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The Integration of Non-Russian Servicemen in the Soviet and Russian Army - Documents and Sources
" The Formation of a National Kyrgyz Division (1927-1928)- Documents and Commentary

Commentary - The Early Days of Central Asian Military Integration: the Kyrgyz National Division of the Red Army in 1927-1928

Isabelle Ohayon

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Research Fields:

History, Sociology
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  • 1  The documents detailing the Frunze reform and its consequences show that the creation of national (...)
  • 2  R. Reese, Stalin's Reluctant Soldiers: A Social History of the Red Army, 1925-1941, (Modern war st (...)

1This paper is a brief overview of the sociology of a national division of the Red Army in the early days of its formation in Kyrgyzstan, as described in two documents about soldiers of Kyrgyz nationality in 1927 and 1928. At that time the Soviet Army was not seeking to substantially increase its numbers1 but rather recruiting in line with the intentions of the nationality policy, by integrating ethnic groups and regions that had been ignored by the high command. Kyrgyzstan is a striking example: it was not until 1924 that this remote territory formed an autonomous republic, and the educational level of its native population was one of the lowest in the USSR. Like the Yakuts, Turkmen and many others, the Kyrgyz, because of their weak leadership and peripheral location in the political and social world of the Russian Empire and early USSR, did not join the ranks of the Red Army in large numbers before the reforms brought in by Mikhail Vasilyevich Frunze from 1924 onwards. Frunze succeeded Trotsky at the head of the USSR’s Revolutionary Military Council (revolutsionnyi voennyi sovet, People’s Commissariat of Defence in 1934).He initiated a wide range of measures creating national divisions in the Soviet republics and autonomous regions and more generally overhauling the structure and organisation of the Red Army. Until the mid-1930s, the Soviet Army underwent a period of transition and the beginnings of modernisation in terms of both command practices and equipment, formalising hierarchical distinctions and relations, mechanising armament and infrastructure, and standardising recruitment. Following the same reasoning, the system of territorially based divisions and units with sphere of action and deployment restricted to the relevant region or national republic was gradually abandoned after 19352, in favour of the principle of a regular army.

  • 3  J. A. Sanborn, Drafting the Russian nation. Military Conscription, Total War and Mass Politics, 19 (...)
  • 4  Cf. page 2 of document n°1, “Social’no-politicheskaia kharakteristika molodniaka 1905 goda rozhden (...)

2The decisions taken between 1924 and the early 1930s with respect to the national republics were intended to promote the incorporation of a small number of volunteers, gradually unify the call-up rules and in practice prepare society for the prospect of compulsory conscription3, which was finally instituted by the Soviet Constitution of 1936. Seen from Central Asia, this policy of military integration, albeit introduced at a late stage, was a radical shift from the position adopted by the Tsarist authorities towards the native peoples of the steppes and Turkestan. Their status had meant that they were excluded from service in the Imperial army. When in 1916 Nicholas II decreed compulsory conscription, requiring men to join the rear units, the Central Asians expressed their violent disagreement with this status as second-class subjects implied by rear-line mobilisation and with the sudden order sending adult men to the rear of the Western Front. The subsequent revolts left deep scars on societies that later welcomed the Soviet measures for incorporation in the Red Army, based on volunteering and equal status for all citizens, including soldiers. One of the documents records a soldier saying, “the Soviet State is giving us weapons, so it trusts us”4.

  • 5  “Politupravlenie sredne-aziatskogo voennogo okruga”. I have chosen to call the region Middle Asia (...)

3The two documents discussed here are held in the political documentation archives of the Kyrgyz Republic (formerly the archives of the Communist Party of the Kirghiz Soviet Socialist Republic [earlier transliteration]) and are part of the holding of the Kyrgyz Communist Party Central Committee. They comprise reports on young recruits of Kyrgyz nationality enrolled in 1927 and 1928 in the Kyrgyz national division of the Red Army on the territory of the newly-formed Kirghiz Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (ASSR). The first, entitled “Socio-political characteristics of recruits born in 1905”, dating from March 1928, concerns the contingent called up in 1927, and the second, more detailed, “Political report” concerns the 1928 recruits. They were addressed respectively to the political directorate of the Middle Asian military sector (okrug)5 with copies to the Kyrgyz Party Central Committee and the GPU division, and written in Russian by the political directorate of the Kyrgyzstan military territorial directorate. They differ from most documents published about the Soviet Army and nationalities in that they concern regions marginal to the formation of the Red Army and contain the direct remarks of unit chiefs.

