ABSTRACT
Faced with a population speaking many dozens of languages, the Soviet government has long attempted to promote Russian as the primary means of communication among members of different nationalities. At least since the middle of the 1930s, Moscow has sought to encourage the integration of Central Asians into Soviet society through promotion of teaching Russian language skills. This chapter examines the way in which the Party used Russian language instruction in its attempt to bridge the cultural and geographic distance between the Soviet Union's Slavs and the Central Asian peoples. Customs and associations connected with the Russian Orthodox religion were also never ignored, for anything related to the Russian people and its milieu was deemed important for the New Historical Community—the Soviet People. The teacher was called upon to explain the roles of pop and popad'ia, the institution of kum, and the ceremony of obvenchanie.
