Central Asia Losing Its Oral Traditions with Passing of Last Aksakals

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 31 – The aksakals, as the older members of the Central Asian nations who for centuries have transmitted the cultural memories of their peoples to the rising generations, are now dying out with no replacements in sight, the victims of urbanization, globalization and economic challenges.

            The last generation of aksakals, people born in the 1940s and 1950s, are now reaching the end of their lives; and according to the Bugin news agency, there are no replacements among those born later and efforts to save the aksakals by digitalizing their words are falling short (bugin.info/detail/poslednie-aksakaly-kak-ts/ru).

            That means that one of the chief transmission belts of cultural knowledge is disappearing and that differences between those raised with aksakals and those raised without them are increasing, a development that could threaten the ethnic unity of these peoples and lead to radical changes. 

            Oral history in Central Asia, Bugin notes, “includes epics, sayings, genealogies, and also stories about local events such as the hunger of the 1930s or the consequences of World War II.” With the passing of the aksakals and the tradition they had maintained, few young people know much about their past and the poems and stories which have united their peoples.

            The aksakal tradition is rapidly dying out because of globalization and digitalization, educational systems which stress formal training rather than the informal transmission of ideas that the aksakals represented, and economic factors which have driven so many young people to leave their villages and even countries in the search for work, cutting them off from the past.

            All the governments of the region and many international organizations recognize this problem, but their efforts to collect and publish what the aksakals have said have not had the impact many hoped for because the Central Asian leaders have not integrated these documentary findings into the school system.

            Some Central Asians are now looking to Finland as a model for what they should do. Helsinki has made the oral tradition of the Kalevala central to its educational system; and three countries in Central Asia – Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan – have indicated that they hope to do the same. But time is not on their side.

Neither Repression Nor Propaganda Effort has Ended Environmental Protests in Bashkortostan

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 31 – Neither repression by Moscow and Ufa or a massive propaganda effort by companies that want to mine the natural resources of the Urals has been able to stop or even seriously reduce the size of environmental protests in Bashkortostan, the Middle Volga republic which has been the site of the largest demonstrations inside Russia in recent years.

            Bashkortostan’s environmental movement has not gotten the attention it deserves not only because it is about something that the Russian government and many analysts call “non-political” because it is not directed in the first instance against Russia’s current leaders but also because the Bashkirs have long attracted less attention that the neighboring Tatars.

            But the longer the protests continue – and they have been taking place since the last decade – the more important and more political they are becoming, something that has forced Moscow and the companies allied with it to change tactics but without achieving any of the successes they hoped for.

            Initially, Moscow and Ufa sought to end the protests through the use of police power, arresting those who took part and imposing draconian sentences. But that effort has backfired, leading many Bashkirs to look at the victims of injustice as not just environmental but national heroes.

            So as a result, the government and the companies which want to despoil the land of Bashkortostan to get at the mineral wealth of the Urals have launched a  major propaganda effort, trying to wean away the least committed activists and thus reduce the challenge these protests represent.

            But as IdelReal journalists report, this effort is backfiring as well. While some may be listening to the propagandists, far more are standing up online and in the streets against them and their efforts to suppress this movement, something that almost certainly will make it even more political in the future (idelreal.org/a/33427450.html).

Far Fewer Foreigners Fighting in and for Ukraine than Moscow Claims or Experience of Earlier Wars Elsewhere Might Suggest

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 1 – Moscow’s claims to the contrary and the experience of earlier wars might suggest, only several thousand foreigners are now fighting in Ukraine on Ukraine’s side, the result, an investigation by The Insider says, of both internal Ukrainian norms and the policies of Ukraine’s allies, none of whom actively supports the participation of their nationals.

            That was true before Putin began his expanded war in Ukraine in 2022 and remains the case now, journalist Vyacheslav Yepuryanu says, even though at that time, Kyiv said it was prepared to take in 20,000 volunteers from other countries to help it repulse the Russian invaders (theins.ru/politika/281613).

            But the actual number of such people has not risen above 2,000, he continues, not only because Ukraine has not always made it easy for such people to take part and pays them so little but because Ukraine’s allies have actively opposed participation in the war lest that antagonize Moscow or create other problems for themselves.