  • 6  “Doklad zam. Predsedatelia RVS SSSR M. V. Frunze v CK RKP (b) o piatiletnei programme natsional’no (...)
  • 7  In 1924, at the time of the Frunze reform and the establishment of the plan, national units were d (...)

4The reports reveal very low numbers of conscripts­—145 in 1927, 163 in 1928—which correspond, however, to the five-year recruitment plan established in 1924 to enrol 0.12% of the Kyrgyz national population, roughly 800 men6. In all, the so-called “national” units in the USSR were intended to account for a tiny proportion of the Red Army’s total numbers at a time when the contingent was being reduced7. The initiative should therefore be seen as part of the affirmative action policy then practised toward nationalities rather than a decision to strengthen Soviet defence forces.

  • 8  R. Reese, Stalin’s Reluctant Soldiers,op. cit., p. 1.
  • 9  Cf. Document 2, first paragraph concerning the reception of the national division by the eighth es (...)

5Be that as it may, despite their small size, the Kyrgyz units of the Soviet army reflect “a society in and of itself and a society within society”, as Roger Reese describes the Red Army as a whole8. They are an observatory in which may be seen the prime concerns of the young Soviet state in Central Asia and the general state of Kyrgyz society at a time of tension. The USSR was about to enforce collectivisation: during the last two years of the NEP, pressure on farm produce collection foreshadowed a harder line, while the repression of Kyrgyz rural elites had begun in the early 1920s. So the very structure of the units revealed from the outset a relationship of dominance that was not just strictly military but included a hierarchical distinction between Kyrgyz and Europeans (local Slav settlers). The units comprised a main body known as the “national division” for the Kyrgyz and a smaller body of more experienced Europeans, the “eighth escort company”, in charge of them9. These two categories of soldier, systematically distinguished in the description of the units, illustrate a way of thinking that recurs in the army’s discourse, referring to the sort of civilising mission it saw itself as undertaking in the ethnic divisions. Three major themes emerge from the observations contained in these documents, corresponding to three major functions of the Red Army: education and literacy, political education and the secularisation of daily practices traditionally linked to religious ritual.

Literacy and education: the army’s function and the conscripts’ expectations

6The high command was aware of the generally low level of education throughout the USSR in the early 1920s and gave the Red Army the mission of teaching literacy to overwhelmingly peasant conscripts and ensuring that they received a general education comprising basic skills, together with lessons in atheism, Marxist-Leninist thought and rules of hygiene.

  • 10  Cf. Document 2, page 3.

7In Kyrgyzstan, the national divisions followed this plan, especially since the literacy rate among the Kyrgyz was about 30%, and in the eighth escort from 40% to 50% depending on the year, since most of the latter had received primary education in their villages (one to four years). This difference involved quite separate teaching: the Europeans had their knowledge assessed by the command according to their skills in “political culture, reading, writing, arithmetic, geography”10. The hierarchy sought to evaluate these recruits’ suitability for supervising the Kyrgyz and their loyalty to the army and the State. The Kyrgyz were not given so thorough an examination because it was taken for granted that they were uneducated and would need an entire course of instruction during their service.

  • 11  Cf. Document 1, conclusion point 4.
  • 12  These conscription periods were specific to the national divisions; at that time, the legal period (...)

8This educational aspect of army service was sufficiently publicised in Kyrgyz society for the recruits to have high hopes of it. The documents frequently note the demand from recruits and their disappointment that the army did not devote enough time to school-type instruction. This also shows the utility that conscripts saw in military service as an opportunity to gain qualifications that would help them obtain jobs later in civilian life. “It is also noted that the recruits regard the army as a school preparing them solely for Soviet work”11. This prospect was certainly a motivation for volunteering, as was the desire to obtain the status of an ex-krasnoarmeets as a certificate of loyalty when applying for work in an administration or Soviet organisation. This ambition is also shown in the desire expressed of having military service extended from two to four years12.

9Military service was part of an individual strategy among Kyrgyz who came almost entirely from rural backgrounds of middle rank (seredniak), in the Soviet classification of the period. Their social origin explained why they knew or suspected that the army was a useful start to working in the new Soviet order and occupying the posts that were now allocated to national citizens. The army was not only a place of education for the native population but was also seen as such by the European recruits who, despite their special status, were required to achieve the same educational standards.

