According to directives from the Uzbek
education department, all references to their communist past, including treatises on Lenin
and Stalin, accounts of Party congresses and five year plans must be expunged from the
pages of history and forcibly torn from school text books as if it never happened. While
university and city library shelves now lie empty after evacuations by truck of all
old-style dogma, some schools are struggling with the decimated tomes, desperately trying
to fulfill language acquisition plans that had always inextricably linked modal verbs with
Communist newspaper reports of Young Communist League marches on Washington and reports
such as "America must know the truth!" Despite this former Soviet
republic’s independence in 1991, the powerful Soviet propaganda machine is still
grinding away in Uzbekistan, molding another generation of minds in the thousands of
village schools throughout this remote desert land.
The school year always begins on September 1st with a celebration of National Knowledge
Day and World Peace Day. Children are encouraged to treasure the achievements of the
Soviets who in less than 70 years managed to lead the world in science and technology,
culture and the arts. "Knowledge is power" they are told, "power to build
socialism and fight for peace." Amid their smiles they are reminded to spare a
thought for the "52 million children in the capitalist world where those under the
age of 15 are forced by poverty to leave school and go to work." On that day too,
"all progressive people in the world mark World Peace Day." They have to fight
for peace because "imperialists try to make them forget the lessons of past
history." Children must not forget that when Vladimir Ilyich Lenin proclaimed peace
in 1917, the whole world could see that the new revolutionary Russia would be a
peace-loving country." Children are urged to take part in demonstrations, meetings
and to send money to the Soviet Peace Fund. "I vote for peace!" should be their
slogan.
In their school’s world of the English language is forever fused in a pupil’s
mind with notions of imperialism, capitalistic war-mongering and oppression of the working
man. After being marched through chapters on virgin lands, factory and plant building,
Soviet space triumphs and multitudinous achievements of the Great October Socialist
Revolution, that are liberally peppered with biographies of politically correct authors
such as Shaw, Dreiser, Cronin and Langston Hughes, the spring term begins with an
introduction to several new words: Government, belong, evil, capitalism, benefit,
political and politics. Uzbek children are invited to compare the lot of their own
minority races with those of Australia, New Zealand and the United States and the status
of their working people compared with the "millions of Americans who live in city
slums and country shacks. They learn that the situation in capitalist countries is
"dismal" especially for women, and many school dropouts have to join the
"army of the unemployed."
No Uzbek child’s education would be complete without a section on slogans popular
in Soviet times. The summer term arrives with the opportunity to translate and copy out
the following: "Glory to the great Soviet people, the builders of Communism, heroic
fighters for peace and happiness for all the people the world over." "Long live
Communism which establishes on earth peace, freedom, equality, fraternity and happiness
for all!" Uzbekistan’s President Karimov has his own propaganda machine working
on replacements for all of this. New ideology is being created, fresh slogans are
appearing and new heroes are invented all the time. But it will be hard persuading people
that the Russian and Soviet colonialism of Uzbekistan never happened at all. Tearing pages
out of books won’t convince anyone.
Jennifer Balfour, Long-term Educator in former Soviet Central Asia