Encyclopedia of world cultures 10 volume set 6 russia and eurasia china (1994)

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF WORLD CULTURESDavid Levinson Editor in Chief North America Oceania South Asia Europe Central, Western, and Southeastern Europe East and Southeast Asia Russia and Eurasia

Encyclopedia of World Cultures

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF WORLD CULTURES

David Levinson

Editor in Chief

North America Oceania

South Asia Europe (Central, Western, and Southeastern Europe)

East and Southeast Asia Russia and Eurasia / China

South America

Middle America and the Caribbean Africa and the Middle East

Bibliography

The Encyclopedia of World Cultures was prepared under the auspices and

with the support of the Human Relations Area Files at Yale

Univer-sity HRAF, the foremost international research organization in the field of cultural anthropology, is a not-for-profit consortium of twenty-three spon- soring members and 300 participating member institutions in twenty-five countries The HRAF archive, established in 1949, contains nearly one mil- lion pages of information on the cultures of the world.

Encyclopedia of World Cultures

Volume Editors

G.K Hall & Company

NEW YORK

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Nopart ofthis bookmay be reproduced in anyform orbyany means, electronicor

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retrieval systemwithoutpermission in writing from the publisher

10 9 8

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

(Revised for volume 6)

Encyclopedia of worldcultures

Includes bibliographical references, filmographies,and

indexes.

Contents: v 1. NorthAmerica /TimothyJ O'Leary,

David Levinson, volume editors- v 3 South Asia /

Paul Hockings, volume editor- [etcl- v 6 Russia

andEurasia /China/Paul Friedrich and Norma Diamond, volume

editors

1. Ethnology-Encyclopedias 1 Levinson, David,

1947-GN307.E53 1991 306'.097 90-49123

ISBN0-8161-1840-X (set: alk paper)

ISBN 0-8161-1808-6 (v 1: alk paper)

Libraryof Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

ISBN 0-8161-1814-0 (v 5: alk paper)

ISBN 0-8161-1810-8 (v 6: alk paper)

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American

National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library

Materials ANSI Z39.48-1984. (iM

MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Project Staff Editorial Board

Middle America and the Caribbean

Editorial and Production

Timothy J O'Leary

Human Relations Area Files

North America

Amal Rassam Queens College and the GraduateCenterof theCity

University of NewYork

1 Russia and Eurasia xlix

2 Ethnic Groups ofEastern Europe, Russia,

and Central Asia 1

3 Ethnic Groupsof the Caucasus 1i

4.People's Republic of China lii

5.National Minorities of China liii

Part One: Cultures of Russia and Eurasia 3

PartTwo: Cultures of China 415

Bariat Magomedovna Alimova

Institute of History, Language and Literature

Chuvash

AngaraGamidovna Bulatova Rutul~s

Institute of History, Language and Literature

StateUniversity of New York-Binghamton

Binghamton, New York

Faculty of Asian Studies

Australian National University

Canberra, Australian Capital Territory

Daur;Drung; Gelao; Hezhen;

Maonan; Miao;Mulam; Nu;

Contributors ix

NewSchool for Social Research

NewYork, New York

Glassboro StateCollege

Glassboro, New Jersey

UniversityofNevada-LasVegas

LasVegas, Nevada

Contributors xi

University of California-Los Angeles

Los Angeles, California

University of New Orleans

New Orleans, Louisiana

Institute ofNationality Studies

Central Academy of Nationalities

DepartmentofPolitical Science

Carnegie Mellon University

Paul RobertMagocsi

Ukrainian Studies Program

xiv Contributors

Misrikhan Mammaevich Mammaev

Institute ofHistory, Language and Literature

Department of Political Science

UniversityofHouston-University Park

Institute ofNationality Studies

Central Academy of Nationalities

Beijing

People's Republic of China

Vsevolod Ivanovich Naulko

Naxi

Romance Languagesand Literatures

Washington andLee University

University of Southern California

University Park, California

Ibragim Magomedovich Shamanov

Institute ofHistory, Language and Literature

State UniversityofNewYork-Stony Brook

Stony Brook,NewYork

Institute ofNationality Studies

Central Academy of Nationalities

Departments ofAnthropology, Linguistics,

and Social Thought

Buriets

Greeks

Itelmen; Koryaks andKerek; Mansi

Itelmen; Koryaks and Kerek

Chechen-Ingush; Dargins; Kumyks; Tabasarans

Karachays

BukharanJews; Georgian Jews; Karaites

Saami

Kurds; Mountain Jews; Talysh; Tats

ijarians; Andis; Ingilos; Khevsur; Khinalughs;

Meskhetians; Udis

Buriats; Chuckchee

This projectbeganin1987 with thegoal of assemblingabasic

referencesourcethatprovidesaccurate,clear,andconcise

de-scriptions of the cultures of the world.Wewantedtobeas

comprehensiveand authoritativeaspossible:comprehensive,

by providingdescriptions of all the cultures of each region of

the worldorbydescribingarepresentativesampleof cultures

for regions where full coverage is impossible, and

authori-tative by providing accuratedescriptions of the cultures for

both the past and the present

The publication of the Encyclopedia ofWorld Cultures in

the last decade of the twentieth century isespecially timely

The political, economic, and social changes of the pastfifty

yearshaveproducedaworldmorecomplex and fluid thanat

any time in human history Three sweeping transformations

of the worldwide culturallandscapeareespecially significant

First is what somesocial scientists are calling the "New

Diaspora"-thedispersal of cultural groups to new locations

acrossthe world Thisdispersalaffectsallnationsandtakes a

wide variety of forms: in East African nations, the formation

of new towns inhabited by people from dozens of different

ethnic groups;in MicronesiaandPolynesia, themovementof

islanders to cities in New Zealand and the United States; in

North America,the replacement by Asians and Latin

Ameri-cans of Europeans as themost numerousimmigrants; in

Eu-rope, the increased reliance onworkers from the Middle East

and North Africa; andso on

Second, and relatedtothisdispersal, is the internal division

of what were once single, unifiedcultural groups intotwo or

morerelatively distinct groups This pattern of internal division

is most dramatic amongindigenous or third or fourth world

cul-tures whose traditional ways of life have been altered by contact

withthe outside world Underlying this division are both the

population dispersionmentioned above and sustained contact

with the economicallydeveloped world The result is that groups

who at one time sawthemselves and were seen by others as

sin-gle cultural groups have beentransformed into two or more

dis-tinct groups Thus, in manycultural groups, we find deep and

probably permanent divisions between those who live in the

country and thosewho live incities, thosewhofollow the

tradi-tional religion and those who have converted to Christianity,

those who live inlandandthosewho live on theseacoast, and

those who live by meansof asubsistence economy andthose

now enmeshedin a casheconomy

The third important transformation of the worldwide

cultural landscape is therevival of ethnic nationalism, with

manypeoples claiming andfighting for political freedom andterritorial integrity on the basis of ethnic solidarity andethnic-based claims to theirtraditional homeland.Although

most attentionhasfocusedrecentlyonethnic nationalisminEastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, the trend is

nonetheless aworldwide phenomenon involving, for

exam-ple,AmericanIndian culturesinNorth and South America,the Basques in Spainand France, the Tamil and SinhaleseinSriLanka, and the Tutsi andHutu inBurundi,among others

Tobe informedcitizensofourrapidly changing tural world we must understand the ways of life ofpeople

multicul-fromcultures different from our own "We"isused hereinthebroadest sense, toincludenotjust scholars whostudythe cul-turesof the world andbusinesspeople and governmentoffi-

cials who workinthe world community but alsothe averagecitizen who readsorhearsabout multicultural events in thenewseveryday and young people who are growing upin thiscomplex cultural world For all of these people-whichmeans all ofus-thereis apressing needforinformationonthe cultures of the world This encyclopedia provides thisin-formation in two ways First, its descriptions of the traditionalways of life of the world's cultures can serve as abaselineagainst whichcultural change can be measured and under-stood.Second, it acquaints the reader with the contemporaryways oflife throughout the world

We are able toprovide this information largely throughthe efforts of the volume editorsand the nearly one thousandcontributors who wrote the cultural summaries that are theheart of the book Thecontributors are social scientists (an-thropologists, sociologists, historians, and geographers) aswell as educators, governmentofficials, and missionaries whousually have firsthand research-based knowledge of the cul-tures they write about In many cases they are the major ex-pertoroneoftheleading experts on the culture, and some arethemselves members of thecultures As experts, they are able

to provide accurate, up-to-dateinformation This is crucialfor many parts ofthe world where indigenous cultures may beoverlooked by official information seekers such as govern-ment census takers These experts have often lived among thepeople theywriteabout,conducting participant-observationswith them and speaking theirlanguage Thus they are able toprovide integrated, holisticdescriptions of the cultures, notjust a list offacts Their portraits of the cultures leave thereader with a real sense of what it means to be a "Taos" or a

"Rom" or a "Sicilian."

Those summaries not writtenby an expert on the culturehave usually been written by aresearcher at the Human Rela-tions Area Files, Inc., working from primary source materials.The Human Relations Area Files, an international educa-

xxi

xxii Preface

tional and research institute,isrecognizedbyprofessionalsin

the social andbehavioral sciences,humanities, and medical

sciences as amajorsourceofinformationonthe cultures of

the world

Uses of the Encyclopedia

Thisencyclopediais meant tobe usedbyavarietyofpeople

foravariety of purposes.Itcan be used bothtogainageneral

understanding ofaculture andtofindaspecificpiece of

in-formationbylookingitupunder the relevantsubheadingin a

summary It canalsobe used tolearn aboutaparticular

re-gionorsubregion of the worldand thesocial,economic,and

political forces that have shaped the cultures inthat region

The encyclopedia is also a resource guide that leads readers

who wantadeeper understanding of particular culturesto

ad-ditionalsources ofinformation Resourceguidesinthe

ency-clopedia include ethnonymslisted in each summary, which

canbeusedasentry points intothe social scienceliterature

where the culture may sometimes be identified by adifferent

name; abibliography at the end of each summary, which lists

books and articles about the culture; andafilmographyatthe

end ofeachvolume, which lists films andvideos onmany of

the cultures

Beyond being a basic reference resource, the

encyclope-dia also serves readers withmorefocusedneeds For

research-ersinterested in comparing cultures, the encyclopedia serves

as the most complete and up-to-date sampling frame from

which toselectcultures for further study Forthose interested

in international studies, the encyclopedia leadsonequickly

intothe relevant social science literatureaswell asproviding

astate-of-the-art assessment of our knowledge of thecultures

ofaparticular region.Forcurriculumdevelopers and teachers

seeking to internationalize their curriculum, theencyclopedia

is itself abasicreference and educational resource as well as a

directory toothermaterials For government officials, itisa

repository ofinformation not likely to be available in any

other single publication or, in some cases, not available at all

Forstudents, from high school through graduate school, it

providesbackground and bibliographic information for term

papers andclass projects And fortravelers,itprovidesan

in-troductionintothe waysoflifeoftheindigenouspeoplesin

the area of the world they will be visiting

Format of the Encyclopedia

The encyclopedia comprises ten volumes, ordered by

geo-graphical regions ofthe world The order of publication is not

meant torepresent any sort of priority Volumes 1 through 9

contain a total ofabout fifteen hundred summaries along

withmaps,glossaries, and indexes of alternate names for the

cultural groups The tenth and final volume contains

cumula-tive lists of thecultures of the world, their alternate names,

and a bibliography of selected publications pertaining to

thosegroups

North America covers the cultures of Canada, Greenland, and

the United States of America

Oceania covers the cultures of Australia, New Zealand,

Mela-nesia, MicroMela-nesia, and Polynesia

South Asia covers the cultures of Bangladesh, India,Pakistan,

Sri Lanka and other South Asian islands and the Himalayan

states

Europe covers the cultures of Europe

East and Southeast Asiacoversthe cultures of Japan, Korea,mainland and insular Southeast Asia, and Taiwan

Russiaand Eurasia/China covers the cultures ofMongolia,the People's Republic of China, and the former Union ofSoviet SocialistRepublics

SouthAmerica covers the cultures of SouthAmerica.Middle America and the Caribbean covers the cultures of Cen-tral America, Mexico, and the Caribbean islands

Africa and the Middle East covers the cultures ofMadagascarand sub-Saharan Africa, North Africa, the Middle East, andsouth-central Asia

Format of the VolumesEach volume contains this preface, an introductory essay bythe volumeeditor, the cultural summaries ranging fromafewlines to several pages each, mapspinpointing the location ofthe cultures, afilmography, an ethnonym index of alternatenamesfor thecultures, andaglossary of scientific and techni-calterms.All entriesarelisted inalphabetical order and are

extensivelycross-referenced

Cultures Covered

Acentral issue in selecting cultures for coverage in the clopedia has been howtodefine what we mean byaculturalgroup The questions of what a culture is and what criteriacanbeused toclassify a particular social group (such as a reli-gious group,ethnic group, nationality, or territorial group) as

ency-a culturency-al group have long perplexed social scientists andhave yettobeanswered to everyone's satisfaction Two reali-ties account forwhy the questions cannot be answered defini-tively First, awidevarietyofdifferenttypesofcultures existaround the world Among common types are national cul-tures, regional cultures, ethnic groups, indigenous societies,religious groups, and unassimilated immigrant groups Nosinglecriterion ormarker of cultural uniqueness can consis-tently distinguish among the hundreds of cultures that fitinto these general types Second, as noted above, single cul-tures or what were at one time identified as single cultures canand do vary internally over time and place Thus a markerthat may identify a specific group as a culture in one location

orat one time may not work for that culture in another place

or atanother time For example, use of the Yiddish languagewouldhavebeen a marker of Jewish cultural identity in East-ern Europeinthe nineteenth century, but it would not serve

as amarker for Jews in the twentieth-century UnitedStates,

where mostspeak English Similarly, residence on one of theCook IslandsinPolynesia would have been a marker of CookIslander identity in the eighteenth century, but not in thetwentieth century when two-thirds of Cook Islanders live inNew Zealand andelsewhere

Giventhese considerations, no attempt has been made

todevelop and use a single definition of a cultural unit or todevelop and useafixed list of criteria for identifying culturalunits Instead, the task of selecting cultures was left to thevolume editors, and the criteria and procedures they used arediscussed intheir introductory essays In general, however, sixcriteria were used, sometimes alone and sometimes in combi-nation toclassify social groups as cultural groups: (1) geo-graphical localization, (2) identification in the social scienceliterature as a distinct group, (3) distinct language, (4)shared traditions, religion, folklore, or values, (5) mainte-

Preface xxiii

nanceof groupidentityinthe face ofstrongassimilative

pres-sures, and (6) previouslistingin aninventoryof the world's

cultures such as Ethnographic Atlas (Murdock 1967) orthe

Outline of World Cultures (Murdock 1983)