  • 13  J. Cadiot, “A grands pas vers le russe : l’égalité des langues en URSS dans les années 1920”, in C (...)
  • 14  J. Sanborn, Drafting the Russian Nation, op. cit., p. 91.
  • 15  “Doklad nachalnika GU RKKA V. N. Levicheva v RVS SSSR o nacional’nykh formirovaniiakh”, of 8 May 1 (...)

10The army was traditionally perceived by Soviet leaders as a “Russification” school and was central to the debate on the promotion of a compulsory state language in the USSR to be shared by all citizens13. These concerns were reflected in the form given to the ethnic divisions after the 1924 reform. In the two documents, however, no mention is made of the language of communication and instruction used in the Kyrgyz national division; only the level of literacy is mentioned, regardless of the language spoken. But it is most probably Kyrgyz that is intended: in 1924, one of the conditions for popularising the Red Army and encouraging enrolment under the reform was that it offered military training in the vernacular languages used within the national units14. Furthermore, the localised nature of the ethnic units, whose military sphere of action was restricted to the territory of their own republics, perhaps explains why these documents do not mention Russian teaching. The curious silence on this point implies that the instruction was given in Kyrgyz, which would explain the absence of protest, but one may suppose a certain degree of bilingualism, without which communication between the division’s Kyrgyz and Russian-speaking Europeans could not occur. The senior military authorities on the Revolutionary Council showed a certain concern for linguistic issues, and specified both Russian lessons and the distribution of textbooks in local languages15; but this is not reflected in these documents, so one may suppose that directives from above did not always influence the priorities of the local command.

The division as observation unit and political school

  • 16  J. Sanborn stresses the role of the komsomol, particularly in the ethnic units, Drafting the Russi (...)

11The low level of literacy, including among European recruits who came from rural areas poorly served by rail, was closely correlated with a poor level of political awareness. The new recruits, whatever their nationality, came mainly from unpoliticised backgrounds, since only 29% in 1927 and 37% in 1928 claimed membership in the Party or komsomol youth movements. In the “national division” only 3% of recruits were former employees of the administration or Soviet apparatus, compared with 31% in the “eighth escort”. Not surprisingly, it was the soldiers with this political experience to whom the command gave a leading role in political education16: they led debating societies, ran the recreation room (Lenugolok, Lenin’s corner), and so on. Although the command deplored the low proportion of conscripts from the youth movements and apparatus (24.4% in 1928), it is easily explained. Officials in the auls (mainly pastoral Kyrgyz villages) and kishlaks (sedentary villages, especially of Uzbek farmers) remained in their functions, rather than joining the Red Army, because there were no “qualified” replacements and they simply did not want to swap their posts of responsibility for the status of private soldier in the Red Army.

12This lack of political consciousness among young Kyrgyz is revealed by a number of indicators. An absolute majority knew neither the names nor even the functions of Kalinin, head of state (Central Executive Committee), Rykov, head of government (Sovnarkom), or Stalin, secretary of the USSR Communist Party, and could not identify the most important organs of authority in the USSR. They did not understand the local political structure of the Soviet state, since they did not know who held responsibility in the district (volost’) and village (aul/kishlak), but showed some interest in the elections to local soviets. Most did not understand the full meaning of sovkhoz and kolkhoz or the part they played in the rural economy, at a time when collectivisation had not started and the collective principle was in practice not applied.

  • 17 Soiuz Voinstvuiushchikh Bezbozhnikov:a mass volunteer antireligious organization active since 1925 (...)

13In the eighth escort, political profiles were somewhat different. Here 31% had experience in working in a Soviet apparatus and had already occupied posts of responsibility, and many others had been members of trade unions, cooperatives or voluntary organisations, such as the League of the Militant Godless17. However, on the whole the recruits displayed poor knowledge of the USSR’s international status and the challenges of Soviet construction, and, more generally, of world current affairs. These weaknesses justified organising press readings and consequently intensifying political education.

  • 18  I. Ohayon, “Lignages et pouvoirs locaux. L’indigénisation au Kirghizstan soviétique (années 1920-1 (...)
  • 19  Cf. Document 1, paragraph 1.