            This is in sharp contrast to the Spanish civil war when 30,000 foreign volunteers fought Franco’s forces and the Winter War in Finland when more than 10,000 volunteers from abroad helped Helsinki resist the Soviet invasion.  And it also means, Yepuryanu says, that Ukraine has attracted to its colors far fewer Europeans than did even the Islamic State.

 

Tyva, Praised by Putin for Its High Birthrate, Plagued by Flood of Underground Abortions

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 30 – Tyva, a Buddhist republic east of the Urals, has one of the highest birthrates of any federal subject and has been praised by Vladimir Putin for that. One reason that its birthrate is so high, he and others appear to believe, is that at present, Tyvan women can get abortions at only one clinic there.

            But a new study by the Wind Project which tracks women’s health finds that what the absence of medical facilities to get legal abortions has led to is a growing number of underground abortions women are performing on themselves with drugs they obtain via the internet (veter.info/posts/2LeplejbeHbH reposted at novayagazeta.eu/articles/2025/05/30/na-kazhdom-shagu-vashi-tabletki).

            Many of these medications do not in fact lead to abortions and often leave the women with more serious medical problems, especially because they are taken secretly and without medical supervision. The Wind Project report thus documents what is likely to be the real consequence of the Putin regime’s war on legal abortions: more suffering and more tragedies.

The Other Tatars of Ukraine

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 30 – When anyone speaks about the Tatars of Ukraine, they almost invariably focus on the Crimean Tatars. But there are other Tatars in that country, although their numbers, once large and important in many cities have declined since the disintegration of the USSR with many having emigrated either to Tatarstan or the West.

            In its continuing survey of Tatars living beyond the borders of Tatarstan, the Milliard.Tatar portal has now featured an article on these other Tatars in Ukraine and their numbers from the late nineteenth century to today (milliard.tatar/news/tatary-na-ukraine-perepisi-rossiiskoi-imperii-i-sssr-7570).

            Of the quarter million Tatars who lived in Ukraine at the end of the 19^th century, approximately 30,000 were Tatars from the Middle Volga and Siberia. They mostly came in search of work but some, especially in the Donbass, decided to settle permanently. And as early as 1905, this Tatar community built a mosque in Kharkhiv.

            In the first Soviet census in 1926, these Tatars were counted separately from the Crimean Tatars and numbered 22,281. As migrant workers from what had become the RSFSR, they were disproportionately male. By 1937, their number had increased slightly to 24,242. The larger figures from the 1939 Soviet census were clearly falsifications.

            The 1959 Soviet census counted 61,527 Tatars, of which only 193 were Crimean Tatars. The overwhelming majority of the latter remained in Central Asia to which they had been deported by Stalin. And in the 1970 Soviet census, there were 76,212 Tatars, of which only 3554 were Crimean Tatars.

            In the last two Soviet censuses, in 1979 and 1989, the Tatars continued to increase, with their number rising to 90,542 in the former, of which 6336 were Crimean Tatars, and with their total being 133,682, of whom more than 45,000 were Crimean Tatars, the Milliard.Tatar portal reports.

            Since 1991, ever more Crimean Tatars have returned to Ukraine; but many of the other Tatars have left for Tatarstan or further abroad. They likely number fewer than 70,000 at the present time, far smaller than the Crimean Tatars but a significant community that deserves to be remembered and supported. 

Ukrainian Far Eastern Republic Recalled on Anniversary of Its Founding in 1919

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 30 – On this date in 1919, Ukrainians living in the far east proclaimed the formation of the Ukrainian Far Eastern Republic, a political entity which was suppressed by Moscow in November 1922 but that still exerts a powerful influence on Ukrainian thinking and alarms many in Moscow.

            In the last decade, as Russian pressure on Ukraine has intensified, Ukrainian officials and activists have devoted increasing attention to ethnic Ukrainian areas within what are now the  borders of the Russian Federation. Among these, known as wedges, the Green Wedge as the Ukrainian Far East is known, is by far the largest and potentially the most important.

