Anatoly M. Khazanov

Muhammad and Jenghiz Khan Compared: The Religious Factor in World Empire Building

This essay compares the two greatest conquest movements of pre-moder times, the Arab and the Mongol, which resulted in the creation of world empires, and analyzes the importance of religion in these events. This attempt is hardly in the mainstream of current cultural anthropology, which does not encourage much comparative study of historical societies separated in time and space. Nonetheless, perhaps this comparison will facilitate a better understanding of some serious conceptual problems that both of these conquests pose for anthropologists and historians. The fact that the Arab society had a strong nomadic component and the Mongol society was firmly based on pastoral nomadism makes this comparison even more interesting. The preconditions of these conquests bear some remarkable similarities. The internal situation in Arabia in the second half of the sixth and in the beginning of the seventh centuries was very complicated. At that time Arabian society was under stress then; after all, new religions do not emerge in times of tranquility and prosperity. So, in discussing the origin of Islam one should take into account conditions in the whole peninsula. For this reason alone, it is difficult to agree with Aswad (1963:439) that the emergence of the Islamic state in Arabia resulted from a struggle between the nomadic and the sedentary people in the Medina oasis. The emergence of a state capable of

How to Deal with the Past

Abstract The conclusion first discusses the ways in which dealing with an authoritarian or totalitarian past is relevant to present concerns. It then analyses different approaches: honest reckoning and repentance, reconciliation and forgiveness, drawing a line between past and present, and forgetting the past or forging a new narrative about it. The importance of historical distance is analysed, followed by the problems of identifying who are perpetrators, accomplices, bystanders and victims. The next sections treat transitional justice, and the role and character of different national narratives, which sometimes creates a new myth of victimhood. ‘Collective memory’ and ‘selective memory’ are treated, concluding with a discussion of the limits of retribution and its role in successful democratisation.

Whom to Mourn and Whom to Forget? (Re)constructing Collective Memory in Contemporary Russia

Abstract This article analyses the reasons for the insignificant role that crimes committed during communist rule play in contemporary Russia. It argues that attitudes toward the Soviet past are a matter of politics and values much more than of knowledge. While the official historical memory and master narrative are not inclined to give an objective assessment of the Soviet period, the Russian public at large also does not want to make Soviet crimes a focal point in collective remembrance. Unwillingness to admit a societys own responsibility inevitably leads to its solidarity with the undemocratic power.

Ethnic and National Conflicts in the Age of Globalisation: Withering Away, Persisting, or Domesticated?

Abstract This article challenges rather widespread claims that in the twenty‐first century the role of nation states as the main actors on the global political scene is diminishing; that, at present, nation statehood is universal; and that nationalism and ethno‐national conflicts will subside in the foreseeable future. Since the continuing salience of ethnic and national identities and of ethno‐national strife and conflicts seem to be inevitable at the current stage of globalisation, the best that can be hoped for is not to eliminate their underlying reasons, but to prevent their most extreme forms. At present, even this is sometimes impossible. Thus, these conflicts should be somehow regulated and diffused, and the ways of their possible alleviation are discussed in this article.

A WORLDWIDE NETWORK FOR COMPARATIVE STUDIES ON CARAVANS: PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE

Persis B. Clarkson1, Calogero M. Santoro2*, Thomas E. Levy3, Lautaro Núñez4, Axel Nielsen5, Steven Rosen6, Frank Förster7,8, José M. Capriles9, Anatoly M. Khazanov10, Michael Frachetti11, Daniela Valenzuela12, Vivien G. Standen12, Barbara Cases13, Gonzalo Pimentel4, Patrice Lecoq14, Ximena Medinacelli15, Luis Briones16, André Wink17, Nicholas Tripcevich18, Heiko Riemer19, Enelidolfo O’Ryan16, Ximena Loayza16, Thomas F. Lynch20, and Helina Woldekiros21

Marxism—Leninism as a Secular Religion

I would like to start with a few explanatory remarks. First, with regard to the nature of the Soviet state, I am on the side of those scholars, the ‘cold war warriors,’ as they are sometimes called by their revisionist opponents, who consider it totalitarian (Friedrich and Brzezinski, 1965; Laqueur, 1994; Malia, 1994; Pipes,11995: 240ff.; Tormey, 1995; Linz and Stepan, 1996: 40ff.; Linz, 2000; on the history of debate, see Siegel, 1998). I have already argued my position in other works (Khazanov, 1995, 2004), and I do not see any reason to dwell on this question in this chapter. Suffice it to say that those who declared the totalitarian model to be politically incorrect and analytically wrong ignored the fact that the Soviet Union shared all three main characteristics of totalitarianism: ideology, organization (a single and mass party with a strict hierarchical structure), and terror (the arbitrary right to resort to any means of violence and compulsion), as pointed out already by Hannah Arendt (1966). Moreover, without denying (any) significant change that the country underwent after Stalin’s death, I hold that it remained essentially totalitarian, ideological, and repressive, until the perestroika period, when for a few years the late totalitarianism gave way to authoritarianism. One may agree with Michnik (1985: 7) that there is no such thing as non-totalitarian ruling communism; it either becomes totalitarian or it ceases to be communism.