14It should not be inferred from the above that the army became a dumping-ground for the “dregs” of Kyrgyzstan society. It attracted men whose poor qualifications only reflected a more general state of affairs18. On the contrary, its ranks comprised young men who were ambitious for education and social contacts in the new circles of authority. Although they knew little of the political environment surrounding them, they were already aware of a number of norms that it was useful to be able to use so as to benefit from the promotion policy intended for the social categories preferred by the system. One example is self-identification as belonging to the poorest and most exploited classes (bedniak and batrak), often by false declaration: “The population of the aul and the kishlak have realised that the most respectable positions in Soviet society are bedniak and batrak, so that the first rural surveys reported 50% bedniak and 50% batrak, but no “middle-rank peasants” (seredniak) or “rich peasants” (zazhitochny)… Senior management [later] corrected [these figures]”19. Although Kyrgyz society had understood the implications of assigned social identity, it only vaguely suspected its ideological underpinnings and all the consequences. While manipulating these categories to obtain advantages—some recruits concealed their parents’ assets, by claiming they had no cattle, and yet also complained that their parents paid taxes—the young soldiers regretted that this policy had led to repression of the aul’s authority figures (manap) and richer livestock-owners (bai) since 1921-22. Between the authorities and Kyrgyz pastoral society lay a wide gulf of misunderstanding: since the Soviet State was supposed to promote equality and consequently redistribution, why should it repress the bai and manap who actually distribute some of their assets to their needy clients? This criticism of the bai deportation and property confiscation campaigns noted in one of the reports reveals a certain naivety on the part of the conscripts and a certain trust in the Soviet State. This trust did not conflict with their attachment to traditional political and social practices, but was symptomatic of their poor political consciousness. Similarly, based on each man’s identification with his family, they claimed that their choices and commitments affected their family’s status, and that consequently a soldier’s parents should be exempted from paying tax on farm production.

  • 20  N. Pianciola, “Décoloniser l’Asie centrale ? Bolcheviks et colons au Semirech’e (1920-1922)”, Cahi (...)
  • 21 I. Ohayon, “Lignages et pouvoirs locaux”, op. cit.

15The tax issue was one of the problems most often mentioned by the division’s recruits at political discussion meetings held in barracks, among both Kyrgyz and Europeans. In 1927-28, the tax burden was rising throughout the USSR’s rural areas because the NEP had not produced sufficient food deliveries in the eyes of the Soviet leadership. The share of grain crops due to the State rose, provoking many tensions that were reflected in the violently critical statements of the eighth escort soldiers. Most of these Russians and Ukrainians came from farming families who had settled on the grain-growing foothills in northern Kyrgyzstan at the end of the 19th century. They had signed up probably to escape a crisis caused by this taxation and more broadly by their status as former settlers required to return the land they had occupied to the native population20. They still publicly accused the Soviet authorities for this policy; one, the “son of a rich peasant”, even provoked an incident leading to his expulsion from the division. The presence of “socially foreign elements”, as defined by the Soviet classification of society, in the ranks of the Red Army revealed the effect of voluntary enrolment on the quality of recruit selection. In Kyrgyzstan and other less Sovietised regions, this period was characterised by improvisation and the need to get by with the skills and resources available21.

16Despite this, the soldiers in the Kyrgyz national division displayed a certain enthusiasm for their service, and were proud to be worthy of the trust of the Soviet State. Although the 1927 report did note an initial “psychological demobilisation” among the first recruits: fifteen sets of parents, on learning of their sons’ dissatisfaction, asked for them to return home to support the family and used as intermediary the head of the local administration (village soviet or district executive committee). In 1928, better induction conditions (officer preparation, welcoming ceremony, accommodation) reduced the causes for dissatisfaction and affected the mood of the soldiers, who took a more active part in political meetings, lessons and out-of-class activities. However, the command surveys show that the recruits’ prime motivation was education. Their desire to help defend their new motherland was still the first stated objective in the written questionnaires, but education remained the argument most often heard in public and informal conversation.

Body and “morality”

17This final section concerns the measures taken by the command with respect to religious observance and the reaction to them. The specific nature of this army action on “morality” was its relation to the concepts of bodily hygiene included in Muslim ritual. For the military hierarchy, atheist propaganda was in practice supported by the desire to change habits of cleanliness. Quite naturally the command evaluated conscripts’ state of health, particularly during the quarantine period preceding enlistment, and recorded cases of the most frequent diseases. In practice, the reports note a generally satisfactory situation with only a few cases detected of syphilis and typhus, although they do mention three cases of “hysteria”.