In general, we have been bumperss" rather than

"split-ters"inwritingthesummaries.That is, if thereis some

ques-tion aboutwhetheraparticular groupisreallyoneculture or

tworelatedcultures,wehave more oftenthannottreateditas

a singleculture, with internal differences noted inthe

sum-mary Similarly, we have sometimes chosen to describe a

number of verysimilar cultures in asingle summary rather

than in a seriesof summaries that would be mostly

redun-dant There is, however, some variationfromone region to

anotherinthis approach,and the rationale for each region is

discussed inthevolumeeditor's essay

Twocategoriesof cultures are usuallynotcovered in the

encyclopedia First, extinct cultures, especially those that

havenotexisted as distinct culturalunitsforsome time, are

usually not described Cultural extinction is often, though

certainly not always, indicatedby the disappearance of the

culture's language So, for example, theAztec are not

cov-ered,although living descendantsof the Aztec, the

Nahuatl-speakers ofcentral Mexico, are described

Second, the ways of lifeof immigrant groupsareusually

notdescribedinmuchdetail, unless thereis alonghistory of

resistance to assimilation and the group has maintained its

distinctidentity,ashave the Amish in NorthAmerica.These

cultures are, however, described in the location where they

traditionally livedand, for the most part, continue to live, and

migration patterns are noted For example, the Hmong in

Laos aredescribedinthe Southeast Asiavolume,butthe

ref-ugeecommunitiesinthe United States and Canada are

cov-eredonly in the general summaries onSoutheastAsians in

those two countries in the North Americavolume Although

itwould be ideal to provide descriptions of all the immigrant

culturesorcommunitiesof the world, thatisanundertaking

wellbeyond the scopeof thisencyclopedia,forthere are

prob-ably morethanfive thousand such communities in the world

Finally, it shouldbenoted that not all nationalities are

covered, only thosethat are also distinct cultures as well as

politicalentities Forexample, theVietnamese andBurmese

are included butIndians (citizens of the Republic of India)

are not,because thelatter is a political entity made up of a

great mix of cultural groups In the case ofnationswhose

populations includeanumber ofdifferent,relatively

unassim-ilated groups or cultural regions, each of the groups is

de-scribedseparately Forexample, there isnosummary for

Ital-ians assuchinthe Europevolume, but there are summaries

for the regional cultures of Italy, such as the Tuscans,

Sicil-ians, and Tirolians, and other cultures such as the Sinti

Piemontese

Cultural Summaries

The heart of this encyclopedia is the descriptive summaries of

the cultures, which range from a few lines to five or six pages

in length They provide a mix ofdemographic, historical,

so-cial, economic, political, and religious information on the

cultures Their emphasis or flavor is cultural; that is, they

focus on the ways of life of the people-both past and

present-and the factors that have caused the culture to

change over time andplace

A key issue has been how to decide which culturesshould be described by longer summaries and which byshorter ones This decisionwasmade bythevolumeeditors,who had to balance a number ofintellectual and practicalconsiderations Again, the rationale for these decisions isdis-cussed intheir essays.Butamongthe factors thatwerecon-sideredby all the editors were the total number of culturesintheir region, theavailability of expertsto writesummaries, theavailability of informationonthecultures,thedegreeofsimi-

laritybetweencultures,and theimportance ofacultureinascientificorpolitical sense

The summary authors followedastandardized outlinesothat eachsummaryprovides informationon a corelist oftop-ics.Theauthors, however, hadsomeleewayindeciding howmuch attention wastobe given each topic and whether addi-tional information should be included Summaries usuallyprovide information on the following topics:

CULTURE NAME: The name used most ofteninthe socialscienceliterature to refer to the culture or the name the groupuses for itself

ETHNONYMS: Alternate names forthecultureincludingnames usedbyoutsiders, the self-name, and alternate spell-ings, within reasonable limits

ORIENTATIONIdentification Locationof the cultureand thederivation ofitsname andethnonyms

Location Where the cultureis located andadescription ofthephysical environment

Demography Population history and the most recent ablepopulation figures or estimates

reli-Linguistic Affifiation The name of the language spokenand/or writtenbythe culture, its place in an internationallanguage classification system, and internal variation in lan-guage use

HISTORY AND CULTURAL RELATIONS: A tracing

of the originsand history of theculture and the past andrent natureof relationships with other groups

cur-SETI'LEMENTS: Thelocation of settlements, typesof tlements, typesofstructures, housing design and materials.ECONOMY

set-SubsistenceandCommercial Activities Theprimary ods ofobtaining, consuming, and distributing money, food,and othernecessities

meth-Industrial Arts Implements and objects produced by theculture either for its own use or for sale or trade

Trade Products traded and patterns of trade with othergroups

Division of Labor How basic economic tasks are assigned byage, sex, ability, occupational specialization, or status.Land Tenure Rules andpracticesconcerning the allocation

ofland andland-userights tomembers of the culture andtooutsiders

KINSHIPKin Groups and Descent Rules and practicesconcerningkin-based features of social organization such as lineages andclans and alliancesbetween these groups

KinshipTerminology Classification of the kinship nological system on the basis of either cousin terms orgenera-

termi-xxiv Preface

tion, and information about any unique aspectsofkinship

terminology

MARRIAGE ANDFAMILY

Marriage Rules and practices concerningreasons for

mar-riage, types of marriage, economic aspects of marriage,

postmarital residence, divorce, and remarriage

Domestic Unit Description of the basic householdunit

in-cluding type, size, and composition

Inheritance.Rules and practices concerning theinheritance

ofproperty

Socialization Rules and practices concerning child rearing

including caretakers, values inculcated, child-rearing

meth-ods, initiation rites, and education

SOCIOPOLITICAL ORGANIZATION

Social Organization Rules and practices concerningthe

in-ternalorganization of the culture,including social status,

pri-mary and secondary groups, andsocial stratification

Political Organization Rules and practices concerning

lead-ership, politics, governmental organizations, and decision

making

Social Control The sources of conflict within the culture

and informaland formal social control mechanisms

Conflict.Thesources ofconflict with other groups and

infor-mal and formal means ofresolving conflicts

RELIGIONANDEXPRESSIVE CULTURE

Religious Beliefs The nature of religious beliefs including

beliefs insupernatural entities,traditional beliefs, and the

ef-fects of majorreligions

ReligiousPractitioners Thetypes,sources of power, and

ac-tivities ofreligious specialists suchas shamans and priests

Ceremonies The nature, type, and frequency of religious

and other ceremonies and rites

Arts The nature, types, andcharacteristics of artistic

activi-ties includingliterature, music, dance, carving, and so on

Medicine The nature of traditionalmedicalbeliefs and

prac-tices andthe influence of scientific medicine

Death and Afterlife The nature of beliefs andpractices

con-cerning death, the deceased, funerals, and the afterlife

BIBLIOGRAPHY: A selected listofpublications about the

culture The list usually includes publications that describe

both the traditional and thecontemporary culture

AUTHOR'S NAME: The name of the summary author

Maps

Each regionalvolume contains maps pinpointing the current

location of the cultures described in that volume The first

map ineach volume is usually an overview, showing the

coun-tries in that region The other maps provide more detail by

marking the locations of the cultures in four or five

subregions

FilmographyEach volumecontains a list offilmsandvideos about cultures

covered in that volume This list is provided as a service and

in noway indicatesanendorsement bytheeditor, the volume

editor, or thesummary authors Addresses of distributors are

provided so that information about availability and prices can

longer used, orthe name in another language.It is not usualthatsomeethnonymsareconsidereddegrading andin-sultingby the people towhom they refer.These namesmaynevertheless be included here because they do identify thegroupandmayhelpsome userslocate thesummary oraddi-tional information on the culture in other sources Eth-nonymsarecross-referencedtothe culturename inthe index

Population Figures

Wehavetriedto be asup-to-dateand asaccurate as possible

inreportingpopulation figures This is no easy task, as somegroups are not counted in officialgovernment censuses, somegroups are verylikelyundercounted, and in somecasesthedefinition ofaculturalgroupusedbythe censustakersdiffersfromthedefinition we have used In general, we have relied

on population figures supplied by the summary authors.Whenotherpopulationdata sources have beenused in avol-ume,they are so noted bythevolume editor If the reportedfigure is from an earlierdate-say, the 1970s-it is usuallybecause it is the most accurate figure that could be found

Units ofMeasure

In aninternational encyclopedia, editors encounter the lemof how to report distances, units of space, and tempera-ture Inmuch of the world, the metric system is used, but sci-entists prefer theInternational System of Units (similar tothe metric system), and in Great Britain and North AmericatheEnglish system is usually used We decided to use Englishmeasures inthe NorthAmerica volume andmetricmeasures

prob-in the other volumes Each volume contains a conversiontable

Acknowledgments

In a project of this size, there are many people to acknowledgeand thank for their contributions In its planning stages,members oftheresearch staff of the Human RelationsAreaFilesprovidedmany usefulideas Theseincluded TimothyJ

O'Leary, Marlene Martin, John Beierle, Gerald Reid,DeloresWalters, Richard Wagner, andChristopher Latham Thead-visoryeditors, of course, alsoplayedamajorrole inplanning

Preface xxv

the project, and not just fortheir own volumes but also for

the projectas awhole.Timothy O'Leary,TerenceHays,and

PaulHockings deserve specialthanks for their commentson

this preface and the glossary, as does Melvin Ember,

presi-dent of the Human Relations Area Files Members of the

of-fice andtechnical staff also must be thanked for so quickly

andcarefully attending to the manytasks a project of this size

inevitably generates They are Erlinda Maramba, Abraham

Maramba, Victoria Crocco, Nancy Gratton, and Douglas

Black At Macmillan and G K Hall, the encyclopedia has

benefited from the wise and careful editorial management of

Elly Dickason, Elizabeth Kubik, and Elizabeth Holthaus, and

theeditorial and production management of Ara Salibian

Finally, I would like to thank Melvin Ember and theboard of directors of the HumanRelations Area Files for theiradministrative and intellectual support for this project

Introduction to

Theterritory of NorthernEurasia(roughlyMacro-Russia, the

Commonwealth ofIndependentStates 1CIS1,orthe former

USSR) covers more than one-sixth of the earth's land

sur-face Much ofit isblanketedbyseeminglyendless forest.It is

inhabited by people speaking over one hundred languages

and constitutes thethirdmostpopulous geopolitical entityin

the world It extends from the ArcticSea tothe deserts of

Turkestan and includesmaximumandminimumdegrees of

temperature,elevation, precipitation, wind, land and mineral

resources, andecological, cultural, and linguistic variation

The cultures of this huge area may be divided roughly

intofour parts thatoverlap-for example, the Jews and

Gyp-sies,each with significant subcultural variation, range from

theBaltic Seatothe Pacific Ocean The four majorculture

areas are:European Russia,with its Slavic,particularly Great

Russian, majority and many Tatar and Uralic minorities;

Central Asia,with its predominantly Turkic, Muslim peoples,

notably the Kazakhs and the Uzbeks, spread over vast steppes

and desert ranges; Siberia, with its many small indigenous

groups such as the northernmost Nganasan and a huge

Rus-sian(Siberiaki) majority mainlyinthe citiesfromthe Urals to

Vladivostok; and the Caucasus, where the density and

multi-plicity of cultures (e.g., Daghestan is known as "the

Moun-tain of Languages") coexists with many shared patterns and

traits

In termsof moreanalytical dimensions, northern Eurasia

includes at least three kinds of cultural entities (if by

"cul-ture"wemean a broad constellation of ecological, economic,

social, and religious factors): ancient and self-conscious

peo-ples with a complex class structure, a literary tradition, and a

developed economy, of which Georgia, Armenia,

Kazakh-stan,Ukraine, Tajikistan, and Russia proper are good

exam-ples; relatively large ethnic groups with much historical

iden-tity that have or have had considerable political standing

such as in the Baltic states, the Udmurt and other

Finno-Ugric groups near the Volga, the Tuvans, and Yakut (Sakha);

and relatively small groups-such as the Even, Gagauz, and

the peoples of Daghestan-often tribally organized, in some

casesshamanic in religion, that in recent times have been

po-litically subjugated to a degree; some, like the Kalmyks, have

been pushed toward oblivion, and others, like the Yukagir,

into it

(1) European Russia, occupied mainly by Slavs, runs

from the Baltic Seaand the Polishborder east to the UralMountainsand from the White SeasouthtotheBlackSea,the southernRussiansteppe, and theCaucasus Itisbasically

a vastplain interrupted by rivers, lakes,andrangesof hillsandravines.The three main subdivisionsoftheEastSlavs-theRussians proper, the Ukrainians, and the Belarussians-although differing significantly from eachother, also sharemany basicculturalpatternssuch as reliance ongrainsinthediet, the importanceof the somewhat extended nuclear fam-ily, thesteam-bathcomplex, long and elaborate weddings, a

village commune (mir) tradition, and certain annualholidaysthat have carried overfromearlier times,notably EasterandChristmas

Over half the East Slavs liveinvillages, but about thirds of the 150 million Russians proper or "Great Russians"areurban This urbanpopulationshares certain patterns Themajority now live in large, crowded, dilapidated apartmenthouses and work infoundering, inefficient factories or servicetrades while being imperfectly assisted by public health andsocial security amidanunending sequence of shortages,infla-tion, and breakdowns oftransportation, heating, and fooddelivery Nonetheless,someaspects ofurban culture preserveearlier (even czarist) levels ofquality, notably education inmathematics and certain arts (ballet and poetry) Urban life

two-is made more feasible by dense personal networks (often byphone), by patterns of informal exchange (often by barter),and by traditions shared with the village such as the localsteambath There is a remarkable similarity, incidentally, be-tweenurban apartments and the interiors of ruraldwellings.There are, moreover, long-standing, strong, and continuingtraditions of peasants working in the cities, of wealthier cityfolk having country cottages and cabins, and of all socialclasses maintaining familial and other personal ties with thecountryside Additional processes of ruralization today are re-sulting in the migration of city dwellers (especially Russiansfrom non-Russian states) to villages and a large increase intruck farming (family plots) near cities

