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Tatsächlich ist in einem Staat, der seine „vollendete Struktur“, die den jahrhundertelangen Hoffnungen des Volkes entspricht, jäh angenommen hat, kein Platz für einen langen historischen Prozess – ein solcher Staat kann nur Errungenschaften haben. Dementsprechend trägt die Hinwendung zur Vergangenheit einen unverdeckt mythologischen Charakter, wie zum Beispiel: Den Begriff „Türke“ gibt es nicht, sondern die Bezeichnung „Turkmene“.
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However, the Central Asian countries, basing themselves on the experience and style of Soviet statehood, have regained some half-forgotten commonness in their relation to the past. The vacuum, which was created after the Soviet ideology had become history, was quickly filled with a diverse and eclectic collection of new national ideologies, mentalities, and traditions. An important, if not fundamental characteristic of all these new conceptions, was their malleable use of the past. Indeed, the genuine historical process does not fit the artificiality of the new state, which has suddenly gained its ‘perfect structure’. Balancing the age-old aspirations of the people requires a certain negation of historical fact so that such a state can only be seen to have achievements. Accordingly, this appeal to the past is of a blatantly mythological nature, such as: there is no concept of ‘the Turks’, there is the concept of ‘the Turkmen’ instead; the origin of the Kazakh statehood dates back to the second millennium BC; the Samanids are the Tajik Aryan Empire of the 10 century, and so on. The place of history is occupied by the immutable and yet amorphous concept of these, “sacred national traditions.”
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