  • 22  Document 2, p. 4, first paragraph on religious matters.
  • 23  Islamic precepts allow, in the absence of water, ablution with mineral matter.

18However, it is in the remarks made about daily religious practices, particularly those to do with Islamic precepts for hygiene, that the reports reveal the army’s intention to domesticate soldiers’ bodies. First, they note the high frequency of ritual reflexes among Muslim Kyrgyz: the “Allahu akbar” call to prayer was said on numerous occasions; everyday gestures, such as rubbing the face with both hands after a meal or as a short prayer, ritual washing of the hands, face and feet, were behaviour frequently observed among young Kyrgyz recruits during their first weeks of service. These words and gestures, notes the command, tended to disappear in public after two or three months, although some might persist with them in private. These practices were eroded by anti-religious propaganda and social pressure: “Most of the recruits can still be heard whispering ‘Allahu akbar’, but face washing is no longer overt because of the fear of being mocked by other soldiers, especially komsomol activists”22. The same was true for cross-wearing among Christian recruits, who quickly gave up missals and religious signs. At all events, although it is clear that this eradication of ritual behaviour was moral education in the sense Foucault would use, it may also be seen in the dimension of an intrusion into privacy. The documents report the obvious embarrassment that occurred when the Kyrgyz soldiers had to go to the latrines at the same time. This infringement of Muslim rules of decency required by life in barracks also included an interference with the cleanliness practices to be adopted after relieving oneself. The report welcomes the fact that Kyrgyz soldiers had stopped wiping themselves with soil, which one supposes to mean “dry ablution”23 or simply particular habits, and this remark reveals how far the hierarchy intended to discipline each man’s private life.

19This type of behaviour was visibly not found among the division’s European members, or at least was not noted in the report. These were practices and attitudes towards private matters that the Muslim Kyrgyz did not share with their hierarchy, whose values were based on the standards of Russian life. However, the army appeared to see military education, the promotion of atheism and the consequent “Sovietisation” as requiring the imposition of frameworks of behaviour that reached into the most private details of the body. Rather than mere rules of disease prevention, this was a cultural violence that must be seen as domination by the Russian command of a national group that practised a higher standard of bodily hygiene. The religion given as a reason for this interference was typically a “national” argument that appeared to justify intruding on bodily privacy, for which these documents do not give any medical rationalisation. This national aspect of acculturation via private matters is thus an addition to the discipline required by military training and the regulation of male collective life.

Conclusion

  • 24  M. Foucault’s term for prison, school, hospital, factory, asylum and barracks. M. Foucault, Discip (...)
  • 25  See, among others, D. Northrop, Veiled Empire: Gender and Power in Stalinist Central Asia, Ithaca (...)

20These brief details concerning the Kyrgyz national division between 1927 and 1928 show the Red Army, and in particular its barracks, in its functions as a total disciplinary institution24, substituting for the Party, school, dispensary and even workplace (the recruits complained of having to work instead of studying), and drilling body and morality. The type of military enlistment that in the late 1920s affected only a tiny proportion of the Kyrgyz population foreshadowed the major integrating role of the Red Army after the ethnic units were disbanded in 1936 in favour of a centralised army and non-regionalised military service that might be done anywhere in the USSR. Although military service was, and would remain until the end of the Soviet system, a powerful instrument for integration, “Russification” and “Sovietisation”, its dark side was the violence that can here be seen in its most intimate dimension. However, the discourse reported in these documents does not criminalise the non-standard behaviour that the command was supposed to correct. Unlike what is found, say, in political police reports in Kyrgyzstan at that time, the military officers appear to consider society more tolerantly and to wish to integrate as many people as possible, even if their status contradicted the principles of Soviet social promotion. Against a background of repression of “crimes of daily life”25, in which the customary practices governing social and private life were prosecuted and sanctioned, the army took on the task of transforming them by discipline rather than repression.

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Notes

1  The documents detailing the Frunze reform and its consequences show that the creation of national divisions was not necessarily intended to increase the Red Army’s troop numbers. Cf. “Doklad zam. Predsedatelia RVS SSSR M. V. Frunze v CK RKP(b) o piatiletnei programme natsional’nogo stroitel’stva v RKKA” of 29 December 1924, “Doklad nachalnika GU RKKA V. N. Levicheva v RVS SSSR o natsional’nykh formirovaniiakh” of 8 May 1926 and “Sirkuliar RVS SSSR ob okonchatel’nom utverzhdenii plana natsional’nykh voennykh formirovanii” of 27 June 1927 in Reforma v Krasnoi Armii. Dokumenty i materialy. 1923-1928 gg, kn 1, M., SPb., Letnii sad, 2006, pp. 306-309, pp. 556-564 and pp. 94-95.