The Russian area is conveniently and realistically vided into three parts: the southern "black earth" zone, withlarge villages and the raising of many kinds of grains in fairlyopen country; the central "industrial" zone of rolling fields,low hills, and groves, with its mix of diversified agriculture(e.g., dairy and truck farming), local arts and crafts, and manyheavily industrialized cities and their huge sectors of skilledand semiskilled workers, intellectuals, and bureaucrats; andthe large northern and northeastern zone, with many lakes,streams, and rivers, extensive forests (mainly of birches andconifers), and small villages, typically with large home-steads-in the northeast there is also much lumbering,min-

subdi-xxvii

xxviii Introduction to Russia and Eurasia

ing, andsomeheavy industry.Welloverhalf theGreat

Rus-sianpopulationisnominallyRussianOrthodox andprobably

a larger proportionbelieve in spirits ofvarious kinds (e.g.,

housespirits,forestspirits, rivernymphs, etc.) in asystem of

partly pagan beliefs that is strongly supported by folklore

(e.g., proverbs, sayings) Kinship networks, villagecommunal

organization,andabureaucracy (althoughthe latteris

ineffi-cient) helpto maintain a semblance of socialorder

There are two other major EastSlavicgroups Ukraine

hasapopulationof51 million,ofwhich 37 millionare

actu-ally Ukrainian Itis thebreadbasket of the Slavic areaand

produces wheat,maize,andother cerealsinprodigious

quan-tities; half the Ukrainian population, concomitantly, still

consists ofpeasantswho live invillages of1000 to5000in

populationthat arelaidout incluster, chain, ribbon, orgrid

patterns.ThegreatculturalcenterofKiev, withitsmany

leg-endary bells, rivals the northerncapitalsofMoscowandSt

Petersburg. Many western Ukrainians belong to the Uniate

church The black-soilplainsand steppes, as in Russia, are

crosscutby large rivers,notablytheVolga, theDnieper, and

theBug,all critical fortransportation.Farthertothewestthe

much smaller Belarussian population of about 8 million,

much ofitheavily Russified,livesin anindustrialized,urban

environment,in citiessuchasMinsk,or in acountrysidethat

isoftenmarshyandlow-lying.HereareBelarussianpeasants

in theirsmallvillagesof 5 to 100households, eachtypically

consisting,asamongthe otherSlavs,ofadwelling,agranary,

afeedbarn,a livestockbarn, andacold cellar Fishingis

im-portant in the north, as it is among the northern Great

Russians

Elementsofchauvinismnotwithstanding,theculture of

the EastSlavs is highly syncretistic,involving native Slavic,

Finno-Ugric,Turko-Tatar, Mongol,Greek (e.g., Byzantine),

western European, and, most recently, American

com-ponents

In cultural terms the East Slavic mass includes all its

outliersanddiasporainneighboringstatesandregions,where

theyoften form large minorities (e.g.,one-third the

popula-tion of Estonia and a large fraction of that of northern

Kazakhstan). The Siberian Russians (and Ukrainians) are

scatteredacross a continent totheeastalthoughcenteredin

westernSiberia, notablyinKurgan andnearthe coalminesof

Novosibirsk.Despitetheirdistinctiveness-their characteras

"Siberiaki"-theyare moreRussian(orUkrainian)than

any-thingelseinlanguageandcustoms.Tothe south and

south-east areseveralgroupsofCossacks suchastheDonCossacks

of theDon River area,who,whileretainingassociationswith

cavalry and choruses, are today grain farmers, miners, and

members of theintelligentsia.

Within, among, and adjoiningthe EastSlavs, thereare

manyminorities. TheTatars include thenowpartly

repatri-ated Crimean Tatars and the Volga Tatarswith their great

culturalheritage andintensenationalconsciousness (which

includes a reformist Islamic revival) Several Finno-Ugric

groupsaredispersed in the centralVolgaarea, often notfar

from the river itself The Udmurt, the Mordvinians, and,

more tothenortheast,theKomi, althoughheavily Russified,

are tendingmore and more torevitalizeandrestore their

in-digenouscultures Between Ukraineand Romania are found

theRomanian-speaking Moldovans,and,withinMoldova,

al-most aquarter million (Orthodox Christian) GagauzTurks

Despite problemsofclassification,cross-reference, and

mar-ginality,the area we arecalling European Russia, includingitsminorities,isintegratedinmany critical waysby culture, poli-tics, economy,and a sharedhistory,and it is demarcatedbybodies ofwater,the Urals and theboundariesofneighboring

states.The Balticgroupsconstitutetheexception: thenians, Karelians, Latvians, andLithuanians, although influ-enced byRussia's traditions and political economy, are pri-marily associated with western Europe and are relativelymarginaltothe area inquestionin termsof culture andpoliti-cal attitudes (e.g.,the Lithuanians are RomanCatholic, theLatviansLutheran)

Esto-The mosaic and synthesis of cultures today reflects a

long and tragic history-from primeval beginnings of

dis-persedhunters and fishermeninterminglingwith Finnic

peo-ples,tothegradual emergenceofSlavicpolities,toconquest

bytheVarangians (Vikings) inthe ninthcentury,to

conver-sion to ChristianityunderVladimir (988) with subsequent

Byzantineinfluence,totheemergenceof themainlysouthernprincipalitiesoftoday's Ukraine,tothe oftengenocidalcon-questbytheMongols (thirteenth century), tothe rise intheMiddle Ages of the Muscovite State in the north (notablyunder Ivan III and Ivan theTerrible),totherapid imperialex-pansion and explosive economic growth during the eight-eenthcentury,tothehighculture andworld-powerstatusofthe nineteenth and twentieth centuries, tothe First WorldWarand theRussianRevolution, and then the Soviet period,the Second WorldWar, andfinallythechaos and regenera-

tion ofperestroika Throughout these years the boundariesoften shifted butthebasic processwasimperial expansionatthecost ofTurk, Pole,Tatar, andSiberian native; the colo-nial exploitation ofsubject peoples such astheVolga areaFinno-Ugric groups;andthe creationofculturally and politi-

cally defined national entities, particularly of Russia and,

later, of Ukraine and Belarus

(2) TheCaucasus, occupyingthesouth-centralportion

ofthe area,runsfromthe southernRussiansteppe to theders of Iranand from the Black tothe Caspian seas Apartfrom sometropicalcoastalareasin thewestandparchingdes-

bor-erts in the northeast and flatlands here and there, this islargelyaregion of mountains(including some of the highest

in the world) and oflush, fruit-tree-filled valleys

TheCaucasus maybediscussed in terms of fiveculturalclassifications:Georgia,inthewest,withatleast sevenGeor-gian subdivisions, all of them Georgian Orthodox in faith

(except the partly Islamic Ajarians and the non-Georgian

Abkhazians), an ancient,highculturaltradition, acomplexand diverse economy, and a strong national polity over athousand yearsold;Armenia,inthesouth-central Caucasus,with Easternand Western subdivisions, also with anancient

high culture, a national (Monophysite) church, a sense of

identity as a nation-state, and large numbers in diaspora;

Azerbaijan, in the east, Turkic-speaking and mostly Shiite

Muslim, with acomplex economyin whichtheoil industry

predominates;theNorthern Caucasus, roughly north oftheCaucasus mountain range, ranging from the Circassians,

someofthemnearthe Black Sea, totheChechen and Ingush

in the center, to the Avars near the Caspian Sea; and the

Daghestanareathat contains overfifty distinct groups, some

ofthem small, occupyingasingle valley, others, notably theAvars,numberingin thetens orhundredsofthousands and

havingastrongsenseofhistory,ahighrate ofliteracy,anda

complex social structure

Introduction to Russiaand Eurasia xxix

In terms of history and prehistory, by the end of the

StoneAge the three main indigenous groupsmay well have

beenin place: the Northwest CaucasianorAbkhaz-Adyghe

peoples occupying an area from theBlack Seatothe Seaof

Azovand inland totheKuban River;theNortheastor

Nakh-Daghestanianpeoples living in an area extending from

some-where northof the Terek River south along theCaspianSea

into what is now Azerbaijan; and the South Caucasian or

Kartvelian peoples in whatisnowGeorgia and some

adjoin-ing areas, particularly Turkey Some or all ofthese regions

were successively subjugated or at least influenced by the

Greeks underAlexander (fourthcentury B.C.) and, later, by

Byzantine Greece (c sixth century A.D.); the Persians (e.g.,

the Sassanids Ithird to seventh centuriesi; the Arabs and

theMuslim expansion (mainlyinthe seventh andeighth

cen-turies); the Mongols (thirteenth century); then Tamerlane

(fourteenth and fifteenth centuries); the Ottoman Turks;

and, finally, the Russians (starting mainly in the eighteenth

century) Atpresent the Caucasusisbeing drawnin

conflict-ingdirections toward the Russians to the north, Europe to

the west, andthe Turkic and Muslim worlds to the south

Linguistically, the North Caucasian languages are

usu-ally divided into the Northwest, the North Central, and the

Northeast (e.g., the Chechen-Ingush); according to some

views, they arerelatedtoeach other, but, according to other

views,eventheNortheastern group maynot constitute a

fam-ily;according to yet other theories, the North Caucasian

lan-guages as a set may have been related to

Proto-Indo-European Indo-European-language speakers on the scene

today include the Armenians, who, by one hypothesis,

oc-cupy the original Indo-European homeland area, and the

IranianOssetes in the northern mountains There are some

half-dozen Turkic languages such as Kumyk in the northeast

comer of the areaandAzerbaijani, the language spoken by

thelargest Turkic group in theCaucasus; some form of

Tur-kic (or'Tatar") serves as a linguafranca in much of the area,

particularly Daghestan The dominant or characteristic

lin-guistic fact is the greatdiversity, ranging from Georgia, where

eightormoredialects of Georgianarespoken, toDaghestan,

which, although about the size of Illinois, contains groups

speaking over thirty distinct languages and a vastly greater

numberofdialects The Caucasus displays far morelinguistic

diversity than all of western Europe

Despite the overt fact of cultural and, in particular,

lin-guistic heterogeneity, variouslarge subsets of the cultures of

the Caucasus share a number of patterns, some of them

worthitemizing here: a large porch as the locus for many

fam-ilyactivities; centering the home on a cooking pot suspended

on a chain overthe centralhearth, and/or the pattern of a

decorated pole in the center of the main room; national foods

made of grains and milk or meat (for example,

khinkal-spiced meat in a dough pouch); men's fur caps,several typical

jackets and coats,daggers, and women's complex jewelry and

many-storied headgear; marked segregation and division of

labor between the sexes; variously compacted villages (e.g.,

the"beehivemodel"); patrilocal and patriarchal family

organ-ization combined with strict taboos for the in-marrying

woman; extraordinarily developed patterns of ritual kinship

and ofhospitality; kissing or at least touching the breast of an

unrelated woman in order to be accepted into her clan as an

honorary member (resorted to in somecommunities to end a

feud); clan (tukhum) endogamy in Daghestan but exogamy

elsewhere Although there are large modem cities such asMakhachkala, Baku, Erevan, andTbilisi, most people live inregional centers and mountain hamlets

Interms ofreligion the Caucasus includes a remarkablyvital substratum of indigenous (pagan) practices including,variously, animal sacrifice, shamanism, and rainmaking cere-monies Islam brought with it Sharia (the code of Islamiclaw), which nowcomplements the traditional adat (custom-arynorms) of the northern Caucasus andDaghestan, variouselements fromChristianity, and, of course, the secular laws.(3) Central Asia occupies the vast expanses that extendfrom thesouthern Russian steppe and the Caspian Sea east-ward to and into the Altai Mountains and the Pamirs andfromsouthern Siberia south to the borders of Iran, Afghani-stan,and China There are hilly or lowmountainous areas inthecore, as inKazakhstan, and true mountains on the easternperipheries; most of Tajikistan consists of mountains andnarrow valleys But much of this is a flatland consisting oftreeless steppes anddeserts that are marked by frequent dust-and sandstorms and continental extremes of cold and heat(up to 50° C inthe Kara Kum) and of aridity anddrought-the latter reaching ecologically disastrous proportions as inthe partial dessication of the Aral Sea In such an environ-ment, the great rivers of the Amu Darya, Syr Darya, and Ili,serving as linearoases, have played a crucial role (e.g., in theFerghana Valley)

Thepopulation of what used to be Russian Central Asianowexceeds 50 million In some of the former republics, such

as Kazakhstan, theeponymous Turkic peoples actually stitute less than half of thepopulation, but these groups havebeengrowing explosively in recent decades, often creating se-vere social problems ofunemployment, ethnic conflict, andthe like The entire region can be subdivided into six parts:Turkmenistan in the southwestcomer around the Kara KumDesert (population about 3 million, almost all Turkmens);Uzbekistan, with 200,000 Uigur in its south-central zone,400,000Karakalpaks around the Red and Black deserts, andsome 14 million Uzbeks in a polity of 19million-the Uzbeksare thus the mostnumerous Turkic group in Northern Eura-sia;Kazakhstan, spread all across the north and center (about

con-5 million Kazakhs within a population of 15 million);Kyrgyzstan in the southeastern comer (almost 2 millionKyrgyz within a population of 4 million); also in the south-east, the non-Turkic Tajiks, who are Iranian (about 3 mil-lion); yet farther east, thelikewise Iranian Pamir peoples onthe "Rooftop of the World"; the Pamir Mountains are alsohome to theIchkilik (or Pamir-Kyrgyz) Turks, and there areotherminorities in Russian Central Asia as a whole (e.g., theShiite Ironisdescended from Iranian slaves) There are manymillions of Russians and tens ofthousands of other minori-ties (e.g., Germans, Siberian Estonians)-who have beenrapidly leavingCentral Asia for their own titular regions sinceabout 1985

Allthe majoreponymous groups are Sunni Muslims ofthe Hanafi rite, observing such major holidays as Ramadanand theKorban (the great sacrifice ofAbraham) and oftenvisiting Muslim holy places orbelonging to Sufibrotherhoods(tariqa) orlocalizedsemi-Muslimburial shrines Theprinci-pal exceptions are the Pamir peoples, most of whom areIsmailis of the Nizarot rite (followers of the Aga Khan), theBukharan Jews, and the Russians andUkrainians A strongattachment to traditional Islamic values is exemplifiedvari-

xxx Introduction to Russia and Eurasia

ously: bytheearly marriagesofgirls, by respectforelders,and

by the importance of the Quran Todaytherapidbreakdown

ofMuslim valuesinsomequartersiscompetingwith the rise

ofIslamicfundamentalism, which seekstorevitalizeoreven

exaggerate these same values: many consider themselves

membersof the Islamic community,theumma,withoutbeing

either fundamentalist or particularly observant Speaking

moregenerally, CentralAsianreligions stillbearthe markof

pre-lslamic practices contributed by ancient Iranian and

Mesopotamian religions, such as Zoroastrianism,

Mani-chaeism, Gnosticism, and Nestorian Christianity, not to

mention the shamanism indigenous to Siberia and Central

Asia In Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan Islam grew to

promi-nenceonlyintheeighteenthtonineteenthcenturies,roughly

corresponding to Muslim missionizingpromoted by the

Rus-siansvia theTatars

Russian Central Asia is dominated symbolically by

speakers of Turkicdialects:thoseenteringintothe (relatively

artificial) divisions ofKazakh, Kyrgyz, and Karakalpak; the

Turkmen dialects(closetoAzeri); andthe Uzbek and Uigur

languages; the threebelonging, respectively, totheKipchak,

Oguz, and Chagatay branches of the Ural-Altaic Language

Family Almostall (96 percent to 99 percent) of theseTurkic

peoples classified their languages as primary (as against

Rus-sian) The writing systems, after a switch from the Arabic

script to the Latin (in the 1920s) and to theCyrillic (in the

1930s), today are reassuming Latin forms (although some

people are advocating the Arabic script).Thelanguages are

the vehicles for a renowned oral (mainly epic) literature as

well as, in the case of Uigur, a sophisticated written tradition

going back to theMiddle Ages Inaddition to verbal arts, the

Turkic peoples of Central Asia, in particular the Uzbeks,

have highly developed dance, theater, classical music, and,

especially among the Turkmen, a tradition of nearly peerless

carpet weaving

Thelonghistory of thisareamay besummed up briefly as

an early period of indigenous and shamanic Tengri and

Zoroastrian cultures, followed by the Islamic conquests, then

the Mongol invasions led by Chinggis (Genghis) Khan and

his successors (thirteenth century), the empire of Tamerlane

(fourteenth century, centeredinSamarkand), then

annexa-tion by Russiaduring theeighteenth and nineteenth

centur-ies, and, finally, the period of Soviet domination beginning in

1919-1921 Inthe course of these phases, local polities were

overlaid with imperial power, followed by combinations of

fairly autonomous tribes with various khanates (e.g., of

Bukhara and Samarkand)-which were conquered by the

Russians and replaced by administration through regions and

districts-oftentotheextreme economic disadvantage of the

colonized populations (a situation that is changing rapidly

today)

