Ali Igmen's Speaking Soviet with an Accent is a well-researched study of Kyrgyz identity as it was “crafted” by the activities of Soviet culture clubs from the 1920s to 1930s. The work is remarkable in several ways. It uncovers voices from “below” from Central Asian archive documents, which are unfortunately not so accessible to scholars. It is the first English-language study of the Soviet cultural clubs, or “Red Yurts,” in Kyrgyzstan through which the Soviet state educated the masses about its ideology and regulated popular-level or “amateur” cultural and entertainment activities. The book thus suggests a new approach to studying Soviet mass culture, which had predominantly focused on Soviet Russia and Eastern Europe and overlooked the role clubs played as institutions of identity formation and sources of modernization. In addition, Speaking Soviet with an Accent moves away from looking at the so-called “sovietization” process as a simple top-down imposition from Moscow to the indigenous Kyrgyz population. Instead, Igmen borrows the postcolonialist scholar Homi Bhabha's concepts of hybridity and mimicry to explain how the Kyrgyz learned not only to speak Soviet with a Kyrgyz accent but also to speak Kyrgyz with a Soviet accent.
The Soviet clubs were introduced in the 1920s across the Soviet Union with the agenda of promoting amateur talents, teaching Marxist ideology to the general public, and regulating cultural activities. As the author writes, the clubs were “an exemplary setting where new Soviets could experiment with the Bolshevik concept of ‘cultural transformation’ as if in a laboratory.” Through their activities, mostly catered to non-professional level the Kyrgyz clubs attacked Islam and nomadism, the two pillars of the Kyrgyz life-style, and converted the indigenous population to Soviet modernity. The people in charge of the early clubs were often from outside Kyrgyzstan and unfamiliar with the local culture. Instead, their views of Central Asia differed little from the imperial predecessors of the tsarist regime whom they criticized for colonizing the region.
The Soviet administrators also recruited the “organic intellectuals” – aksakals (community elders) and akyns (bards) – who had traditionally held significant influence on the Kyrgyz ail population. Igmen observes that these newly-recruited ail leaders serving as club managers were keen observers of both the Party directives and local sentiment, and they adapted flexibly to the changing political atmosphere of the Stalinist era. They integrated local cultural elements into the Soviet campaigns such as modifying Manas, the epitome of Kyrgyz oral tradition, for ideological education/entertainment. Supported by the Soviet state that sought national consolidation, the leaders actively engaged in defining a distinctly Kyrgyz nation that superseded tribal alliances and was different from other Central Asian ethno-linguistic groups.
Igmen also examines the role of the clubs as a venue for Soviet celebrations such as the republican-level Olympiads organized by the Kyrgyz House of National Creativity. The primary purpose of these Olympiads and other celebrations was to demonstrate the harmonious merger of socialism, modernity, and Kyrgyz national identity. The Olympiads provided an opportunity for legitimizing the expressions of Kyrgyz culture and exploring, fashioning, performing, and practicing Kyrgyzness. They were also an occasion for individual artists and writers to make their names. The author traces the local-level discourses and comments from the club managers, which reveal a reality less ideal than that reported in official and central decrees praising the Soviet success of transforming Kyrgyz culture. Many club mangers complained about the slim native participation, lack of financial and material resources, which in turn severely limited the number of participants, and lastly, unsanctioned activities taking place during the celebrations. In addition, some reported the ail population's apathetic attitude towards the Stalinist celebrations and festivals.
The Olympiads and other celebrations also introduced Western art forms to the native Kyrgyz population. Igmen traces the emergence of the Kyrgyz Theater closely connected to the club activities and the careers of a few theatre professionals who had survived the Purge to study the influences of the exported art forms on the Kyrgyz culture. The ail clubs and the House of Nation Creativity were expected to take charge of theatrical development in the republic. Therefore, the clubs organized theatrical troupes and recruited young actors and theatrical staff from the local rural population who were to perform at the Olympiads and other festivals. The directors and actors of the ail troupes came to represent Western modernity and formed the new cultural elites of the Kyrgyz nation.
A chapter is devoted to the effects of the Bolshevik women's liberation campaigns, another priority agenda for the clubs, on Kyrgyz women. According to Igmen, the Soviet authorities distinguished Kyrgyz women from the Uzbek and Tadjik women from sedentary and more orthodox Islamic society and characterized them as perpetuating the nomadic lifestyle, which hindered conversion into socialism. As was the case in any other Central Asian republics, the Stalinist cultural policy implemented through the club activities focused on educating and transforming native women into Soviet heroines. The author suggests that this policy and the club programs influenced Kyrgyz women's self-image and the new concept of Soviet womanhood. In reality, the club administrators failed to understand the labor-division between genders in traditionally nomadic Kyrgyz society and ignored the serious economic consequences that hindered the women's attendance at the clubs. Nevertheless, Kyrgyz intellectuals of a later generation such as the writer Chingiz Aitmatov began to combine the official narrative of Soviet heroines and indigenous tradition, treating the Soviet ideology and Kyrgyz culture as equal, to fashion Soviet Kyrgyzness. Like the heroines in Aitmatov's fictions as well as his own biography, Kyrgyz women of the 1930s who rose to ranks under the Soviet power came to embody both revolutionary spirit and traditional wisdom, inspiring the later generation of Kyrgyz intellectuals.
The author could have investigated further into the question whether the “Kyrgyzness” projected by the Soviet modernization was shared by the wider Kyrgyz population or simply functioned as a representational identity. In addition, some assumptions the author takes without questioning – such as the claim that the creation of the Soviet Union was essentially an attempt to make a Soviet nation – can be a source of confusion and misunderstanding. Notwithstanding these points, Ali Igmen has written a significant book that should be of interest to scholars of both Central Asia and Soviet history.
