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16.1 (Spring 1992) After the Breakup: Roots of Soviet Dis-Union

CULTURAL SURVIVAL: AIMS AND METHODS

Since 1972, Cultural Survival has helped indigenous people and ethnic minorities deal as equals in their encounters with industrial society.

We maintain that cultural difference is inherent in humanity; protecting this diversity enriches our common earth. Yet in the name of development and progress, native peoples and ethnic minorities lose land, natural resources, and control over their lives. The consequences can be disease, destitution, and despair for them - and war and environmental damage for us all.

Where the Moose Have No Blood: In Yakutsk, Siberia, the myths are falling, though slowly.

They say the moose in the forests have no hair and no blood. Parents say the children suffer from leukemia and are allergic to apples and jam; their skin breaks out in rashes, and they have trouble breathing. In the nature museum is a stuffed calf that was born here not long ago, a calf with two heads not unlike the two-headed eagle that is the historic symbol of the Russian empire. The world's fourth longest river flows here, but it contains no fish.

"Don't go out after dark," people warn. "Bands of youths roam the area.

Unnatural Disasters: Pogroms have killed thousands of Bangladeshi minorities; millions more are refugees in India

Unnatural Disasters: Pogroms have killed thousands of Bangladeshi. minorities; millions more are refugees in India.

In the West, Bangladesh is a synonym for poverty, a basket-case nation with a soaring population, a pitiful economy, and a plague of natural disasters. Less well known is that the country's minorities have long waged one of the world's most difficult and serious struggles for survival.

The Quest for Identity

On February 21, 1988, a startling announcement appeared in the Nagorno-Karabagh daily newspaper:

The special session of the regional council...of Nagorno-Karabagh resolves...to request the supreme soviets of the Azerbaidzhani and Armenian Soviet Socialist Republics that they appreciate the deep aspirations of the Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabagh and transfer the Autonomous Region of Nagorno-Karabagh from the Azerbaidzhani Soviet Socialist Republic to the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic.

The decision of the council of Nagorno-Karabagh, an Armenian-populated region a

Siberian Seminar: In the village of Kazim, activists learn to portray their own culture with video.

In August 1991, we traveled to western Siberia to conduct a field seminar on visual anthropology in the village of Kazim. Our intention was to establish the practice of video ethnography among a small group of native Siberian cultural activists. Members of the Association for Ugrian Salvation, the regional native association, had shown an interest in using these techniques to extend the awareness of Khanty culture and encourage Khanty cultural preservation and revitalization in the context of their emergence from Soviet society.

POPULATION TRANSFER: The Tragedy of the Meskhetian Turks

All the nationalities in the vast lands of the former Soviet Union are facing rough times, but few have had to endure such tragic hardships as those that have fallen upon the Meskhetian Turks. Worse yet, these hardship have gone practically unnoticed. Very little documentation a bout the ancient history of this people exists, and no detailed investigations on them have been published.

POPULATION TRANSFER: The Crimean Tatars Return Home

In 1912, a Russian scholar, L.P. Semirenko, wrote that "even those people who have been in the Crimea for but a month know that the Crimea will perish after the resettlement of the Tatars. They alone survived in this dry steppe by mastering the secrets of extraction and irrigation and by raising livestock and growing gardens where neither Russian, nor German, nor Bulgarian could get along for long."

Semirenko's words were prophetic. In August 1944, Stalin ordered the complete resettlement of the Crimean Tatars.

POPULATION TRANSFER: A Scattered People Seeks Its Nationhood

The rich and distinctive culture and tragic fate of the Kurds make up a striking part of the history of the nations of the former Soviet Union. In some ways the situation of the Kurds is worse today than it was between 1937 and 1944, the years of forced relocation under Stalin.

The story of the Kurds is an ancient one, dating as far back as the second century B.C. in Turkey, Iran, Syria, Egypt, and other Arabic countries. After the first Russo-Persian War (1804-1813), part of the Kurdish homeland ended up in Russia.

Mapping the Future

Maps provide an orientation. Ancient maps looked eastward, hence the expression." Maps, literally and figuratively, can put things in perspective and people in their place.

For most of the twentieth century, the orientation of the world map appeared immutable largely because of the standoff between East and West. Indeed, in the 1950s, '60s, and '70s, the map of Africa underwent a revolution without altering our orientation. With the changing boundaries of the former Soviet and East European states, we have lost our geographical and political guide posts.

Manipulating Territory, Undermining Rights

A close look at world maps reveals that states have created a variety of "ethnic territories" from republics and autonomous regions in the Soviet Union and China to Swiss cantons, ethnic states in India and Burma, Indian reservations in the United States, independent homelands in the Republic of South Africa, and Flanders and Walonia in Belgium. The question arises: are all these administrative systems equal? Do they all "preserve" ethnic rights?

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