Generations of Uzbeks had been brought up on a Russocentric Stalinist version of history, which portrayed the non-Russian nationalities as backward peoples who had received support and enlightenment from the Russian "elder brother". Patriotic Uzbek scholars had to limit themselves for the most part to the oblique devices as promoting the miras, or national cultural heritage, but always without questioning the supposed superiority of Russian civilization. In rebuttal to the substance of Mavlan Vahabov's thesis, Erkin Yusupov and B. V. Lunin argued—in cautious deference to the residual sway of Stalinist survivals—that the anti-Russian content of the uprising was beside the point, that what really mattered was its "social" context. In his speech to the meeting, Hamid Z. Ziyaev succeeded in demolishing the arguments of Vahabov, who made a desperate last-ditch defense of the Stalin-era thesis that the uprising of Central Asian Muslims had been "reactionary and anti-popular".