IU’s Association of Central Eurasian Students (ACES) organized an installment of its ACES Horizon Talk series, showcasing the work of senior scholars as well as doctoral students to create more kinetic forums for workshopping research methods and approaches. This installment’s talk, “Soviet Passports as One-Way Tickets to Paradise,” examined larger contexts of language and words as powerful ways of “working on and changing the status” of people and things. Drs. Gardner Bovingdon and Gulnisa Nazarova presented their research in a joint lecture.
In his opening remarks, Dr. Bovingdon laid out the context for the talk by describing the use of declarative language and “solicitous circumstances” as a real institutional force that people and institutions can call upon in performative and transformative ways, such as the writing on passport identification pages, or the act of an officiator pronouncing people as married. The talk was interwoven with narratives of firsthand accounts of Soviet passport services and their role in motivating families to move to Soviet Central Asia from Xinjiang. Dr. Nazarova then provided insight about the methods of providing Xinjiang Uyghurs, Uzbeks, Kazakhs, and Kyrgyz with passports. Many families who chose to move to Soviet Central Asia, she recounted, were imbued with visions of Soviet Central Asia as an idealistic paradise, with “milk and honey pouring from faucets” and “[asphalt] roadways that shine like mirrors.” The passports issued to these families – and the families’ choice to move to Central Asia – represents the success of the passport system as a powerful instrument of propaganda extending beyond the mere physical act of issuing a document.
As Bovingdon and Nazarova explained, the existence of special cultural centers throughout Xinjiang and Uzbekistan acted as a fulcrum against which people experienced the realities of their lived experiences in the PRC contrasted with an idealized representation of Soviet life. Firsthand participants, as part of Dr. Nazarova’s study, relayed their shock upon arriving to Soviet Central Asia, realizing that they were led to believe in a polished façade of Soviet life that was a heavily curated vision of economic achievement. From radio broadcasts and screenings of Soviet cinema at cultural centers to newspapers like the Soviet-Kazakh Qazaq Eli and word-of-mouth from families who moved, passports and moving programs became a tangible reflection of the power that language had as an institution that reified outsider engagement with the Soviet vision of life.
Audience members included members of the general public and academic experts from several universities, as well as IU doctoral students. Questions and discussions followed, with particular focus on the importance of passport systems as special circumstances that made the physical possession of a passport a “tangible, binding choice” and an expectation of life improvement on the part of the passport holder. Firsthand accounts included those of Uyghur activists and ex-leaders of the East Turkestan Government In-Exile, such as Ahmet Egemberdi, whose works vividly portray the experiences of those who held transnational ties through these programs. Additionally, Bovingdon and Nazarova elaborated on the comparison of Soviet “Virgin Lands” programs and the PRC bingtuan paramilitary agricultural land development initiatives to compare both parties’ motives in affecting citizens’ relationship to land, production, and identity.
The IAUNRC thanks the ACES representatives and organizers of this talk and looks forward to future presentations the ACES Horizon Talk series.