by James Millar
Linguistically, Kyrgyz is a Turkic language that is mutually intelligible with Kazakh. Throughout the past several centuries, it has been written in the Arabic, Latin, and Cyrillic scripts, with the latter two dominant during the Soviet period. The government is shifting the language back to the Latin script, with an effort to emulate the Turkish model.
The early history of the Kyrgyz is shrouded in mythology, particularly the founding legend of the Manas, an epic poem of more than one million lines that is still presented orally, through song. Kyrgyz have had, in the past, their own forms of government, although more often they have been under the rule of outside forces: Mongol, Chinese, Timurid, and Russian, to name the most significant. During the period of the Russian Empire, the Kyrgyz were often called Kara-Kyrgyz. There is a common history with the Kazakhs, who were con-fusingly called the Kyrgyz by Russian ethnographers for most of the nineteenth century. Although they were incorporated into the Khanate of Kokand in the eighteenth century, the Kyrgyz were not always content with being controlled by others. Kyr-gyz clans rebelled four times between 1845 and 1873. When the Khanate of Kokand was incorporated into the Russian province of Semirech’e in 1876, the same ire was directed against the new overlords.
Through the rest of the nineteenth century and into the early twentieth century, the region of the Kyrgyz was firmly entrenched in the Russian Empire. In 1916, there was a large-scale uprising in the region against the threat of drafting ethnic Kyr-gyz and other Central Asians into the Russian Army, to support the effort against Germany and Austria-Hungary. The regional turmoil only deepened with the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 and the subsequent civil war, both of which had direct effects on the Kyrgyz people. Significant fighting took place on Kyrgyz soil, and the anti-Bolshevik Basmachi Rebellion was partially based in the regions of southern Kyrgyzstan, around the city of Osh. By the early 1920s the region was pacified, but at a high cost: Perhaps a third of all residents of the region either died in the fighting and in the famine that plagued Central Asia in those years, or fled to China.
In the National Delimitation of 1924, the territory of the Kyrgyz was incorporated in the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic and was dubbed an Autonomous Republic. The region was elevated to full Union-Republic status in 1936 and was officially called the Kirgiz Soviet Socialist Republic (Kir.S.S.R.). This entity lasted until 1991, when the
KYRGYZSTAN AND KYRGYZ
Kyrgyzstan, 1992. © MARYLAND CARTOGRAPHICS. REPRINTED WITH PERMISSION Soviet Union was officially dissolved. At the time of independence, the name was changed to the Republic of Kyrgyzstan, and later the Kyrgyz Republic. With independence, the former president of the Kirgiz Soviet Socialist Republic, Askar Akayev, was elected president of the new country. He continued to hold that position in 2003, and has consolidated his authority over the years. The Kyrgyz Republic has the institutions associated with a democracy-a legislature, a judiciary, a president, and a constitution-but the conditions for democratic development remain weak.
Economically, the Kyrgyz have traditionally been nomadic herders, and pastoral activity remains important for the Kyrgyz. With more than 80 percent of the territory being mountainous, pastoral habits include bringing the herds to high-elevation fields during the summer and back to the valleys during the winter months. There are also mineral deposits in the country, particularly of gold and some strategic minerals that can be exploited. Overall, the economy remains poor, with a gross national product (GDP) of approximately $13.5 billion dollars. While the purchasing power parity (PPP) of the country is $2,800 per capita, typical incomes often fall to less than $100 per month per person.
Making matters worse is the fact that the country has borrowed heavily from the international community during the first decade of independence. The national budget is actually exceeded by the amount owed to organizations such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, totaling more than $1.6 billion as of 2003. In addition, corruption is rampant and most international companies and observers view the business conditions in the country in a negative light. These problems will continue to plague any effort at economic reform that the current government, or its successor, might try to implement.