Central Asia as a whole wasfor a long time a regionof

mixed (semi-) pastoralism characterized by transhumant

pat-tems of (mobile) tent dwelling combined with sedentary

agri-cultural villages of orchards and extended families living in

clay or stucco houses built around courtyards and surrounded

by orchards In the late 1920s and early 1930s the pastoral

side of society was assimilated to or converted intostate-run

villages with catastrophic consequences (e.g., the death of

millions of Kazakhs through famine) Both types of society

were ordered into larger clans or tribes in terms of the

patrilineal principle (typically reckoned as far as seven or

moregenerations) Sometimes, on aninformal as well on anadministrative level, womentook onarelativelygreaterrole

infamily decision making, especially inpastoral zones Forthe most part, however, particularly later in Central Asianhistory,Islamic valuesinvolvingsex roleseclipsedmoreegali-tarian aspects ofsociety

The cultures of the region are known for aheavy reliance

onmutton, grain, anddairy products andarigidsexualsion of labor and spatial segregation In addition to intenseandproductive agriculture, notablyin the Ferghana Valley,cotton is raisedon a massive scaleusing 'modemmethods'such as chemical fertilizers with results that, depending onthe area, range toward outright ecological disaster Againstthebackdropof formerpastoralism, contemporary village col-lectives, andmechanized agriculture, there stand the many-storiedcities with theircomplexeconomies andsophisticatedurbanways: Bukhara, Tashkent, and Samarkand, aswell as

divi-relatively modem centers such as Dushanbe The goldmines

ofUzbekistan rank among the richestinthe world.(4) Siberia, occupying about 7.5 million square kilome-ters,from the UralMountains tothe PacificOceanandfromthe Arctic Sea to the borders of China and Mongolia, con-tains apopulation of approximately 35 million dividedintofortyor more ethnicgroups (depending on one's criteria forcounting them) speaking dozens of distinct Uralic, Turko-Tatar, and Paleosiberian languages and many moredialects-usually, today,with Russian as a lingua franca ofsorts Theage-old patternofintermarriage and geneticinter-mingling between these groups and other immigrants,partic-ularly Russians, is continuing today Large populations,mainly Slavic, are concentrated today in and around citiessuch as Omsk, Yakutsk, and Vladivostok and in industrialand/or mining areas such as Krasnoyarsk, in more or lessurban (and often ecologically catastrophic) conditions Butthebasic and initial demographic profile of Siberia is of smallgroupsliving in relatively simple conditions, thinly scatteredand often migratingover great spaces (most extremely, theEvenki with about 17,000 individuals scattered over an arealargerthan western Europe)

Geographically, Siberia consists of four main zones:treeless tundra along and in from the Arctic coast; southofthat abroad strip oftaiga (mainlyconiferous forestsmixedwithbirch, larch, and aspen); a more complex landscape ofsteppe and hill country (e.g., the steppes of northernTurkestan); and the regions of mountains sometimes rising

to over 1.6kilometers in elevation (where the Tofalar oftheSayanMountains, the Altai of the Altai Mountains, andtheTuvans of the Tuvan mountain range live) Siberia is inter-sected by many great rivers, which, unlike most of those ofEuropean Russia, run northward: the Ob, the Irtysh, theYenisei, the Lena, and others have always been vital for traveland transport (east to west transport being served today inmoresouthern areas by the Trans-Siberian railroad) Most ofSiberia is subject to extreme cold-from -20° C in winter-time in many areas to world-recordlows of -90° C or more inthenorth-necessitating extraordinary adaptive measures inclothing and housing, notably many-layered fur garments,tents of hides, insulated log cabins, and semisubterraneandwellings (which housed up to 100 persons among theItelmen of yore) Yetmany parts of southern Siberia aretem-perateenough to allow for prosperous agriculture, not only

Introduction to Russia and Eurasia xxxi

truckgardensnearthe city,but,particularlyinthe southwest,

extensive dairyand wheat farming.

Until the sixteenth century the population of Siberia

consisted mainly ofscores of indigenous groups ranging in

size fromafew hundred to severaltensofthousands, which

lived in relative economic, political, and cultural

indepen-dence, traded ubiquitously, often mixed socially, and

some-timeswarredwith each other.Someregionsweregoverned by

local khanates or similar polities. Between about 1500 and

1598Siberiawasgradually conquered (mainly byCossacks),

secured by lines of forts, and gradually colonized and

ex-ploitedbyRussiancommercial and governmental forces that

exactedatribute (iasak), usuallyinfurs (often takingover

ex-istingtributesystems).During theeighteenthand nineteenth

centuries southernSiberia witnessedexplosive industrial

de-velopment, particularly ofmines Russian Siberia evolved a

distinctivecharacter,whichenabledafewlargergroupssuch

asthe Yakut and theTatarstomaintain somedegreeof

eco-nomicand cultural viability. Siberia was thesceneofbitter

and brutal civilwarafter the 1917Revolution;itwasfirst

con-trolledbythe Whites (notablytheCossacks)and then taken

bythe Reds From the 1920s tothe 1970sSiberianhistory

combined sensational economic buildup (e.g., in industry,

mining and"virginland" agriculture) with religious

persecu-tion,culturaldestruction,andecologicalruination Sincethe

middle 1980sthearea asawhole has beengripped by a new

cultural and political consciousness, exemplified by

every-thingfromrefurbishinglocal governmenttoinvitingJapanese

andGermancapitalizationofextractiveindustriestothe

ex-porting of (brilliant) Yakut theatertoChicago

Siberia today falls into roughly four ecocultural areas:

westernSiberia,alowlandagricultural area where live the

rel-atively Russified Nenets, Komi, Mansi, and Khanty;

south-western Siberia, with its huge mining and industrial

com-plexes (e.g.,around theKuznetskBasin),which attract some

indigenous people, including women; east-central Siberia,

dominated by the Buriats and Yakut but including many

groups that are particularly interesting and important in

termsofcomparativeethnography, suchasthe Nganasan, the

nothernmostpeopleofEurasia; and theFarEast, with

peo-plessuchastheEskimos, Chuckchee,andNivkh, living on or

nearthe Pacific Oceanormajorriverssuchasthe Amuralong

the Chinese border.Theytypicallydevote much time to

fish-ing and sea-mammal hunting The Far East (Chukhotka,

Kamchatka, and the Amur region), although included in

muchof the above discussionaspart ofSiberia,isthought of

as aseparate entity inmany contexts;similarly, the Kazakhs

and other peoples ofnorthern andeastern Kazakhstan,

al-though included in the discussion ofCentral Asia, are in

manyways part of southwestern Siberiaand are so classified

in Russian-areaanthropology

Forcenturies, but especiallyintheStolypin era

(1906-1911) and during and after World War 11, there has been

migration, resettlement,anddeportationintoSiberia

Immi-grant minorities include the numerous Siberian Germans,

centered in Omsk, the well-organized and prosperous

Dungans (from China),and theKoreans Generally,

indige-nouspeoples throughout Siberia still focus their livelihood

on hunting, fishing,trapping, reindeer breeding, cattle

rais-ing, and the production ofclothing. Afew have low-status

jobsinthecities orindustrialsettlements; someindividuals of

indigenous origin, however,aretodayleadersinpolitics,ness, and the arts and sciences

busi-Despite itsdiversity andenormous spaces, thepeople ofSiberia, or atleast large blocks ofthem, including theRussianSiberiaki, sharesomevalues andcharacteristics suchasphysi-

cal and psychological adaptation tocold, small or relativelysmall extended families organized into large kinship net-works, patrilineal organization (usually with clan exogamy),

and, notablyamongthe immigrantSlavs,anopenor

frontier-town mentality Stereotypical of all Siberiawas shamanism(theword 'shaman" comes, accordingto somescholars, fromthe Tungus via Russian), shamans serving to protect groupmembers from hostile forces, make predictions, andmediatebetweenthe human and supernatural worlds (e.g., asguides

of the souls of the dead) Although devastated by Sovietantireligious campaigns, shamanism has survived in manyplaces and today is experiencing a mixed revival-even adif-fusiontotheRussians innorthern and eastern Siberia Hav-ing reviewed the cultures, let us turn to a general, currentproblem

"Nation"?

The fuzzy edges andpotential chaos of Russia/Northemasia emerge inperhaps the theoretically most interesting way

Eur-in thepermuting contrasts of the idea of 'nation" as it is used

by the'natives" today and might reasonably be used byars At one extreme we find the Gypsies scattered fromVladivostok to the Baltic referring to themselves and referred

schol-to as a nation,and, as if this weren't enough, each of theirconstituent subdivisions is also considered a nation Scarcelyless problematical are diaspora groups-for example, theTatars, who are trying to realize their ancient claims to losthomelands inthe Crimea Further along are many indigenousgroups with a territory, usually traditional, in the Caucasus,Siberia, or European Russia who, although small and weak,have distinct cultures, a long-standing polity, and a strongsense of national and cultural identity: the Gagauz inMoldova, for instance; the Khanty and Eskimos of Siberia;dozens of otherSiberian and Caucasian entities; and the leg-endary Terek Cossacks on the Terek River, numbering250,000 and claiming separate nationhood A considerablenumber of ethnicities have an organized government, a com-plex political economy, and sometimes aggressive territorialclaims: the AzerbaijaniTurks in the southeast Caucasus, theChechens of thenorthern Caucasus (the center of the localIslamic movement), the numerous and powerfulBuriats, andthe Tuvans, Kazakhs, and Georgians, who respectively domi-nate, try to dominate, or are seen to dominate central Siberia,Turkestan, and the western Caucasus and are, on variouscounts by which nations rank themselves, superior to theirRussian 'big brother." Finally, there are the huge nation-states of Russia and Ukraine

Themost immediate variables in the spectrum of what itmeans to be a nationare the degree of governmental organi-zation, ofethnic consciousness, of linguistic and cultural dis-tinctiveness, of de facto independence, and of political, eco-nomic, and military size and power Perhaps insight into theidea of nation might be gleaned from contemplating thegroups that are not so designated: the Old Siberian Russians(Siberiaki); many of the smaller Caucasus groups such as theKubachi and the Jews; and many immigrant groups such as

xxxii Introduction to Russiaand Eurasia

the Koreans and the Siberian Germans The question of

nationhoodistodaymorevolatileinthe former Soviet Union

thanin western Europeor East Asia Perhaps themain

cul-turaland political lessontobe learnedfromthevarietiesof

nation in Russia/North Eurasia is that, rather than get

bogged down inwhat may beterminological orpurely

taxo-nomicquestions,oneshouldconstruct alargeand open

semi-system ofcontinuous, fuzzyvariables fromsomesynthesisof

socialscienceand,evenmore,the meaningsand actual

prac-tices of thepopulation inquestion

Cultures CoveredThis volumeprovidesdescriptionsofall major cultural groups

oftheformer Soviet Union, including nationalities such as

the Russians and Kazakhs, indigenous peoples such as the

Chukchee, religious groups such asthe Kurds andvarious

Jewish groups, the peoples and tribes of the Caucasus, and

others such as the DonCossacks and Gypsies In all, 111

groups aredescribed In ordertoprovide as much

informa-tion as possible about these groups, I sought contributions

from scholarsinthe formerSovietUnion,someofwhomare

writing for the first time for a Western audience.Thus, 42 of

the articles were writteninRussianandweretranslated and

edited forinclusion inthisvolume

Theemphases ofsomearticlesreflect thetraditional

in-terests ofethnography inthe Soviet Union Thus, there is

often much detail about material culture (clothing, food,

housing,tools,and weapons),language,andliterature,andin

thisvolumewe haveaddedsubheadingsasneeded for these

topics At the same time, becausethey were relatively ignored

bySovietethnographers, descriptions of thekinshipsystem

and sociopolitical organizationofsomegroupsdescribed here

areless completethan for cultures in other parts of the world

I have alsoattemptedtobeasup-to-date aspossible in

theinformation provided,reflectingthe wholesale changesin

theSovietUnionthat occurred as this volume was being

writ-tenandedited We have triedtousethe most current name

for groups (for example, Belarussians instead of

Byelorus-sians), nations, regions, cities, bodies of water, etc.,although

somenames arelikely tohave fallenintodisusebythetime

thisvolume appears in print aschangecontinues in the

for-merSoviet Union Forhistorical information, we have

gener-allyusedtraditional spellings and names

Reference ResourcesThevastness of theliterature on the former Soviet Unionre-

flects the physical expanseof the region, the variety of

peo-plesliving there, and thecentral role of Russia in world affairs

forthe last two centuries (and the Soviet Union in recent

decades) The opening of the former Soviet Union to the

Westmeans that many of the standard works on thehistory,

politics, and economy of the Soviet Union and the

now-independent constituent nations will be revised and updated

Similarly, atlases are beingcontinually revised to reflect

polit-ical andname changes inthe region

Usefulbibliographies to works relevantto theculturesof

the formerSovietUnion include those of Jakobson (1957)

on the indigenous peoples ofnortheastern Siberia, Horak

(1982) on the non-Russian peoples of the Soviet Union,

Mann (1981), which lists nearly 200 bibliographies on the

peoplesof the former Soviet Union, and theBibliography of

Soviet Ethnological Publications, 1977-1982

Surveysof thepeoplesofthe SovietUnioninclude those

of Wixman (1984),whichprovides brief descriptions of thegroups and helps sort out the various ethnonyms; Katz

(1975),whichcovers the major national groups; Levin and

Potapov(1964),whichistheEnglish-languagetranslation ofthe 1956Russian-languagesurveywith muchinformationon

the traditional culture of Siberian peoples; and the Sovietgovernment survey, Peoplesofthe SovietUnion The Muslim

peoplesareperhaps better coveredinethnographic surveys,

including those by Akiner (1986) and Bennigsen andWimbush (1986) and the entries in Weekes (1984) The

Journal ofSoviet Nationalities, which began publication in

1990,publishes scholarlyresearchrelevant toformer Sovietpeoples.Thelanguagesof the SovietUnionarelisted,classi-fied,anddescribed inComrie (1981).

