Cultural Change in Central Asia: Brezhnev, Modern Sports, and Memories in Uzbekistan, 1964 to 1982

The Cold War Soviet leaders Nikita Khrushchev (d. 1971) and Leonid Brezhnev (d. 1982), between1953 and 1982, continued with Vladimir Lenin’s (d. 1924) and Joseph Stalin’s (d. 1953) physicalculture policy designed to create healthier citizen-workers and soldiers. The underlining concept wasto construct a communist society. In the process, the Soviet culture and sports culture played a role inintegrating the different ethnic groups into the multinational Soviet Union. Leonid Brezhnev(Communist Party leader from 1964 to 1982) consolidated and expanded the Soviet sports system,albeit in a changing historical context. Our paper, firstly, describes the concept of Soviet modernityand physical culture. Secondly, in the context of Brezhnev’s tenure, we investigate the developmentof the modern sports infrastructure in Tashkent, and the numerical growth of the ordinary and the elitesportspeople in Uzbekistan. Thirdly, to explain what this meant to the everyday Central Asian, wehave incorporated their oral histories into our study. This inclusion of the people’s memories willprovide us with a bottom-up perspective of Soviet sport, and enrich our understanding of the ordinarycitizen’s relationship with the Soviet Union’s sports culture.

PDF

___

Cultural Establishments of Tashkent: A Brief Reference Book on Theatrical, Scientific and Cultural Instructive Establishments. Uzbek SSR: Goslitizdat, 1958.
ABAZOV, Rafis. Culture and Customs of the Central Asian Republics. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood, 2007.
AKINER, Shirin. Central Asia: New Arc of Crisis? London: Whitehall Paper Series, 1993.
AKYILDIZ, Sevket, “Soviet Physical Culture in Uzbekistan: Implementation and Social Impact”, in Sports and Coaching: Pasts and Futures, ed. Dave Day. Manchester: Manchester Metropolitan University, 2012, 105-122.
AKYILDIZ, Sevket, “Olympic Culture in Soviet Uzbekistan 1951-1991: International Prestige and Local Heroes” Polyvocia: The SOAS Journal of Graduate Research, 3, (March 2011): 1-16.http://www.soas.ac.uk/research/rsa/journalofgraduateresearch/edition3/file67219.pdf (Date Accessed: June 28, 2015).
AKYILDIZ, H. Sevket, “Assessing Uzbekistan’s Olympic Performance, 1992-2012” Central Eurasian Scholars and Media Initiative (2012):http://cesmi.info/wp/?p=202, or http://www.bbc.com/kyrgyz/in_depth/2012/08/120827_sevket_hilton_take_on.shtml, orhttp://www.bbc.com/uzbek/institutional/2012/08/120824_cy_uzbek_shevket_akyildiz. shtml (Date Accessed: 28 June 2015).
AKYILDIZ, Sevket Hylton. “Modern and Folk Sports in Central Asia under Lenin and Stalin: Uzbekistan from 1925 to 1952.” Vakanuvis—International Journal of Historical Researches 4:2 (Fall 2019): 515-541.
BREZHNEV, L.I. Report of the Central Committee of the CPSU. Moscow: Novosti Press Agency Publishing House, 1981.
BROWN, Archie, and Michael Kaser and Gerald Smith. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Russia and the former Soviet Union. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.
DADABAEV, Timur. “Trauma and Public Memory in Central Asia: Public responses to political violence of the state policies in Stalinist Era in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan.” Kyoto Bulletin of Islamic Area Studies 3:1 (July 2009): 108-138.
CARPENTER, Tegan, “Development of Soviet Sport and the Components which Ensured its Success,” in Sports and Coaching: Pasts and Futures, ed. Dave Day. Manchester: Manchester Metropolitan University, 2012, 85-104.
FIGES, Orlando. The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin’s Russia. London: Penguin, 2008.
GRANT, Susan. Physical Culture and Sport in Soviet Society: Propaganda, Acculturation, and Transformation in the 1920s and 1930s. London: Routledge, 2013.
HILBRENNER, Anke, “Soviet Women in Sports in the Brezhnev Years,” in Euphoria and Exhaustion: Modern Sport in Soviet Culture and Society, ed. Nikolaus Katzer. Frankfurt: CampusVerlag, 2010, 297-98.
HOBSBAWM, Eric. Age of Extremes. London: Abacus, 1994.
KATZER, Nikolaus, and Sandra Budy and Alexandra Kohring and Manfred Zeller. Euphoria and Exhaustion: Modern Sport in Soviet Culture and Society. Frankfurt: CampusVerlag, 2010.
KHODZHIBAYEV, A., To New Heights: DOSAAF Training in Uzbekistan, Moscow, 1979, 5, cited in USSR Report (31 March 1980) USSR Report, 9006 Military Affairs, 12, Foreign Broadcast Information Service, U.S.:https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/document/cia-rdp82- 00850r000200060047-2 (Date Accessed: 1 March 2019).
KOZLOV, Viktor. The Peoples of the Soviet Union. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988
MERTIN, Evelyn, “Ethnic Minorities and National Identity in Soviet Sport.” Studies in Physical Culture and Tourism 15:3 (2008): 165-70.
RICHARDS, Michael. “From war culture to civil society: Francoism, social change, and memories of the Spanish Civil War.” History and Memory 14:1 Special Issue: Spanish Memories: Images of a Contested Past (2002): 93-120, 93.
RIORDAN, James. Sport in Soviet Society: Development of Sport and Physical Education in Russia and the USSR. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980.
RIORDAN, James. Soviet Sport: Background to the Olympics. New York: Washington Mews Books, 1980.
RYWKIN, Michael. Moscow’s Muslim Challenge: Soviet Central Asia. Armonk, New York: M. E. Sharpe, 1990.
TIMOFEYEV, A, and Kopytkin, Y. Soviet Sport: The Success Story. Moscow: Raduga Publishers, 1987.