While there are ethnic Kyrgyz in neighboring Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, and China, the respective populations are relatively modest and do not cause much concern. Regardless, the Kyrgyz feel it necessary to establish positive relations with these neighboring states, in large part because of the difficult borders and the fact that the Kyrgyz Republic
KYRGYZSTAN AND KYRGYZ
is a relatively small neighbor in this region. Thus, it is not surprising to see the Kyrgyz government participate in a number of multilateral security and trade agreements. It is an active member of the Commonwealth of Independent States, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (which includes China, Russia, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan), the Collective Security Agreement (with six CIS states), as well as a number of regional initiatives. It is also a member of the NATO Partnership for Peace Program and, as a result of the U.S.-led Global War on Terrorism, agreed to have NATO forces establish a military air-base outside of the capital city Bishkek in 2001. During 2002, the Kyrgyz government allowed the Russian Air Force to base jets at a second airbase, and in 2003 the army of Kyrgyzstan conducted military exercises with the People’s Liberation Army of China.
Foreign relations ultimately are less of a concern than the day-to-day domestic problems that plague the country. Economic development, employment difficulties, crime, corruption, and social problems continue to exist in the Kyrgyz Republic. See also: CENTRAL ASIA; ISLAM; KAZAKHSTAN AND KAZAKHS; NATIONALITIES POLICIES, SOVIET; NATIONALITIES POLICIES, TSARIST; POLOVTSY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Achylova, Rakhat. (1995). “Political Culture and Foreign Policy in Kyrgyzstan.” In Political Culture and Civil Society in Russia and the New States of Eurasia, ed. Vladimir Tismaneanu. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe. Allworth, Edward, ed. (1994). Central Asia: 130 Years of Russia Dominance, A Historical Overview. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Anderson, John. (1999). Kyrgyzstan: Central Asia’s Island of Democracy. New York: Harwood Academic Publishers. Bennigsen, Alexandre and Wimbush, S. Enders. (1985). Muslims of the Soviet Empire: A Guide. London: C. Hurst. Cummings, Sally, ed. (2002). Power and Change in Central Asia. London: Routledge. Huskey, Eugene. (1997). “Kyrgyzstan: The Fate of Political Liberalization.” In Conflict, Cleavage, and Change in Central Asia and the Caucasus, ed. Karen Dawisha and Bruce Parrott. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Stewart, Rowan and Weldon, Susie. (2002). Kyrgyzstan: An Illustrated Guide. New York: Odyssey Publications.
ROGER KANGAS
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LABOR
Labor commonly refers to the work people do in the employ of others. In its history, labor in Russia has taken a wide variety of forms, from slavery to labor freely exchanged for wages, and the full gamut of possibilities between those extremes. The fates of both peasants and workers have been tightly bound together through most of Russian history.
FROM KIEV THROUGH PETER I
While slavery was common through the reign of Peter I, perhaps accounting for 10 percent of the population around 1600, it was never the dominant factor in the economy. In Kievan Rus, labor was generally free in both the vibrant cities and the countryside. Although information is scarce, manufacturing throughout the Kievan and Muscovite periods seems to have been generally on a small-scale, artisanal basis; for a variety of reasons a European-style guild system never developed. The free-hire basis of labor only began to become seriously restricted with the centralization of the Muscovite state. The slow but steady imposition of serfdom on peasants was matched by a similar reduction in the urban population’s mobility. Both peasants and city dwellers were permanently tied to their locations by the Law Code of 1649. Constraints on movement became even more severe when Peter I instituted the poll tax as a communal obligation, firmly binding all non-nobles to their communal organ
ization, whether rural or urban.
Before 1700, urban manufacture was artisanal, carried out in very small enterprises, which makes it difficult to speak of an urban working class. Large-scale manufacturing began in the countryside, close to natural resources, either on noble-owned land, with nobles utilizing their own peasants, or on land granted by the government for specifically industrial purposes. In the latter case, although labor was hired at times, the work force was more usually peasants who had been assigned either temporarily or permanently to that particular enterprise. The binding of the entire population to specific locations after 1649 made freely hirable labor difficult to find. This problem was exacerbated after Peter the Great began large-scale industrialization, most notably in the Urals metallurgical complex.