Inrecentyearsnumerousethnographicpublicationson

(former) Soviet peoples have been published in Russian,

Ukrainian,Georgian, Kazakh,and otherlanguages Many ofthese are cited in the relevant articles in this volume, al-

thoughmosthavenotbeen translated andareavailableonly

at a few major research libraries

earlystages; I owethemacorrespondingly great debt Iwant

to thank Sergei Arutiunov of Moscow and MamaykhanAglarov ofMakhachkala, who wereextraordinarily generouswithtimeandthoughtwhenit cametorecruiting authorsandproviding information I am thankful to all the contributorsbut want to single out the following for special mention:

NataliaVolkova, Alaina Lemon, John Colarusso, SvetlanaDyer, Dale Pesmen, Stephanie Platz, Vsevolod Naulko,

Johanna Nichols, Galina Gracheva, Elisa Watson, JuhaJanhunen, Anatoly Khazanov, T F Aristova, UliSchamiloglu, Victor Mote, David Koester, and David Testen

ReferencesAkiner, Shirin (1986) Islamic Peoples of the Soviet Union.London: KPI

Bennigsen, Alexandre, and S Enders Wimbush(1986) lims of the Soviet Empire: A Guide Bloomington: IndianaUniversityPress

Mus-Bibliography of Soviet Ethnographical Publications,

1977-1982.Moscow: Institute of Ethnography

Comrie,Bernard (1981) The Languages of theSoviet Union.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Horak,Stephan, ed (1982) Guide to the Study of the SovietNationalities: Non-Russian Peoples of the USSR Littleton,Colo.: Libraries Unlimited

Introduction to Russia and Eurasia xxxiii

Jakobson, Roman (1957). Paleosiberian Peoples and

Lan-guages New Haven: HRAF Press

Katz, Zev, ed (1975).Handbook of Major Soviet Nationalities

NewYork: Free Press

Kosven, M O., etal.,eds (1960) Narody Kavkaza (The

peo-ples of the Caucasus) Moscow: Akademii Nauk

Levin, M G.,andL P Potapov,eds (1964) The Peoples of

Siberia Translated by Stephen P Dunn and Ethel Dunn

Chicago: University of Chicago Press Originally published

in Russian in 1956

Mann,ThomasL (1981) "U.S.S.R Bibliographies."In

An-thropological Bibliographies: A Selected Guide, 211-226.South Salem, N.Y.: Redgrave

Peoples of the Soviet Union (1989) Moscow: Novosti PressAgency Publishing House

Weekes, RichardV (1984) Muslim Peoples: AWorldgraphic Survey 2nded.Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press.Wixman, Ronald(1984) ThePeoplesof the USSR: An Ethno-graphic Handbook Armonk, N.Y.: M E Sharpe

Ethno-PAUL FRIEDRICH

Introduction to China

Thissection coversthecultures of thePeople's Republic of

China (PRC) Nomenclature and spelling follow the

stan-dard formsused in thePRC.Materialson OverseasChinese

appearinother volumeswhenapplicable,and themountain

peoples of Taiwan arecovered in the East and SoutheastAsia

volume Both the East and Southeast Asia volume and the

Russiaand Eurasia section of thisvolume cover ethnic groups

also foundin China

In 1990, the population of China was 1,133,682,501

persons, of whom 1,042,482,187 belonged to the Han

na-tionality, the people generallyreferredto asChinese The

re-mainder were divided among somefifty-five "minority

nation-alities" that are recognized officially by the state, at least

749,341 personsclaiming membership in ethnic groupsnot

yet accorded official recognition, and 3,421 naturalized

for-eigners The recognized minorities range in size from the

15,489,630 Zhuang to the 2,312 Lhoba; at least eighteen

groups havepopulations over 1,000,000

Geographical Regions of China

China's total area coversnearly 10 million square kilometers

Two-thirds of the country is high plateaus and mountains

withpopulations living at altitudes from 1,000 to 4,000

me-tersabove sea level and high mountain areas reaching 7,000

to8,000 meters Climate variesfrom subarctic to subtropical

The Han majority is denselysettledinthe easternhalf of the

country-also called"innerChina"-along the coastal areas,

on the great plains, inthe river valleys, and in the foothills

Most Han live in temperate zones, at elevations well below

1,000 meters The minorities are more sparsely distributed

over the remaining 55 percent of the country lying to the

north, southwest, and west of the main areas of Han

settle-ment In the mountainous provinces of Yunnan and

Guizhou,where Han and other ethnic groups have coexisted

for several centuries, they are separated by elevation, with the

minorities living at higher altitudes

Inner China is suited to intensive, settled agriculture

with an emphasis on grain cropssupplemented by vegetables

and fruits Irrigation systems have long been used to lessen

the dependence on rainfall and thedamage from floods and

drought These problems have beenfurtherreduced in recent

decades Since 1949, the government has completed

numer-ous hydraulic projects along the lower Huang He (Yellow

River) and the Huai and Hai rivers Major projects are

plannedfor the Yangzi(ChangJang) incoming decades Ad

ditionally, introduction of chemical fertilizers and cides has increasedproductivityeven asdrainage projects andhillside terracing have opened up additional land Con-versely, some agricultural land has been lost becauseof salini-zationanderosion

insecti-Thereareeight majorgeographical regions, whichlapsomewhat with culturalorsubcultural (regional culture)

over-areas

(1)The Northeast.This area,formerly called ManchuriaandnowknownasDongbei, is composed of the three prov-inces ofJilin, Liaoning,andHeilongjiang, aswellas easternInnerMongolia.Inthenorth, there are vast areas of conifer-ous forest or mixed coniferous/broad-leaved forest, a richsourceof timber.Tothe south thereislarge-scalemechanized

farmingontheplainsand on reclaimed lands Most ofna'sstatefarmsarelocated here.Dongbei has long, coldwin-

Chi-tersandheavy rainfall during the short, hot summers.Amplesupplyofwatersupportssummercropsofwheat, maize, pota-toes, sugarbeets, soybeans, and gaoliang (sorghum) Some ar-eas are warm enough to raise rice and cotton Dongbei'smajor source ofwealth is industrial Since 1949, Dongbei hasrapidly developed as a key industrial area, providing oil and

petrochemical products,coal,ironandsteel,motorvehicles,

and a variety of consumer products Rapid populationgrowth

is mainly the result of heavy Han immigration from north

China, beginninginthe nineteenth century and acceleratingafter 1949.Indigenous national minorities include Manchu,Koreans,Ewenki,Oroqen,Mongols, and Hui They now con-stitute less than8percent of the population

(2) North China Plain This region of inner China cludes the provincesof Henan, Hebei, Shandong, and thenorthern parts ofJiangsuand Anhui Moving north to south,the areahas from 190 to 250 frost-free days, light snowfall,and hot (30° C), rainy summers Rich deposits from theHuang He and its tributaries have enriched and built up thesoils in many areas Flooding and drought continue to beproblems because of erratic rainfall Agriculture is intensive:forests andgrasslands have long since given way to the plowand some40 percent of the total area is under cultivation.About 30percent of the Chinese population live here, mostengaged in agriculture Average population density is 400persons persquarekilometer, mainly concentrated in nucle-ated villages of fifty to several hundred households, sur-rounded by thefields The main staple crops are spring wheat,corn,millet, and sweet potatoes harvested in the late summerand autumn.Tobacco and cotton are important cash crops.Some of the surplus rural labor has been absorbed into theindustrial and commercial growth of major cities-such as

in-XXXv

xxxvi Introduction to China

Beijing,Jinan, Loyang, Shijiazhuang,andTianjin-or

indus-trial centers such as Shandong's Shenglioil fields and the

coastaldevelopment zones.

(3) Loess Plateau Northwestof the plainis less land

and the steppe region, covering the provinces of Shanxi,

Shaanxi, and heavily industrialized eastern Gansu One of

theimportantcentersof Chinese civilizationinthe past, the

LoessPlateauremainsoverwhelminglyHaninethnic

compo-sition.Theheavy depositsof windblown lesssoilsarefertile

butfragile, prone to erosion,gullying, and landslides Much

of the land is notarable Rainfall is unpredictable. Winter

temperaturesfall belowfreezingand thesummers arehot

Ag-ricultureis mostsuccessfulalongtheHuangHeandtheWei

and Fenrivers.Wheat, millet, andmaize arethemaincrops

andsomedouble croppingispossible.Theruralareassupport

alighter population densitythan the NorthChinaPlain,and

thegeneralstandard oflivingismarkedlylower exceptinthe

southeast sector. In the northwest and beyond the Great

Wall,the desertbegins.This regionwasformerlyapart of the

Silk RoadleadingtoCentralAsia Since1949 mining and

in-dustry have become ofkey importance

(4) Northwest Geographically and culturally part of

Central Asia, thisregionincludes western Gansu,Xinjiang,

Ningxia, and part ofInner Mongolia. The topography is

highlyvaried and includes largestretches ofarid desert and

wasteland, fertile oases, grassyplateaus, andhigh mountain

ranges The Altai rangerises to morethan4,000metersabove

sealevel and the Tianshanto7,435.Theclimateisgenerally

dry,averagingonly 10 centimetersofrainyearlyin some

ar-eas. Population issparsein thegrassland and in mountain

pastureland; in many places it is less than oneperson per

squarekilometer The regionisChina'smain sourceofsheep,

cattle, horses,and camels.Someareas aresuitedtograinand

cottonproduction.Therearerelativelyfewcities:thelargest

are Urumqi, and Kashgar,whichwere stagesonthe old Silk

Road Alargepercentage of thepopulation belongto

minor-itynationalities:Uigurs, Hui, Kazak,Kirgiz,Mongols, Tajiks,

and others InXinjiang,overhalf thepopulation belongsto

Turkic-speaking minority groups, and almost one-third of

Ningxia's population are Hui Becauseofheavy Han

immi-gration, Mongols are now no more than 15 percent of the

populationof the InnerMongolian Autonomous Region

(5)LowerYangzi/SouthCentral China Dominatedtoday

by Wuhan and Shanghai, major industrial and commercial

cities, thisareahad important urbancenters aswellas an

af-fluent and productive agricultural sector even before the

nineteenth-centuryriseof the treaty ports.Itincludes

subur-banShanghai Municipality,the provinces ofJiangsu,Hubei,

Hunan,Jiangxi,and parts of AnhuiandZhejiangprovinces

Withitslakes andnumerousnavigablewaterways,it is oneof

therichest andmostdensely populatedareasofinnerChina

The climate is mild,with 240 frost-freedays, and rainfallis

ample. Double croppingiscommon,withalternationof

win-terwheat and summer rice. Cotton, silk, pigs and poultry,

vegetable farming, ocean andfreshwaterfisheries, and rural

industries have for generations supplemented peasant

in-come. In recent years the expansion of towns and cities,

exploitation of rich natural resources, and a thriving

free-market system have made this theleadingarea in industrial

andagricultural output

(6) MaritimeSouth.Thislargeregion includes southern

Zhejiang, Fujian, Guangdong, Hainan, and Guangxi

prov-inces, and it probably should be extended to cover Hong

Kong, Macao,andTaiwan It islinguisticallyverydiverse, and

in some sections there are large minority particularlyinGuangxi, where minority peoples account foralmost 40 percent of the total Some scholars would dividethe regionintoanorthern tea-and-rice area anda southern

populations-double-cropping rice area However, cropping, population

density, urbanization, andcommunications depend ontude: much of the regionismountainous, and temperaturesand soil quality vary Around the Pearl River Delta, near

alti-Guangzhou,which enjoysoneof thehighest living standards

in China, population density reaches 2,000 persons persquare kilometer,whereasin theuplands it iscloser to 200persons per square kilometer.Yao,She,Li, and Zhuanggen-erally live in uplands areas unsuitable for Han methods offarming Itisregardedasoneof China's richest regionstoday:alongthecoastSpecialEconomicZonesandoverseasinvest-mentshave revitalized themodernsectorof the economy andled todramaticchanges in livingstandards and life-styles.(7) Southwest The provinces of Sichuan, Yunnan, andGuizhoutogetherwithwesternHunan areethnically diverse,

althoughHan Chineseareclearlyin' the majority InYunnanand Guizhou the minoritypopulationsare 32percentand26percent, respectively, though they are under 4 percent inSichuan At least twenty-six different minority groupscanbefoundinYunnan.Among the largestarethe Miao, Yi, Dong,Tujia, Hani, Dai,Tibetans,and Lisu.Much of the area was

formerlypartof the Nanzhao Kingdom Until recent times,several important urban centers were predominantly popu-latedbynon-Hanpeoples-forexample, Dali and Lijiang inYunnan.Theclimategenerallyrangesfrom cool temperate to

tropical, dependingon elevation and latitude Much of the

area isrugged mountainsandplateaus, which rise westwardtoward Tibet It is mainlyminority groups who inhabit the

mountainsandhigh plateausabove 1,200meters.Han lationsareconcentratedontheplains and at lower altitudesnear sourcesofwaterfor irrigation However, irrigation farm-ingandwet-riceagriculturearealso found among some of theminorities, particularly the Dai, Bai, and Naxi In recentyears,cash crops have been encouraged by the state, particu-

popu-larly tobacco, rubber,sugar, tea,coffee, and tropical fruitsinthemostsouthernareas.Until the 1950s, slash-and-burnag-

riculturewaspracticedinthe uplands, where the populationdepended on oats, buckwheat, potatoes, maize, and other

"rough" grains supplemented by hunting and forest ing.NorthernYunnanhasbecome a major forestry area Di-minishing tracts of mountain pasture in northern YunnanandeasternSichuanarestillutilized byYi andMiao pastoral-

gather-ists.Despite theexistenceofrich natural resources, road andrail transportationand telecommunications remain underde-veloped over mostofthis region Only the Sichuan Basin,

highly industrialized, richinenergy sources andmineral sources, and linkedby rail and river to the Yangzi, matches

re-innerChina'sproductivityand wealth.There is a wide gap in

living standards between Sichuanand the rest of the regionand betweenthe Han andthe other nationalities within theregion

