ABSTRACT
One may suggest several reasons for introducing the new term patrimonial nationalism in the Central Asian context. First of all, the birth of so-called Central Asian states were the consequence of a peculiar historical event in that they were created by the Bolsheviks, without any meaningful historical, social, ethnic or political grounding. These fledgling nation-states lacked the basic elements of statecraft prior to the Soviet rule. Second, Soviet rule in Central Asia was different from the practices of Western European colonial powers in the colonized territories. Third, the Central Asian states were states within a bigger family of states and their notion of identity was informed and formed by this sort of relationship, that is a member of the larger Soviet state. Consequently, as a group of dependent geo-political pseudo states, they were denied the chance to accumulate experiences associated with a sovereign political entity on their own terms, such as cultural characteristics, historical experiences.