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FROM PETER TO THE GREAT REFORMS
During the course of the 1700s, however, the role of hired labor became more important, as the increasing importance of money in the economy made industrial labor an attractive option for both cash-starved serf owners and peasant households. This was true especially in northern Russia, where the soil was less fertile, the growing season shorter, and agriculture less viable. These regions would also experience a new kind of industrial growth, as peasant entrepreneurs, under the protection of financially interested owners, slowly exploited local craft traditions and began to build industries using hired labor. The two Sheremetev-owned villages of Ivanovo and Pavlovo are examples of this trend, becoming major textile and metalworking centers, respectively.
The first decades of the nineteenth century witnessed an increased acceleration in the factory and mining workforce, from 224,882 in 1804 to 860,000 in 1860. Although less than 10 percent of workers in 1770 were hired as opposed to assigned, by 1860 well over half were hired. Not all of this labor was free, however, since it included hiring contracts forced upon peasants by serf owners or even village communes. In addition, hired labor was concentrated in the greatest growth industry of the period, textiles, especially in the central provinces of Moscow and Vladimir. Forced labor still comprised the great majority of the metallurgical and mining work forces on the eve of the Great Reforms.
PEASANT OR PROLETARIAN?
Although peasants remained tied to their commune as a result of the emancipation of the serfs, this hindered the labor market as little as serfdom had. By 1900, 1.9 million Russians worked in factories and mines; by 1917, 3.6 million did so. In addition, the total number of those earning any kind of wage, either full or part time, increased from 4 million to 20 million between 1860 and 1917. The bulk of this increase in the factory and mining work force came from the peasantry. For a century, historians have debated whether the Russian industrial worker was more a peasant or a proletarian, an argument rendered more acute by the coming to power in 1917 of a regime claiming to rule in the name of the proletariat. This argument has never been satisfactorily resolved. Most industrial peasants remained juridical peasants, with financial obligations to the village commune. More than that, they usually identified themselves as peasants. A few historians have claimed that with an unceasing influx of peasants into the work force, the Russian working class was simply the part of the peasantry who worked in factories, and some see the Bolshevik Revolution as the successful manipulation by intellectuals of na?ve peasant-workers. Others, on the other hand, have carefully traced the development of a hereditary work force, as the children of migrants themselves went to work in the factories, lost their ties to the countryside, and came to identify themselves not as peasants, but as workers. The archetype of this is the iconic St. Petersburg skilled metalworker, a second or third-generation worker, literate, born and raised in the city, with a sophisticated understanding of political matters and consciously supporting a socialist path in the recasting of Russian society. The truth is certainly somewhere between these poles, but there is no consensus on where. Certainly through the 1930s most of the industrial workforce consisted of first-generation workers. However, on the eve of the revolution, possibly a third of workers were hereditary.
What it meant to be a hereditary worker is not clear. Many workers grew up in the countryside, worked in a factory for several years, then returned to the village to take over the family plot. Their children grew up in the village, might themselves die in the village, would work in factories for a decade or so, and could thus be considered both peasants and hereditary workers. In addition, well over half of Russia’s factory workers labored in mills located in the countryside. Thus, although they worked in a factory, they were still in and of the village.
LABOR IN REVOLUTIONARY RUSSIA
Regardless of whether they were peasant or proletarian, there was a continually increasing quantity of factory workers, who constituted growing proportions of the two rapidly expanding capitals, St. Petersburg and Moscow, where workers would play a political role beyond their numerical weight in the general population. Throughout the imperial period, working conditions were horrible, with seventy-hour work-weeks and little concern for worker health.
Although strikes remained illegal through most of the imperial period, they are recorded as early as the 1600s. However, the size of the industrial sector was not large enough to produce strikes of major concern to the state until the 1880s, with larger strike waves occurring in the mid-1890s and
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Woman working in Soviet electronics factory in Moscow. © PETER TURNLEY/CORBIS the first years of the twentieth century. Socialist activists began large-scale efforts to organize the industrial labor force in the 1890s, and many historians have seen the steady fall in violence and increase in political demands during strikes as the result of politically motivated organizers. Whether workers were more led by the political parties, or rather utilized the parties’ organizational capabilities for their own ends, remains a debatable issue.