(8) Tibetan Plateaus Tibet, Qinghai, and westernSichuan lie mostly above 3,000 meters Barley, buckwheat,and somewheataregrowninthesoutheastern valleys, whilepastoralism (raisingyaks, sheep, goats,andhorses) is wide-

spreadinQinghaiandwesternTibet.Traditionaltrade routes

Introduction to China xxxvii

fromTibet to Nepal andIndia,closedin1949, haveonly

re-cently beenreopened Rich mineraldeposits areonly

begin-ning to be discovered and exploited Poor communication

routes to innerChina havehelped tomake this the poorest

region in thecountry.Populationdensity is low, therearefew

urban centers, and most ofthepopulationis non-Han

Be-sides the large Tibetan population, the minorities include

Hui, Lhoba, Moinba, Qiang, Sala (Salar), andTu

The Languages ofChina

Theofficiallanguage of modem China isputonghua,which is

astandardizedlanguagebased on the Beijing dialect.It isalso

known as Mandarin It is now taughtin mostschools and is

thelanguageof the media In everyday usage, people tend to

speakregional dialects Chinaislinguistically diverse Most

people speaklanguages and dialectsbelonging to the Chinese

branch of the Sino-Tibetan Family.The Chinese languages

are all tonal

Thenorthern varieties of Chinese,alsocalledMandarin,

are spoken as a first language by over three-fourths of the

population, in a large area extending east and west across

north China from the coastal regions of Shandong to

Sichuan inthe interior, southward toward the Yangzi River

andnorthward intoDongbei Theyarefor the most part

mu-tuallyintelligible, given minor adjustment for tones,

pronun-ciation, idioms, andvocabulary Most linguists divide

Man-darin into four subgroups: Northern Mandarin, which is

spokeninthe northeast, theShandongPeninsula, and a wide

areaaround Beijing; the Northwestern Mandarin of theless

plateaus; the SouthwesternMandarin of Sichuan and

neigh-boring regions; and Eastern orLowerYangziMandarin,

typi-fied by the dialects around Nanjing South of the Yangzi, the

Chineselanguages are more diverse and are not mutually

in-telligible with each other or with regional forms ofMandarin

The latter include the Wu dialects, spoken in the areas

around Shanghai; the Gandialects ofJiangxi; theXiang

dia-lectsof Hunan; the Yue dialects ofGuangdong and Guangxi;

the Min dialects of Fujian and south coastal China; and

Hakka, which has adiscontinuous distribution from

south-east China to Sichuan (Ramsey 1987, 87ff)

Although their spoken tongues differ, literate persons

share the same writing system Chinese ideographs convey

meaningrather thanfixed pronunciation Each of the many

thousands ofstandardized ideographs is composed of one or

moreconfigurations known as radicals There are 214

radi-cals;most ideographs use two or three incombination, which

in most cases signal sound, meaning, or a combination of

both to the reader Min and Yue writings included some

unique ideographs unknown elsewhere Since the 1950s, the

most frequently used ideographs have been simplified The

newforms are in common use in newspapers and other

publi-cations, including school texts As a result, younger people

havedifficulty reading materials published before the 1950s

A standardized romanization system, known as pinyin, was

alsointroduced in the 1950s It is based on putonghua

pro-nunciation and seems to be less well known and rarely used

except on street signs and shop fronts, along with the

ideo-graphs, or in dictionaries and language texts designed for

those learning Mandarin

Except for the Hui and She nationalities, thefirst

lan-guages of the minority peoples belong to language families

otherthan Chinese In daily life they may alsospeak the nesedialect of their region and have somefamiliaritywith thelanguage ofneighboringminorities Inthe northernareasofChina, almost all the minoritylanguagesbelongtothe AltaicFamily, which includes Mongolian, Turkic, and Tungus.Through migration and historical contacts the languages ofsome of these groups have become rich in loanwords fromChinese and Tibetan as well as fromPersian, Indic, Semitic,and Slaviclanguages

Chi-Most of China's 5,314,000 Mongolian speakers arefound in theInner MongolianAutonomous Region Othergroupslive furthertothenortheast,or inQinghaiand Gansuand even Yunnan.InadditiontoMongolian proper(Khalkha

dialect), there are at least five other languages within theMongolian Branch of Altaic Theseareassociated with smallminority groups: Daur (Dagur), Dongxiang (Santa), Bonan

(Bao'an), Monguor, andYugur The last group isculturally

related to the Turkic-speakingUigurminority The

Mongo-lian script, whichisstillinusetoday, was borrowed from theUigurs in the twelfth century Ithastwenty-four basic alpha-beticsymbols, which take variantforms that are dependent

on thesymbols' positionsinwords Despite some problemswith it,the scriptisbetter suitedto apolysyllabic andinflect-inglanguage thanaretheChineseideographs Mongolianis

very different from Chinese, despite some borrowing of cabulary: itdoesnot have tones, and itsgrammaticalstruc-

vo-turesresemblethose of Korean or Japanese rather than those

of the Chineselanguages

The majority of the speakers of Turkic languages, theWestern Branch ofAltaic, are located in the Xinjiang UigurAutonomousRegion andinthewesternrepublics of the for-mer Soviet Union They include Kazaks, Uigurs, Kirgiz,Uzbeks, and Tatars During the Republican period (1911-1949) all Turkic speakers within China werereferred to as

"Tatars," but inactuality there are less than 5,000 ChineseTatars; theyliveinXinjiang, near the Soviet border There arewell over a million Kazak speakers within China, along theMongolian and former Soviet borders, speaking a languageclosely related to Tatar Kirgiz, found in western Xinjiang, has142,000 speakers and is closely related to Tatar and Kazak.China also holdsasmallpopulationof 14,000Uzbek speak-ers, but the vast majority of speakers of this Turkic languagelive in Uzbekistan The Uigur, who number over 7 million,arethe predominant group of Turkic speakers within China.Their language isrelatively unified because of complexcom-mercial relationsthroughoutthe region and along history ofalphabetic writing systems A rich literature of poetry andwritings on Buddhist and Nestorian teachings exists in theold Uigur script, which was probably Semitic in origin AnArabicscriptreplaced it inthe thirteenth century when theUigur converted to Islam

TheEastern branch ofAltaic are theTungus languages.Thelargestof thesegroups is Manchu The majority of the 9millionManchu arehighly Sinicized, and most are unilingual

in Chinese or use Chinese as theirfirst language Yet in centyearstherehas beenanupsurge of Manchu ethnicity and

re-a revival of thelanguage in both spoken and written forms.Thereis alarge literature inManchu, which uses a modifiedversion of Mongolian script; much of it is translations of Chi-nese writings A few small groups (Ewenki, Oroquen,Hezhen) are alsoTungusspeakers

Theminority languages of the south andsouthwest were

xxxviii Introduction to China

formerly groupedwith Chineseinthe Sino-TibetanLanguage

Family Linguistsare nolongerinagreementthat thisis

cor-rect.Manyof thespoken languagesofthe region derive from

proto-Tai,and these are nowplaced separatelyintheirown

family. In the People's Republic ofChina, this family is

known as Zhuang-Dong, which is divided into three

branches All are tonelanguages.

Thelargestbranchis Zhuang-Dai Zhuangisspokenin

theGuangxi ZhuangAutonomous Region,whichcoversthe

westerntwo-thirds ofGuangxi Province,andbyrelated

popu-lationsinadjacentareasofGuizhou andYunnan.Potentially,

it has over 15.5 million speakers However, as wasthe case

with the Manchu, the Zhuang have assimilated to Chinese

cultureoverthecenturies.Almost allcanspeakthelocal

Chi-nesedialect oftheir region, and many ethnic Zhuangcould

speak onlythatuntilrecently.Sincetheearly1950s,Zhuang

ethnicity has strengthened, with encouragement from the

state.Thelanguagehas been revivedandis in more common

usageindaily life,aprocess facilitatedbytheintroduction of

a standardized pinyin writing system for themaindialect of

northern Zhuang, and use of the language in publications,

radiobroadcasts,and thedubbingof films.Itisrecognizedas

one of China's major official languages. The neighboring

Bouyei, who are even more Sinicized than the Zhuang, are

similarly encouragedto usewhatthestaterecognizesastheir

ownlanguage, thoughsomelinguistsfeelitshouldbe classed

as adialectvariantofnorthernZhuang (Ramsey1987,243).

Dai isthe languageof theDaiofsouthwesternYunnan

They are culturally and linguistically similarto the Thai of

northernThailand, thoughdividedbydialectvariation

inter-nally and across national borders Their writing systemuses

variantsofThai script, and untilrecentlyliteracywaslimited

to males, all ofwhom were expected to spend some years

studyingatthelocal Buddhistmonasteries.Thereare atleast

a million speakers of Dai

The secondbranch,called Kam-Sui, is less well known

and is themost northern and eastern extension of theTai

languages, found in the area where Hunan, Guizhou, and

Guangxiintersect. Kam (also calledDong, in Chinese) has

about2.5 millionspeakers. Itisdistinguishedinhavingthe

mostelaboratedtonesystem of anylanguageinChina,with

fifteen tones: otherTai languagesand someof thesouthern

Chinese languages, such as Hokkien and Cantonese, have

eight,whereasMandarin hasonlyfour TheSuilanguagesare

associated with smaller groups in the area, such as Mulam

andMaonan,andmostof thesepeoplesarebilingualin

Chi-nese orZhuang.Thethird branchisLi, spoken bygroupsin

Hainan.Althoughtreatedas onelanguage bythestate,it is

actuallyagrouping ofatleast fivedifferentTailanguages,

di-vergent by reason oflong separation

AnotherlargesegmentofChina's south and

southwest-em minorities are speakers of languages belonging to the

Miao-YaoFamily. Thesetoo wereformerlyclassed with

Chi-nese,perhapsbecausetheyare tonelanguagesandshowboth

ancientandmodem wordborrowingsfromChinese, but

lin-guists now view them as more typically Southeast Asian,

closertothe Tailanguages.Yao, usedas anethnic category,

includessomespeakersofMiaoor even Kam Itisestimated

thatno morethan44 percent of China's2million ethnicYao

speak Mien, as the indigenous language is called in China

and SoutheastAsia MiensharesfeatureswithMiaoand both

Cantonese and Hakka.TheMiaolanguagesarefoundamong

the7 million MiaoinChina, as well as among the Hmong ofSoutheast Asia Miaolanguagesareclassedintothreemajorgroupings, each containing many 'dialects" that coincideroughly with marked cultural differences and geographical

distributionacrossGuizhou and Yunnan and northwardinto

Sichuan Acrossand within the three major groupstheyarenotusuallymutuallyintelligible In syntax, Miaotoo ismore

similartoTai thantoChinese butcontainsmanyancientand

recentborrowingsof words from Chinese and loan tionsof Chinese idioms

transla-Mon-Khmer languages, another separate family, are

foundalong the southwestern border of Yunnan among suchpeoplesastheBenglong, Blang, and the Wa (Va), who area

segment ofamuchlarger population in Myanmar (Burma)

Theselanguages arefar less influenced by Chinese.The remainder of thelanguagesof southwest Chinaareclassed asTibeto-Burman The majorityaretone languages.The PRC recognizes sixteen languages within this family,

divided among four branches The best-known to foreignscholars is the Tibetan Branch (also known as Bodish),

which includesMoinba and theJiarongspeakers of the Qiangminoritynationalityaswellas some4.5 million ethnic Tibet-

ans.Thelargest branch, overall,istheYiBranch(also known

asLoloish), which shows more affinities with Burmese thanwith Tibetan It includes a number of dialects orlanguages

spoken by the 6.5 million ethnic Yi, who are distributed

through the mountainareas ofSichuan, northern Yunnan,andwesternGuizhou.Additionally,itincludes the closelyre-latedlanguagesof several other minoritynationalities TheseareLisu, Lahu, Jino, Hani, and Naxi, all of them locatedinYunnan Lisu, Lahu, and Hani (Akha) are also found in

Thailand, Myanmar, and Laos With the exception of the

Naxi, they are hill and mountain peoples Both Tibetanproper and the YiBranch produced indigenous writing sys-

temsthatarestillinuse.TheTibetan script, based on Indic

models, emerged some time in the seventh century The Yi

syllabary script, which may be a thousand years old, was

closelyassociated withreligionanddivination, butitwas ibleenoughtobe usedfor other writings TheNaxideviseda

flex-pictographicscript, quitedifferentfrom Chinese ideographs,

aswellas asyllabicscriptinfluenced by Tibetan and Yiing.However, literacywaslimited toarelatively smallgroup.Within Chineseterritory,there are twosmallerbranches

writ-of Tibeto-Burman The Jingpo Branch is more commonlyfound inMyanmar, amongthepeople knownasKachin, and

isof interest to linguists becauseofits ties to Burmese,betan, and Loloish Dulong (Drung) is included in thisbranch Finally, thereisQiang,acategory holding two"dia-lects" thatare notmutually intelligible

Ti-Some of thespoken languages within China have yetto

bedefinitivelyclassified: Gelao,whichseems tobedistantlyrelatedtoTai; Tujia, Nu andAchang, which are sometimes

placed in Tibeto-Burman; and Bai, which remains

proble-matic. Chineselinguists group it with Loloish, while someothers arguethat it isan ancientbranch of Sinitic (Ramsey

1987, 288-291)

History

In this brief sketch of theorigins,growth,andspreadof

Chi-nesecivilization,theexpansions and contractions ofChinese

political control overbordering states and regions, and the

Introduction toChina xxxix

periodic conquests and rule by foreign dynasties, I wish to

stressthat thedevelopmentofChinese civilizationwas not a

unilineal course of development carried forth by a single

growingpopulation Overthecenturiesdiverselinguisticand

cultural populations merged into that largerwhole that we

identify as Han Chinese in later historical time

Unfortu-nately,manyChinese historical accounts, whetherwrittenby

the Chinese themselves or by Western scholars, are

Sino-centric,written asifthe Han hadalwaysexistedand all other

peoples were marginal

Chinese Neolithic cultures, which began to develop

around5000B.C.,were inpartindigenousandinpartrelated

to earlier developments in the Middle East and Southeast

Asia.Wheat, barley, sheep, and cattle appeartohave entered

the northern Neolithic culturesvia contactwith southwest

Asia, whereas rice, pigs, waterbuffalo, and eventually yams

andtaro seem to havecome to the southern Neolithic

cul-tures from Vietnam and Thailand The rice-growingvillage

sitesof southeastern Chinaand the Yangzi Delta reflect

link-agesboth north and south Inthe laterNeolithic,some

ele-mentsfrom the southerncomplexeshadspreadup thecoast

toShandong and Liaoning.It is nowthoughtthat the Shang

state,the firsttrue stateformationinChinesehistory,hadits

beginnings in the late Lungshanculture of that region

The Shang dynasty (c 1480-1050 B.C.) controlled the

North China Plain and parts of Shanxi, Shaanxi, and

Shan-dongthrough militaryforce and dynastic alliances with

pro-tostates on its borders At its core was a hereditary royal

house-attended by ritualspecialists,secularadministrators,

soldiers, craftsmen,andavariety of retainers-that ruledover

asurrounding peasantry.It wasfinallydisplaced by the

West-em Zhou dynasty, led by a seminomadic group from the

northwestedge of the empire.TheWesternZhouestablished

capitals nearpresent-dayXian and Loyang andorganized a

feudalmonarchywithits center onthe North China Plain.In

771 B.C.theywere in turnoverthrownbytheEasternZhou

dy-nasty, which was an unstable confederation ofcontending

feudalstateswith weak allegiancetothe center Duringthe

politicalconfusion of this era, the forcesstrugglingfor power

discussed and canonized whatwere tobecome the key

politi-cal and social ideas of later Chinese civilization.It wasthe age

ofConfuciusand Mencius, of the writing of historical annals

inordertogainguidance from the past, ofDaoistmysticism

and Legalist practicality As Zhou powerwaned, warbroke

outbetween theconstituentfeudatory domainsinwhatcame

to be called the Warring States Period (403-221 B.C.)