2  R. Reese, Stalin's Reluctant Soldiers: A Social History of the Red Army, 1925-1941, (Modern war studies) Lawrence, University Press of Kansas, 1996, Chapter 1.

3  J. A. Sanborn, Drafting the Russian nation. Military Conscription, Total War and Mass Politics, 1905-1925, DeKalb, Northern Illinois University Press, 2003, pp.91-92.

4  Cf. page 2 of document n°1, “Social’no-politicheskaia kharakteristika molodniaka 1905 goda rozhdeniia”.

5  “Politupravlenie sredne-aziatskogo voennogo okruga”. I have chosen to call the region Middle Asia rather than Central Asia, because in Soviet terminology the former term refers to the territory of the four republics of Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan, and excludes Kazakhstan.

6  “Doklad zam. Predsedatelia RVS SSSR M. V. Frunze v CK RKP (b) o piatiletnei programme natsional’nogo stroitel’stva v RKKA”, of 29 December 1924, in Reforma v Krasnoi Armii, op. cit., p. 307.

7  In 1924, at the time of the Frunze reform and the establishment of the plan, national units were due to comprise a total of 38 401 men out of 610 000, a number that was itself reduced to 572 000 in the first year. Cf. note 6 above, pp. 307-308.

8  R. Reese, Stalin’s Reluctant Soldiers,op. cit., p. 1.

9  Cf. Document 2, first paragraph concerning the reception of the national division by the eighth escort, and the exact national make-up of each of these bodies.

10  Cf. Document 2, page 3.

11  Cf. Document 1, conclusion point 4.

12  These conscription periods were specific to the national divisions; at that time, the legal period in the USSR was five years.

13  J. Cadiot, “A grands pas vers le russe : l’égalité des langues en URSS dans les années 1920”, in Cacophonie d'empire, Russes et Soviétiques face au multilinguisme, CNRS éditions, forthcoming.

14  J. Sanborn, Drafting the Russian Nation, op. cit., p. 91.

15  “Doklad nachalnika GU RKKA V. N. Levicheva v RVS SSSR o nacional’nykh formirovaniiakh”, of 8 May 1926 in Reforma v Krasnoi Armii, op. cit., p. 563

16  J. Sanborn stresses the role of the komsomol, particularly in the ethnic units, Drafting the Russian Nation, op. cit., p. 92.

17 Soiuz Voinstvuiushchikh Bezbozhnikov:a mass volunteer antireligious organization active since 1925 [editor’s note].

18  I. Ohayon, “Lignages et pouvoirs locaux. L’indigénisation au Kirghizstan soviétique (années 1920-1930)”, Cahiers du Monde russe,# 49/1, 2008, pp. 148-154, on the educational levels of local cadres.

19  Cf. Document 1, paragraph 1.

20  N. Pianciola, “Décoloniser l’Asie centrale ? Bolcheviks et colons au Semirech’e (1920-1922)”, Cahiers du Monde russe, # 49/1, 2008, pp. 101-144. Document 2 describes the resentment still present among the European peasants concerning this episode and the perception that some of the best land had been allocated to natives.

21 I. Ohayon, “Lignages et pouvoirs locaux”, op. cit.

22  Document 2, p. 4, first paragraph on religious matters.

23  Islamic precepts allow, in the absence of water, ablution with mineral matter.

24  M. Foucault’s term for prison, school, hospital, factory, asylum and barracks. M. Foucault, Discipline and Punish: the Birth of the Prison, Trans. Alan Sheridan, New York, Random House, 1977.

25  See, among others, D. Northrop, Veiled Empire: Gender and Power in Stalinist Central Asia, Ithaca and London, Cornell University Press, 2004, Chapter 7.

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References

Electronic reference

Isabelle Ohayon, “Commentary - The Early Days of Central Asian Military Integration: the Kyrgyz National Division of the Red Army in 1927-1928”The Journal of Power Institutions in Post-Soviet Societies [Online], Issue 10 | 2009, Online since 07 December 2009, connection on 22 March 2025. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/pipss/3761; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/pipss.3761

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About the author

Isabelle Ohayon

CERCEC, CNRS, EHESS

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