            Not only is the Ukrainian government focusing attention on the Green Wedge and other Ukrainian areas in the RF, but there is growing attention to them by Ukrainians more generally. The Green Wedge has its own website (zelenyiklyn.com/), and Ukrainian outlets have given attention to it on this anniversary (https://abn.org.ua/en/news/may-30-independence-day-of-the-ukrainian-far-eastern-republic/).

            The most comprehensive discussion of the Ukrainian Far Eastern Republic is Ivan Svit’s Ukrainian-Japanese Relations (in Ukrainian, New York, 1972, 381 pp.) and John Stephan’s The Russian Far East (Stanford, 1994. Other sources are cited in abn.org.ua/en/history/the-ukrainian-far-eastern-republic-legacy-of-the-ukrainian-resistance-in-the-far-east/).

            For recent developments and their echoes in Moscow, Kyiv and elsewhere, see the following Window on Eurasia articles and the sources cited therein: windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/01/patrushevs-remark-suggests-kremlin.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/07/moscow-declares-two-ukraine-wedge.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/08/japan-ukraine-zeleny-klin-and-future-of.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2022/07/moscow-writer-denounces-links-between.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2018/08/kyiv-takes-up-cause-of-ukrainian-far.html,  windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2018/06/historical-memory-of-ukrainian-wedge-in.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2016/06/a-real-wedge-issue-ukrainian-regions-in.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2016/02/russian-nationalists-oppose-moscows.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2014/06/window-on-eurasia-zelenyi-klin-isnt.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2014/06/window-on-eurasia-second-ukraine-being.html.

Neo-Communist and Neo-Soviet Regimes Both Descend from Soviet System But, Despite Similarities, are Fundamentally Different, Savvin Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 30 – Many observers currently use the terms “neo-communist” and “neo-Soviet” as if they were interchangeable; but in fact, Dimitry Savvin says, although both kinds of regimes have their origins in the Soviet system and share much in common, they are fundamentally different.

            Savvin, editor of the Riga-based conservative Russian portal Harbin, continues his effort to promote a more serious form of Sovietology and thus contribute to the understanding of post-Soviet states by discussing the genesis, similarities and differences of these two regimes (harbin.lv/neokommunisticheskie-i-neosovetskie-rezhimy-genezis-skhodstva-i-razlichiya).

            Both neo-communist and neo-Soviet regimes share much of the pattern of rule they inherited from the Soviet Union, but their “main difference is that “the first have officially declared their rejection of Marxist-Leninist fiction … while the second retains this fiction in one or another form.”

            This is obvious if one considers some examples, Savvin sys. The “classical” case of a neo-Soviet system is Turkmenistan which has kept the same elite in power, remains committed to authoritarian rule, uses the Stalinist model of the peoples democracies, and fills the vacuum left after the rejection of Marxism-Leninism with “populist demagogy and mythological notions.”

            “The Turkmenistan model,” Savvin continues, is typically viewed as something exotic; but in fact, it is one shared by the Russian Federation, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kazakhstan, set apart only because it made that tradition far faster than they did from Soviet to neo-Soviet forms.

            In Turkmenistan and all these other cases, “we see authoritarian regimes, the nucleus of which is the Soviet ruling stratum and apparatus of power, a political system arranged in the way of Stalinist peoples democracies … gradual re-statification of the economy, and the elaboration of neo-Soviet mythology.”

            The chief model of a neo-communist regime is that of China. It has not rejected Marxism-Leninism and the changes it has made in economic arrangements are nothing more than an updated of the New Economic Policy which Lenin himself introduced when the application of Marxist principles failed.

            North Korea which is often lumped together with China as neo-communism is in fact a combination of neo-communism and neo-Sovietism, with elements of both rather than being as more or less clear choice as is the case elsewhere. according to the conservative Russian commentator.

              Except on the question of the continuing centrality of Marxism-Leninism, both neo-communist and neo-Soviet regimes are “in fact identical. They are each aware of this commonality, view liberal and law-based societies as their natural enemy, and now are in the process of forming a coalition against this enemy” and seek global dominance.