Socialist in Form, “National” in Content? Art and Ideology in Soviet Tajikistan

Abstract

This article examines the nexus between art and its ideological function, both discursively and in practice, in the Soviet socialist republics. Scrutinizing the case of visual monumental art in Soviet Tajikistan in the 1970s and 1980s, it can be seen that the geographical and cultural distance from Moscow, in addition to complex multi-actor and multi-level policy implementation channels, allowed for non-conventional artistic practices to develop in the Soviet periphery. The article highlights the role of local officials and, in particular, artists in re-appropriating the official identity formation process with specific ideas of “nationhood,” religion, and gender relations, while at the same time aspiring to comply with the dominant socialist realism doctrine. It is argued that, contrary to the prominent slogan “socialist in content, national in form,” artworks produced in the Soviet periphery were often socialist in form and “national” in content. While the artists skillfully worked within the monumental art tradition promoted by the state, thus relying on a socialist form, not infrequently the meaning of their works distorted, or even contradicted, the official ideology. Often this subversion was non-deliberate. Ultimately, however, the artworks ended up strengthening an autonomous local agency that policy-makers in Moscow sought to eradicate.

The Influence of the Soviet Regime on the Religious Beliefs of Ethnic Minorities

“…The new ideal was to be a grain factory, and not a farm, and in this ideal mechanisation was considered as an "integral attribute of a socialist agricultural enterprise" and greatly contributed to the achievement of the Marxist desire to erase the border between agriculture and industry. Scattered villages were to be replaced by united agglomerates of urban-type residential buildings (Kluczewska and Hojieva, 2022). For the Marxists, which Khrushchev was, the church was a means of public control (Foster et al, 2017).…”

Mapping Participant Frameworks in the Aitys of Birzhan and Sara

“…The Soviet period could be considered an unusually long (seventy year) “intertextual gap” (Briggs and Bauman 1992) in the life of the oral tradition of aitys, wherein there was an explicit state ideological effort to transform the narrative. However, it is essential to state that the duality of the socialist‐nationalist framework was not a totalizing cultural colonialism, but rather allowed for a reasonable degree of freedom in local or regional definitions and emphases in definitions and presentations of “nation” in the sphere of art and literature (Kluczewska and Hojieva 2020; Kudaibergenova 2017; Tagangaeva 2017). It is perhaps better to understand how in this cultural context, the oral tradition “minimized” the gap itself (Wilce 2005, 67; see also Briggs and Bauman 1992) through absorption or reincorporation.…”