The colonialism of the Modern Movement and the post-USSR reaction in Central Asia

Abstract

Political scientists and historians often credit the intangible heritage of language for the development or manufacturing of national identities. By controlling language through printing and media, it is possible to impose a common identity representing a political, diplomatic, and economic unity. This paper aims to illuminate the often-unstated influences of urban and architectural language on the impact of cultural production, and to show how modernist syntax and vocabulary were hijacked into a colonial system through the control of the urban fabric, as an attempt to displace primary identity markers such as empire and religion. However, the socialist ideals of the Modern Movement that developed in the USSR after World War I, were a critical tangible component in this melting pot. At time of its ratification of the World Heritage Convention, the USSR did not nominate any properties in Central Asia, perhaps as a reaction against local identities. An exception was Itchan Kala which was nominated for inclusion as an “open-air city museum.” ICOMOS in its evaluation of the long-term risks involved in transferring all the settlement and artisanal areas beyond its borders, warned that Itchan Kala would become a dead city with the local population cast into the role of “benign traditionalists” (ICOMOS, Evaluation of the Nomination – Historic Centre of Itchan-kala, Khiva. Paris: ICOMOS, 1990, 39). Following the fall of the Soviet Union, the entire Russian bloc faced issues arising from changing values and renewed identities, the speed of change and active vestiges of the past. The post-USSR reaction in Central Asia was through a regenerated Timurid narrative in the inscription of World Heritage properties in Uzbekistan, particularly in Shakhrisyabz, Bukhara, and Samarkand. The shift from an emphasis on architectural monuments toward a broader recognition of the social, cultural, and economic processes in the conservation of urban values comes together with the need for integrative sustainable development. This is matched by a drive to adapt existing leftover planning policies from the Soviet regime by creating new tools to address this postcolonial national vision.