Be-tween 230 and 221 B.C one of the contentious states

suc-ceeded in overrunning and annexing the other six, and its

ruler renamed himself"QinShiHuangdi,"or"theFirst

Em-peror ofQin." China's present namederives from this

ini-tially small western kingdom of Qin, which included part of

present-day Sichuan As the first unifying dynasty, it set the

model for future imperial statecraft: centralized control

through appointed bureaucrats who were subject to recall;

creationofafree peasantrysubjecttothe centralstate for

tax-ation, labor service, and conscription; standardized weights

and measures; reform of the writing system; a severe legal

code; and control over the intelligentsia The boundaries of

thisfirst imperial dynasty were ambitiously large, stretching

fromSichuan to the coast and from the plains andless lands

to the lower Yangzi hinterland Nevertheless, it was

unsuc-cessfulin itsattemptstobringthe southand southwestinto

the orbit of empire

TheQinwasshort-lived, falling in202 B.C.;ationofpopularrebellions and civilwarsbroughtitdown.Thethreat ofinvasionbythe northern nomads(the Xiongnu)was

combina-alsoaweakening factor,despitetheconstructionofaunifiedGreatWalltomark and defend the northernboundaryofem-

pire The Handynasty (202 B.C. toA.D. 220) succeeded theQin.Althoughalso threatenedbythe Xiongnu confederation

tothenorth,it wasabletoextenditsmilitarylinestothewest

and establish trade and diplomatic relations with the

no-madic andoasispeoples inwhatis nowXinjiang Ithad

in-creasingcontactswithKoreaandVietnam Itsentdiplomats,troops, and settlerssouthward,butit nevergainedeffectivecontrol over the independent Min-Yue state (modem-day

Fujian), the DianKingdom (Yunnan), ortheNan-Yue pire,which controlled the southerncoasts. HanChina's ef-fective rule and settlements stretched from the northernplain

Em-toHunan, Jiangxi,andZhejiang, assimilatingsomesegments

of the non-Chinesepeoplesinthese regions;however,native

peoplesthe Chinese referredto as"Man,"meaning

"barbari-ans,"still heldmostof thearea.Meanwhile,thenorthern andnorthwestern borders were still insecure, despite the forcedsettlement of hundreds of thousands of Chinesesettlers,and

closer to home a seriesofwidespread rebellions racked thedynasty.

From the fall oftheHandynastyin 220until the lishment ofa unified dynastic rule under the Sui in 589,China continuedtobeplagued bycivildisorder,attemptsto

reestab-restoreearlier feudal systems, and rivalries between separatiststates.ThestateofWuinthe central and lowerYangzivalley

remainedlargely un-Sinicized,asdid thesouthernYuestates.

Shu,inSichuan,seemsalsotohave beenethnically

heteroge-neous,whereas the northwestwasunder strong pressure fromtheproto-TibetanQiangpeoples.TheWesternChindynasty

(A.D.265-316),whichattemptedtoestablish itselfasthecessor to the Han dynasty, wasprobably doomed from thestart: itcontrolledonlyaboutone-third of the areathat hadbeentheHanEmpire.Onthe northern borders thenon-Han

suc-peoplesrose inrebellion,inalliance with the Xiongnu After

304, much of north China came under the rule of Chinese peoples, such as the Qiang, and branches of theXianbei, suchasToba and Mujiang.Yethistorical recordsin-dicate that the Toba rulers ofinnerChina (Northern Wei

non-dynasty, A.D. 387-534) became increasingly Sinicized, even

outlawing Toba language andcustomsandadopting many ofthe reforms and ideas initiatedduring the Qin dynasty.Con-versely, the ruling house of the short-livedSui wascloselyin-termarried withTurkic and Mongol elites

The Tangdynastythat followed (A.D 618-907) wasled,

at least initially, by northwestern aristocratic families ofmixed ethnicorigins.Althoughit isgenerallywrittenabout as

a HanChinesedynasty,it wasconsciously cosmopolitan Itsarmedforces included contingentsofTurkicpeoples, Khitan,Tangut,andothernon-Chinese, andits citiesopenedto set-tlementby traders, doctors,and otherspecialistsfromPersia,Central Asia, and the Middle East.CentralAsian tastes in-fluenced poetry, music,dance, dress, ceramics, painting, andeven cuisine.Intheeighth and ninth centuries,coastaltradecitieslikeGuangzhou and Yangzhou had foreign populations

of closeto 100,000 The thrustsofimperial expansionwentsouth, colonizing Hunan and thenJiangxi and Fujian The

xl Introduction to China

people of Guangdong Province today refer to themselves as

"people of Tang" rather than'people ofHan," and until the

tenth century the Chinese still viewed Guangdong and

Guangxi asthe wild frontier Tang armies pressed deep into

southern China and the Indochina Peninsula, battling in

successive campaigns against Tai, Miao, and Yue (Viet)

states or tribalconfederations in the provinces of the

south-erntier andAnnam TheNanzhaoKingdom andits

succes-sor, the Dali Kingdom (claimed today by Dai, Bai, and Yi

peoples),controlledYunnan,much of Guizhouand Sichuan,

aswellas parts of what is now Vietnam and Myanmar The

Tangalso pressed into CentralAsiaandestablished

protec-torates asfar as present-day Afghanistan At times, princes

from the outlyingtributary states were educated at the Tang

court in hopes that they would bring Chinese culturehome

with them

In theyears of disorder that followed the fall of theTang,

non-Chinese contenders for control of the empire pressed

theirclaims The Tanguts (Tangxiang), a confederation of

Tibetan tribes, founded the Xixia Empire, which controlled

Ningxia and Gansu until defeat by the Mongols in the

thir-teenth century The Tangut rulers allied through marriage

with the Khitans, who were Altaic-speaking

proto-Mongolians from Inner Mongolia and western Manchuria

The Khitannorthern empire (Liao dynasty, 907-1125)

alter-natively used tribal law or theTang legal codes and system of

government torule over the nomads of their home areas and

the Chinese of the northern plains The Khitan developed

theirown writing system and encouraged an economybased

on amix ofagriculture and pastoralism Except for adherence

to Buddhism, they resisted Sinicization When their empire

finally fell in1125, some of the survivors fled to CentralAsia

andformed a new state in exile (Kara-Khitay), whichperhaps

is the origin of the term "Cathay."

The Chinese-led Song dynasty that eventually wrested

control ofnorth China from the Liao divides into two

peri-ods The Northern Song (960 to 1126) ruled from Kaifeng

butonly briefly reunified inner China,which soon fell to the

northern nomads Ruzhen (}in) and Mongols (Yuan) ruled

thenorthern tier and North ChinaPlain, whereas the

South-ern Song (1127-1179) reestablished a capital at Hangzhou

and tried to consolidate rule of the south By then,

techno-logicaladvances in agriculture, the growth of commerce, and

the past sequence of military colonization had opened the

south to Han settlement By the Northern Song period, most

of the rapidly growing Chinese population already lived south

of the Huai River, having pushed out or absorbedthe

remain-ingindigenous peoples of the area In addition to expansion

ofagricultural land, there was a rapid growth of towns and

cit-ies, some of them reaching one million, and many of them

over 100,000 in population

There was an uneasy peace The Mongol rulers of the

Yuan dynasty (1276-1368) soon controlled most of China

Indeed, the united tribes of the steppes and grasslands

con-trolled most of theEurasian landmass at that time, withtheir

territories stretching across Central Asia into Russia and

eastern Europe They established firmer control over Tibet

anddefeated the Dali Kingdom in Yunnan Their armies went

deepintosouth-central China, staking out the boundariesof

newprefectures and counties to which future dynasties would

layclaim Mongols and their allies (Uigurs and other Turkic

peoples) and a small number of ethnic Chinese filled

govern-ment posts Mongol rule followedtheChinese model of localgovernmentand the law code reflected the influence of earlierChineselawcodes, butit wasclearly not aChinesestate.Therulers awarded some territory to Mongol princelings ormili-tary leaders as fiefs, and both law and administrative regula-tions distinguished Mongols (and their close allies) from

"Han-ren" (north Chinese) and "Nan-ren" (southerners).Buddhist monastery land was exempt from taxation, andclergy everywhere were underthe jurisdiction ofaspecialcen-tral government bureau usually headed byaTibetan lama Inthis period, Lamaistic Buddhism became the state religionand the lamas had influence at court Other developmentsduringtheYuan weretheflourishingofvernacular tales,nov-

els, and dramas and a rapid growth in science and technology(astronomy, hydraulic engineering, medicine, cartography)sparked in part by contact with the world outside of Chinathrough caravan trade into Central Asia and sea routes toSoutheast Asia and India

Widespread popular uprisings and military expulsion ofthe Yuan from inner China led to the restoration of a Chi-nese dynasty, the Ming (1368 1644) Despitethis victory,thestruggles against the Mongols continued The Ming rein-forced the Great Wall and built garrison posts along it, andthere were many conflicts as Chinese traders and farmers at-temptedtosettlethe bordering steppe area Atthe same time,pacification and control of the southern frontiers continuedthrough government support for establishment of Han Chi-nese military and civilian colonies (tuntian) The indigenouspeoplesresisted this further colonization and were sometimesjoined by descendants of earlier waves of settlers; the Minghistories record 218 "tribal" uprisings in Guangxi alone, 91 inGuizhou (which included portions of Yunnan), and 52 inGuangdong The peoples of that area (ancestral to the pres-ent-dayYao, Miao, Zhuang, Gelao, and a number of smallergroups) were either assimilated, decimated, or forced to re-treat to higher elevations or westward; some populationsbegan the migration to present-day Vietnam and Thailand.The Han-settled areas were organized into the same adminis-trative units as prevailed elsewhere in China, governed by ap-pointed bureaucrats The surviving non-Han peoples wereuneasily brought into that structure or, in areas where theystilloutnumbered the Han, were controlled by indirect ruleunder hereditary landed officials (tumu or tusi) initiallydrawn from the indigenous elites As long as the rulers ofthese quasi-fiefdomskept the peace and paid taxes and trib-ute to the state, they had a free hand in administering locallaw and exacting rents and labor service for their ownadvancement

In 1644, the Manchu descendants of the Ruzhen woncontrol of the imperial throne and established the Qing dy-nasty (1644-1911) Qing expandedcentral-govemmentcon-trol to Taiwanrelatively easily, but Guizhou, Yunnan, Tibet,and the northwest continued to be problematic In the south-west, there were wide-scale"Miao Rebellions," a generic termfor all indigenous uprisings in the area There were major re-bellions in the 1670s,the 1680s, and again in the late 1730s.Qing records list some 350 uprisings in Guizhou between

1796 and 1911, and this number may be an undercount Nosooner had the state establishedfirmer control over the mi-nority peoples of the southwest then they faced the armed up-risings of Muslimethnic and religious movements in Shaanxiand Gansu (1862-1875),and the"Panthay" Muslim Rebel-

Introduction to China xli

lion inYunnan (1856-1873), which had set upitscapital in

Dali Even after the status of Xinjiang was changed from a

military colony to aprovince in 1884, Muslimresistance

con-tinued until the end of thedynasty In late Qing, the Han too

were inrebellion: the Taiping Rebellion, which began among

the Hakka inGuangxi and Guangdong, held most of

south-east China during the 1850s and 1860s andextended its

in-fluence into Guizhou and Sichuan The Nien Rebellion in

the same period dominated in the area north of the Huai

River

What seems to have kept the Qing in power throughout

was a firm alliance of interest with the Han literati-elites

whofilled the bureaucratic posts of empire In time, the Qing

emperorsout-Confucianized the Chinese themselves,

adopt-ing andencouraging traditional Chinese political and social

thought based on the Confucian canon andassimilating to

Chinesecultural styles One might even say that they

identi-fied with the Han in viewing all other ethnic groups as

"barbarians."

