Who You Are and Where You Live

by Kelly Raftery
One of my fellow bloggers posed the following series of questions:
“But even after reading your post, I’m still puzzled as far as why these kids would/did not identify more with Kyrgyz culture, even despite the complicated geo-political history in that region. They were born and raised there (at least one of them), presumably went to school there, learned the language, mingled with the locals, etc. And it wasn’t the brutality of the Kyrgyz that forced Chechens to relocate there but that of the Soviets, right? Seems like there are plenty of governments that wronged various countries (the British in India, for example) but now there is cross-immigration between the people of both cultures and the past is the past, the subsequent generations are less bothered by what came before. Why is it so different in Kyrgyzstan, do you think?”
I will preface this by saying I am not an expert nor would I claim to be about the Caucasus. That area is complex and full of nuances of which I am completely ignorant. I have traveled in the area, but never been anything more than a tourist.
So instead I will respond to you about ethnicity and identity in the Soviet Union and post-Soviet Union, because I think that is really gets to the essence of your questions above. You ask, “Why is it so different in Kyrgyzstan?”  It is not a Kyrgyzstan only thing; these dynamics are throughout the former Soviet Union and are not exclusive to any one country or area.
One’s ethnic identity in the Soviet Union was (and is) a very concrete, non-malleable thing. Here in America, at some point, the immigrant children or grandchildren identify more closely with being “American” than to their heritage of origin. I am three generations removed from my immigrant roots and the degree to which I identify with the Irish-American community (for example) is my choice. Until my son took up dancing, my involvement with that community was limited to green beer on St. Patrick’s Day. 
When I lived in Russia, people would identify me as American, and then when they heard my Russian language skills they would begin to probe where my family was from, because of course I had to have some sort of roots in the Russian speaking world, with such a facility for the language, such understanding of the culture and people. I told them that my father’s family was from Ireland and my mother’s family left Pinsk, Belorus, but both families had immigrated to America over 100 years previously. Most Russians would then say, “Ah ha!  We knew you had roots here!” and be satisfied.
What I did not say was that my mother’s grandparents were fleeing the Pogroms (and other anti-Semitic polices) against Jews. Why not?  Because I knew that self-identifying as Jewish there would then create for me a local identity that came with baggage that I did not want to carry, apply a stereotype I resisted and would change me from being “an American” to being “a Jew” in their eyes, something I did not want to happen. I have it very easy; after all, I am an American who can conveniently hide behind a very Irish name.
But, the people who were born and raised in the Soviet Union cannot pick and choose how to self-identify. Their ethnicity (and, by the way, there Jewish is an ethnicity, not a religious choice) is stamped in their passports, can be heard in their names and seen on their faces. The moment I heard the names of the bombers, saw their faces, I understood that they were from the Caucasus region, as did every single person from the former Soviet Union. And, every single person had a set of ideas and stereotypes about Chechens and Dagestanis that were then applied to these two young men, based on their ethnicity.
A friend of mine was telling me that despite the fact that she is half Russian on her mother’s side and her passport reads “Russian” her name reflected her non-Russian heritage and identified her as a minority ethnicity, because Russian names are formed thusly, First Name, Patronymic (derived from one’s father’s first name), Last Name. So, a typical Russian name would be Oleg Vasilievich Ivanov, for example. This person’s sister’s name might be Anna Vasilievna Ivanova. Those middle names mean that their father’s name was Vasili. A formal name in the Soviet Union included these three names; this was and is one’s legal name. If you are being introduced for the first time in a formal setting, you will state this middle name as well.
So, say that one’s mother is Russian and one’s father is not – not only will your last name remain identifiably not Russian, but your middle name will also show that your father was not Russian as well. And, being a non-Russian ethnicity in Russia was subject to teasing, harassment and pressure to assimilate, leaving behind all vestiges of “non-Russianness” behind. In short, other ethnicities had to be more Russian than Russians. And, this assumes that one could pull off “looking Russian” in the first place.
The ethnicities of the former Soviet Union are extremely diverse – the Russians, Belorussians, Ukrainians and others are white European looking peoples. Others primarily from the Caucasus region are dark haired, dark eyed and more similar to Italians or Greeks in looks. Central Asians look Asian with dark hair, darker skin, and eye folds, though not as Asian as what we typically think of as Chinese or Japanese.  Historic photos of various ethnic groups can be found here. In the former Soviet space you are immediately identifiable either when someone looks at you; hears your name, your accent or looks at your passport. Stereotypes and ideas about each of these ethnicities are part of the collective consciousness and how people order the world they live in.
So, asking a Kyrgyz why the Chechens in Kyrgyzstan did not and do identify with Kyrgyz culture seems a completely ridiculous question. My husband’s response is, “Of course Chechens (or Russians or Volga Germans) in Kyrgyzstan won’t identify with Kyrgyz culture, they are not Kyrgyz.”  Nor would a Kyrgyz in Russia identify with Russian culture, despite the fact that he might be a citizen of the Russian Federation. I said in my last post that I used to ask all the non-Kyrgyz a question, “Who sent you here, Tsars or Soviets?”  I knew who to ask because I could tell who was Kyrgyz ethnically and who was not. We had a mutual friend named Oleg and his family had been exiled to Kyrgyzstan under the Tsars (over a hundred years ago), if I asked him if he was Kyrgyz, or identified with Kyrgyz culture, he would laugh, look at me and probably say, “Look at me, I am Russian, not Kyrgyz.”  I never knew a non-ethnic Kyrgyz person who actually spoke the language, or identified with the culture no matter how long his family had been there. Kyrgyz have expressed appreciation to me for my very elementary Kyrgyz language skills because “Russians never bothered.”  
Keep in mind, too, that the dominant culture of Soviet Union was Soviet culture, not local or ethnic culture, with a heavy influence of Russia thrown in. So, the culture that these young men in Boston were born into and brought up under (at least until 1991) was Soviet culture, their parents were Soviets, their grandparents were Soviets. Then, all of a sudden, there was no Soviet Union, Soviet culture and history is being rejected as false. They looked (as did all the peoples of the Soviet Union) to their ethnic roots, their heritage. So, they went back to their ancestral homeland of Chechnya and all that was there was war and bloodshed, returned to safer and more stable Kyrgyzstan for a while, where a new and equally foreign Kyrgyz culture was starting to reassert itself, then to Dagestan then to America.
I don’t know if these young men identified themselves as American, Chechen, Dagestani or “from Kyrgyzstan.”  I am not sure they themselves knew with whom to identify or felt like they belonged anywhere, not in America nor in Chechnya nor in Dagestan nor in Kyrgyzstan.
And maybe that is the root of the issue – the entirely human desire to want to belong to something, to someone, to a group, to a people, to a place and the difficulty these young men had finding it.