Independent labor unions have never played a large role in Russia, in part because they were illegal until 1905. The state attempted to organize some unions before 1905 to counteract the influence of the socialists. This backfired in January 1905, when one of these officially sanctioned worker organizations led protests that were repressed by the state in the massacre known as Bloody Sunday. During the subsequent year of revolution, workers played a visible role. Their participation in a general strike in the fall led directly to the October Manifesto. In 1917, industrial workers, especially in Petrograd, help set the tone for the revolution. This was especially apparent in their support of the soviets as an institution and, eventually for the Bolsheviks, who not only advocated soviet power, but also spoke out for the workers’ favorite parochial concern: worker control of the factories.
THE SOVIET PERIOD AND BEYOND
During the Civil War, however, working class influence weakened significantly. The regime banned strikes, and natural worker leaders were co-opted into the party and state bureaucracies and the military. Furthermore, economic collapse caused most workers with peasant ties to flee the starving cities. General strikes in Moscow and Petrograd in early 1921 helped usher in the New Economic Policy (NEP), although the NEP would produce its own labor discontent. Workers resented that prewar technical elites retained supervisory roles and the state’s attempts to increase worker productivity. There was chronic underemployment and peasant competition for jobs.
This discontent provided much popular support for the radical measures of the First Five-Year
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Plan, which in turn brought millions more peasants into new factories. The chaos of the early 1930s led to the imposition of very strict labor laws, removing strikes as a viable weapon for labor until the late 1980s. The stabilization of the planned economy produced the first unmistakably hereditary working class in Russian history, as migration from the countryside slowed significantly and educational policies restricted social mobility. This was also a very docile period in labor relations, with very few strikes or viable protests. One major wave
of labor discontent did occur from 1962 to 1964, which helped bring down Nikita Khrushchev when he tried to attack the status quo with price hikes and demands for increased productivity. Workers were guaranteed a job, were rarely fired, and were seldom threatened with demands for greater productivity, while being granted a lifestyle that could be considered comfortable by historical standards. As a popular epigram expressed it, “We pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us.” This situation changed in the Mikhail Gorbachev era. The massive dislocations that accompanied the shift from a planned to free market economy at first produced massive strikes, followed by sullen quiescence, as those who still had jobs did not feel secure enough to strike. Labor discontent in the 1990s manifested itself primarily in a steady sizable vote for the Communist Party. Political and economic stability in the early twenty-first century led to normalization of labor markets and more consistent payment of wages than after the shock therapy of the early 1990s. See also: FIVE-YEAR PLANS; NEW ECONOMIC POLICY; PEASANTRY; SERFDOM; SLAVERY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Chase, William J. (1987). Workers, Society, and the Soviet State: Labor and Life in Moscow, 1918-1929. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Ekonomakis, Evel G. (1998). From Peasant to Petersburger. London: Macmillan Press Ltd. Filtzer, Donald. (1992). Soviet Workers and De-Staliniza-tion: The Consolidation of the Modern System of Soviet Production Relations, 1953-1964. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Haimson, Leopold. (1964-1965). “The Problem of Social Stability in Urban Russia, 1905-1914.” Slavic Review 23:619-642, 24:1-22. Johnson, Robert Eugene. (1979). Peasant and Proletarian: The Working Class of Moscow in the Late Nineteenth Century. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Kuromiya, Hiroaki. (1988). Stalin’s Industrial Revolution: Politics and Workers, 1928-1932. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. McDaniel, Tim. (1988). Autocracy, Capitalism, and Revolution in Russia. Berkeley: University of California Press. Zelnik, Reginald E. (1968). “The Peasant and the Factory.” In The Peasant in Nineteenth-Century Russia, ed. Wayne S. Vucinich. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Zelnik, Reginald E. (1971). Labor and Society in Tsarist Russia. The Factory Workers of St. Petersburg, 1855-1870. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