The collapse of the Qing and theascendancy of the

Re-public of China starting in 1911 initially led todisintegration

and local breakawaygovernments Local warlords seized

po-litical power in large areas of thecountry, a problem not

re-solved until 1927 The Japanese held control over Taiwan

andManchuria until the end of World War 11 The Russian

Revolution had led to the establishment of an independent

Mongolia and validation of Soviet claims to contested

terri-tory inChina's far north and northwest Tibet rejected

Chi-na's claims of sovereignty, and many areas in Guangxi,

Guizhou, Yunnan, and the northwest continued to hold large

numbers of diverse peoples who did not follow the

Guomindang's call to assimilate and be absorbed into the

Chinese cultural and political world Still, a new nationalism

emerged and spread during this period in response to the late

Qing andtwentieth-century imperialist economic and

politi-cal intrusions by the European powers (treaty ports, foreign

concessions, unequal treaties, and extraterritorial privileges

forforeigners) The new nationalism was intensified by the

Japanese invasion of inner China in 1937 and the long years

of war that followed Thegovernment of the republic and its

armies retreated to the southwest, while the Communist

party and its armies built up a strong independent base in

Shaanxi, Ningxia, and Gansu Guerrilla forces organized

re-sistance within occupied China Within a short time

follow-ing the end of World War11, China plunged into a civil war

between theCommunist and Republican forces, culminating

in the victory of the Communists and the withdrawal of the

defeated Guomindang government to Taiwan During that

civil war, both sides raised slogansappealing to national pride

and calling for unity in theinterests of China as a nation, as

they had done during the war against Japan Members of the

minority nationalities also joined in the civil war, perhaps

more strongly on theCommunist side because of its promises

of greater tolerance of cultural diversity and greater autonomy

for the minority areas

Religion and IdeologyPrior to 1949, the peoples of China practiced a diversity of re-

ligions, which had their regional, class, and ethnic variants

Thegovernment tolerated and in some instances encouraged

religions, except for those seen as heterodox cults with

politi-cal aims The preference of the Han Chinese elites was for thecanonofConfucian teachings These teachingsdidnotcom-priseatheologyassuch:Confucianismisasecularsetof ethi-cal teachings focused on individual behavior, human rela-tionships, and the relationship between the rulers and theruled Popular Confucianism is expressedinancestral com-memoration, recognition of age and genderhierarchy withinthe family, and care and respect for the seniorgeneration.Household ancestral altars andfamily gravesites receivecare-ful attention Ancestral spirits are invited to join in majorfamily feasts during the year, and their birth and death anni-versaries are observed withspecial food offerings Wealthierpatrilineageskept genealogies and established ancestraltem-

plesinwhichthey stored and periodically venerated thenametablets of successive generations Properpractice of ancestralcommemoration is a key marker for distinguishing betweenthe Chinese and the 'barbarians." After 1949, the statestrongly discouraged the focus on ancestral rites Govern-ment authorities criticized Confucius and his followers asfeudal and reactionary until the early 1980s Sincethen, elab-orate ceremonies honoring the birthday of Confucius haveresumed at the Confucius Temple complex in Qufu,Shandong (his birthplace), and in some places families haverestored ancestral temples and family altars

Among the HanChinese,concernwith the spiritsofthedead extends to a concern with ghosts These ghosts arethought to belonely spirits, uncared for by any oftheir de-scendants.They will cause harm to the living unless theyarefed and propitiated The government continues tostronglydiscourage beliefinghosts

Among many of theminoritypeoples, expression of cern with ancestors and ghosts takesdifferent forms and isoftenovershadowed in importance by animistic belief systemsconcerned with honoring or appeasing the spiritual forces inall naturalphenomena Shamans and diviners are respectedand sometimesfearedmembers of the community Their ser-vices are crucial fordealing with illness, death, and family cri-ses as well as at times of community festivals A similarshamanistic tradition continues among the HanChinese, aswell asdivination, pilgrimages to sacredmountains,, myths ofthe "Dragon King" who controls the seas and rivers,beliefs inwitchcraft, and other elements of folk belief However, theChinese educated elites have long regarded these beliefs assuperstitions At the popular level, the Chinese shifted totemple-centered worship of Buddhist and Daoist gods whoarerepresented in human form Some can be identified as his-torical or literary personages, now transformed into deities.Between the third and first centuries B.c., monks fromIndia brought Buddhism to China For this reason, someChinese scholars today regard it as a "foreignreligion." TheState formally recognized it at the start of the first millen-nium, and it spread rapidlythrough preaching and scriptures

con-In some periods-for instance, in the Tang and Yuan-theruling dynasty actively supported it Formal, monastic Bud-dhism divides into several branches: the most widespread isMahayana Buddhism, whose texts are written in Chinese.Lamaist Buddhismdeveloped in Tibet and spread among theMongols and some southwestern minorities A branch ofTheravada Buddhism, using Pali texts, is found among theDai and neighboring minorities Monastic Buddhism is re-nunciatory of the world and celibate The number of monksand nuns declined greatly after 1949; thegovernment forcibly

xlii Introduction to China.

closedmonasteriesandassignedtheclergytoordinarylabor

Inthepost-Mao period,sometemplesandmonasterieshave

reopened forworshipand the trainingofyoung monks and

nuns has resumed These establishments receive some aid

from the governmentforrestorationoftheirbuildings,but for

the mostpart it isexpectedthattheywill be self-supporting

and that the able-bodied monks andnunswill engagein

pro-ductive labor

FolkBuddhism,often mixed with elements fromDaoism

and localizedcults, traditionallywaswidespreadamong

peas-ants and theless-educatedurbanpopulations.The concepts

ofpunishmentof sin, anafterlifeorrebirth, andavarietyof

godsreferredto asBuddhaswerepopularamongthe Chinese

as well as some of the minorities. Even theConfucianized

elites turnedtoBuddhist monkstoperformtheneeded

ritu-als surroundingdeath and burial

Daoism, likeConfucianism, isof Chinese originandis

rooted in a philosophical school,inthiscase a mysticalone

stressingharmonywith allthings.Initsreligious forms,which

tookshapeintheHandynasty,itbearsresemblancesto

Bud-dhism, and mostpeople donot distinguish clearlybetween

the two. It has its own monastic traditions as well as lay

priests whocan marry and live within the wider community

At the popularlevel ofworship, temples invillages, market

towns, and cities often mix Buddhist and Daoistgods and

spirits togetherandinviteclergyofbothreligions toperform

rituals onbehalfof the local community It isimpossible to

estimate how many people within China still follow

Bud-dhism or Daoism, andfigures on reinstitutedor newclergy

are inconsistent.After 1949,manyBuddhist andDaoist

tem-plesweretakenoverfor other purposes, withonlyasmall

per-centageretainedas museums or tourist attractions.Inrecent

years, somehave resumed theirreligious functions

Islamisthedominantreligionamongatleasttenof

Chi-na's ethnicminorities, and therearethrivingcommunitiesof

Hui (Muslim Chinese) inall regions ofChina It was

intro-ducedin various forms between the seventh and fourteenth

centuries, entering China fromCentral Asia alongthe Silk

Road and being carried by Arab traders via sea routes to

southeastern China Estimates of the number of practicing

Muslims todayrange from 12millionto30millionor more.

Theyare mainly Sunni, divided into a number ofsects. Sufi

orders enteredthroughnorthwest ChinaduringtheQing and

were proscribed by the government in late Qing because of

theirtie tothe Muslim rebellionsinthe area.Because ofits

identification with some of China'slargestminority groups,

Islam appearstohavebeen less restricted than other major

re-ligionsafter the 1949Revolution,buteven sotheauthorities

closed anumberofmosques and schools and restricted the

trainingofclergy. Since the post-Mao reforms, the

govern-menthas allowed mosquestoreopen and the number of

ac-tivefollowers has beengrowing ConversionbyHanChinese

comes mainly through intermarriage, since the state views

Islam as areligionofthe shaoshuminzu (minority

nationali-ties) rather than a universalist creed

Sincethestartof Western contactswithChina, asmall

number ofHan and minorities have converted to

Catholi-cism As with the other religionsnoted above, the

govern-ment closed places ofworship andbanned religiousactivity

from theearly 1950s untilthe 1980s, thoughthereisstrong

evidence that many congregations continued to meet in

se-cretandgrewduringthe decadesafter1949.Accuratefigures

areimpossibletoobtain.Thefigure of 3.3 millionCatholics,

commonly repeated in the Chinese media,isidentical withthe1949figure.The Catholicchurch inChinaisrequiredto

be independent of the Vatican in allregards Thus, Chinamaybe theonly placeinthe world where one hearstheMassand otherliturgies in Latin

Protestantchurch activitiesbeganinthe nineteenth

cen-tury.There are at least 5 million Protestants inchurchesandmeeting places recognized and supervised by the ChineseChristian Three-Self Patriotic Movement and the ChinaChristian Council A number of small seminaries haveopenedin recentyearsto trainnew recruitsor toupgradelaypastors and priests Authorities discourage denominationaldifferences Wider estimatesof Protestant adherents, whichinclude the estimated number outside of the Three-Selfchurches, varyfrom 10 million to 25 million orhigher.All of the major religionsareunderthesupervisionofthe Bureau ofReligiousAffairs ofthe central governmentand itsprovincialand lower-leveldepartments Thisorgani-

zation is a secularstatebureau that hasregulatory control

overthe Chinese BuddhistAssociation,theChineseDaoist

Association, the China Islamic Association, the ChineseCatholic Patriotic Association, the Chinese ChristianThree-Self Patriotic Movement, and the China ChristianCouncil Representatives from these groups have seats re-

served for them inthe NationalPeoples Congress Despitethis officiallinkageand the legalguarantee of theright to

believe or not believe, religion-in the sense ofconcerns

with God orgods, spirits, theological teachings,belief inan

afterlife, and so on-is discouraged by the state ReligiousbeliefdisbarsonefrommembershipintheCommunist party

or itsYouth League affiliate andisviewed asunscientific.The state-approved ideology is Marxism-Leninism-Mao

Zedong Thought Inanumber ofdifferent campaignsoverthedecades,the governmenthasheld upvariouspersonsassecular models ofmoralandethical behavior appropriateto

asocialistsociety.In recentyears Party ideologistshave

at-temptedto settheguidelines for a'socialist spiritualzation" andsimilarly, a secularbodyofteachingsfocusing

civili-on individualbehavior, human relationships, and the

rela-tionship between the rulers and the ruled

spec-equalized.Between 1952 and1954, households were

encour-agedtopooltheir labor andproduction tools into mutualaid

teams of fourorfive households These organizationswere

voluntary,asweretheinitialagricultural cooperatives

(some-timesreferred to aslower-level agricultural producers

cooper-atives) that began to form in 1954 Payment to memberhouseholdswasbasedon acombination of labor inputand

ownership of productive resources However, by 1956

villagewidecollectives(higher-level agricultural producersoperatives) became obligatory and compensation shifted to

co-Introduction toChina xliii

labor input alone After 1958,villages (renamed'brigades")

wereincorporatedinto unitsaveraging twentyvillages,known

as People's Communes Each brigade and its component

teamsorganized dailyworktasksand hadsomeautonomyin

developing sidelineindustries anddeterminingpay rates, but

mostmajordecisionsweremadebythecommune orhigher

levels of government The commune center was usually

lo-cated in a market town; after 1966, the local free markets

wereabolished and didnotresumeuntil the late 1970s The

commune center usuallyincluded a middle school, asmall

hospital and outpatient clinic,afewsmall factories and repair

servicesgearedtoservingagriculture,postalandbanking

ser-vices,and state-owned shops servinglocal needs.Commune

cadres (officialsandtechnicians) wereusually assignedfrom

elsewhere andwere salariedbythestate Duringthe years of

theGreatProletarianCultural Revolution (1966-1976)

bri-gadeswererestrictedintheir economic activities and the

gen-eral conditions inthe countryside failedto improve

During these years of experiment withvarious forms of

collectiveworkinagriculture,therewas somegrowthofthe

urbancenters.The rural populationfell from closeto90

per-cent in 1949to 80percentin1961 But inthelate 1950s, the

governmentbegan to strictlysupervise movement fromthe

rural areasintothecities Statecontroloverurbanjob

assign-ments, housing, ration cards, and residence permits limited

rural migration into thecities Atthesametime, millions of

urban youth volunteered or were assigned to work in the

countryside inorderto ease urban population pressures

Sincethe late 1970s therehavebeenanumber of

impor-tantchanges, starting with the reopening ofthe free markets

for foodstuffs and small homemade goods in the rural and

urbanareas.The government allowedsomeof thesent-down

youth toreturn tothetownsand cities.Intheearly 1980s,the

stateencouraged thedismantlingofthe collective system in

the countryside, leaving the timing andprocedures to local

decision Households can now contract forland and other

productive resources, retaining mostof the profit for

them-selves The authorities encourage peasants to develop new

enterprises, either on a household basis or in cooperation

with others Averageincomehas risen rapidly A parallel

de-velopmentinthe citiesisthe emergence offree-market

entre-preneurswho provide awide variety ofgoods and services

Travel and transport restrictions have eased There is also

permanent population movement: by the mid-1980s less

than 70 percent ofthe population could still be counted as

rural, because of the growth ofestablished cities and new

towns By 1986, there were atleast forty cities with

popula-tions over one million, not including suburban counties

under city administration Other urban growth comes from

the organization of five Special Economic Zones and a

num-ber ofDevelopmentZones,where thestatewelcomesforeign

investment andjoint ventures Wages,living conditions, and

thegeneral quality of life are much higher in these new zones

Since 1980, the standard ofliving has been rising rapidly

in innerChina However,intheareasinhabitedby the

vari-ous national minorities the rise has been much slower In

terms ofper capita income,Tibet, Ningxia, Xinjiang, Gansu,

Yunnan, and Guizhou ranklowest in income and

consump-tion of goods This situation has only recently begun to

change, withthe development of trade across national

bor-ders with the countries of the former Soviet Union or with

mainland Southeast Asia and the Middle East

In recentdecades, China's economic developmentwas

slowed by population growth This problem led to recentmeasures that attempt to limiturban families to one childand rural familiesto two.Thereis someflexibilityinthepol-

icy: forexample, arural couple that hastwodaughters will

usuallybeallowedtotry againinhopesofhavinga son alties forhavingadditional children varylocally; theyincludefines, docking of wages, withdrawal of free medical care,and/or refusal of admissiontostate-run nurseriesand kinder-gartens.Forsuccessful peasant familiesorfree-marketentre-preneursthese economicpenaltiesare nohardship Mostofthe national minorities are still exempted from the restric-tions onfamilysizebutarebeing encouragedtopracticebirthcontrol The birthrate nationwidedropped toaround 20 or

Pen-21 births per 1,000 peoplein the late 1980s

Increased foreign contacts through trade, tourism, and

scholarly exchanges have had a visible impacton people's

lives,particularlyinthe cities and their immediateenvirons.Western styles ofclothing and house furnishings have be-come popular, along with modem conveniences like colortelevisions, stereo taperecorders,compact-disc players, refrig-erators, and washing machines Popular music has beenaf-

fectedby rock music and Western classical music; modemdance nowfindsan audience inthe cities, thegraphic artsshowastrong Europeaninfluence, and some of the popularwritersoffictionordrama have been influenced bycontem-porary European-American literarytraditions Even foreign

foods suchasbreadanddairy products findamarket,andtaurantsservingforeignfoodsareincreasinglypopular.West-ern political and economic ideas, other than those of theMarxistschool ofthought, are also findingsupport amongtheintelligentsia There has beensome liberalizationofthe

res-politicalsystemsincethe late1970s, withelections for gatestothe National Peoples Congress and local representa-tivebodies However, the control of the societybytheCom-munistpartyremainsstrong,andpolitical dissentcontinues

dele-to beviewed as athreat tonational security

Minority Policies

Incompiling this section,wehave followedthe ethnic

classi-ficationscurrentlyinuseinthe People's Republic of China.Thereare fifty-sixrecognized minzu, meaning "nation," "na-tionality," ethnic group,"or"people."Allbut the Han arere-ferred to as "shaoshu minzu." The criteria for identifyingthese groupsareunevenlyappliedandguidedinpartby polit-ical considerations Officially, the Chinese government de-

finesa minzuas apopulation sharing common territory, guage, economy, sentiments, andpsychology This definitionderives from Stalin's writingsonthe national question, and it

lan-isdifficult to apply to the situation in China because of lation movements and other events of recent history Thetermimplieslegalequality together with subordination to thehigher state authority that governs Han and minorities alike

popu-Itisworth noting that the term minzuxue, often translated as

"ethnology," refers only to the study of China's minority

peoples

Since 1949, anumberof areas have beendesignatedasautonomous regions wherein the minorities areguaranteed,within limits, the rights to express and develop their local cul-turesand representationinthepoliticalarena.Therearefivelarge autonomousregions (Tibet, InnerMongolia, Guangxi