National identity formation in post-Soviet Central Asia

The paradoxical relationship between how Central Asian states use national images and narratives that are still Soviet in content and anti-Soviet in form is the main focus of this chapter. My goal is to analyse the newly formed national images and some selected myths behind such symbols in the three Central Asian republics of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan, and to show that they are directly dependent on the Soviet legacy. First, the legitimating goals of such projects (the formal distance from the recent past) and the actors or producers of such symbols (the Soviet-trained local nomenklatura) will be examined. ¹ I will look at the so-called ‘political primordialism’ in Central Asia with its distinctive exploration and usage of ancestral lines and particular historical and legendary images. ² The usage of which I would argue lies within the field of political and social legitimation of the new regimes and their policies as they need to build up their legitimacy over the ancientness of their respective nations. I argue that ideology and the quest for a national idea have become tools for political speculation and manipulation by the elites in these countries. I will compare three countries, each with varying levels of intensity of nationalistic primordial ideas: Turkmenistan (a high level of the nationalistic primordial idea), Uzbekistan (also a high level), and Kazakhstan (a moderate level). In conclusion I will draw patterns of ideological developments in these countries in the first five years of independence; for example, the usage of historical (titular ethnic) personages, the quest for a re-discovery of ancient past, and the deliberate alienation from the Soviet past.