Browse Exhibits (10 total)

Visual propaganda played an enormous role in the history of the 20th century. In contrast to the 19th century, it was aimed not only at the educated classes of the mother countries but also at the masses in the colonies of the great powers, including vast territories in the east and south of the former Russian Empire. The posters created for Muslims (and with the participation of Muslims) between the two world wars in the Soviet East – in the Volga Region, in Crimea, in the Urals, in Siberia, in the Caucasus and in Central Asia – represent an enormous and as yet little-studied layer in the history of Soviet propaganda.

Introduction by Vladimir Bobrovnikov

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This teaching module examines the case of the National Delimitation Project in Soviet Central Asia in the 1920s and 1930s. Using the primary source materials from the RPI collection, students will learn:

1. How relative deprivation contributes to the formation of social boundary
2. How collective axiology helps establish a firm social boundary and facilitates the rise of categorical violence
3. The connections between social boundary, power, and legitimacy.

Included is a description of theoretical concepts, case analysis, and bibliograhy.

This teaching module examines the case of the Basmachi movement as Islamic insurgency in Central Asia in the 1920s. Using the primary source materials from the RPI collection, students will learn:

1. What internal and external factors helped insurgency leaders to recruit local population; 
2. How the insurgency became a political movement;
3. How inadequate government policies contribute to the rise of insurgency.

Included is a description of theoretical concepts, case analysis, and bibliograhy.

This teaching module examines the dynamics of identity-based conflict as presented in the following 4-C model (Comparison, Competition, Confrontation, and Counteraction) in Soviet Central Asia. Using the primary source materials from the RPI collection, students will learn:

1. How specific policies contributed to the experience of relative deprivation among ethnic groups in Central Asia
2. How  competition for the control of resources or power contributes to ethnic tensions
3. The role of the third party (Russian army, Soviet government) in the exacerbation of ethnic tensions in Central Asia?

Included is a description of theoretical concepts, case analysis, and bibliograhy.

Stephen Blank is Senior Fellow at American Foreign Policy Council

February 2017

The current war in the North Caucasus, in historical perspective (along with the ongoing war in Ukraine), represent the latest in an apparently unending centuries-long set of struggles over imperial “space” in and around Russia. Therefore the study of these wars sheds new light on older practices and paradigms and vice versa.  Looking backward as well as forward allows us to see what has worked and what has failed in Russian counterinsurgency (COIN).  Specifically, here we intend to reveal these ongoing paradigms in Muslim areas of the USSR, e.g. Central Asia and the North Caucasus by examining those practices of the 1920s in the light of the contemporary war in Chechnya that Moscow won but also in the light of the current struggle in the North Caucasus where no resolution appears in sight.