25-27 October 2017, 6th International Turkology Research Symposium

http://www.turksovyet.hacettepe.edu.tr/

The concept of revolution took its place in contemporary historical research with the English revolution of the 17th century. Concepts such as resistance, discontent, and political and social change had expressed themselves in the West for a thousand years within a religious framework. By contrast, the French Revolution was, for the first time in Western history, a revolution in a worldly and non-religious sphere. The French Revolution was fundamentally based on the process, beginning in the middle of the 17th century, of adopting the principle that people have no superiority or difference over one another and that everyone has the same rights. This principle was now called social justice. At the end of the process, the first example in modern times of a political and social order being completely and violently eliminated took place. This Revolution left its mark on modern historical developments in three stages: the acceptance of liberty and equality as the fundamental rights of the individual; making this acceptance the goal of political action; and, as a result, a change of power... Thus individual rights came to the fore, and acting against the acceptances and values of traditional society became legitimate. This process was essentially the recognition of the human being as the agent of his own actions and formed the core of individual emancipation. The French Revolution, though not by conscious intent but in its consequences, also moved the concept of economic efficiency to a new and central position in human relations. Efficiency, which hardly appeared in traditional modes of production, began to become the main goal in the social and economic sphere. Following the French and Industrial revolutions, human beings, as individuals and with their economic activities, rose to positions of power and influence as a group made up of the individuals who form the foundation of the wealth and power of the state. The essential duty of the state was to create and maintain the conditions of independence suitable for ensuring the uninterrupted progress of these activities.

Upon all these developments, when Marx began in the 1840s to explain his system in more detail, he drew on the legacy of all the revolutionary traditions before him. While concepts such as equality, freedom and labor power found expression in the process of idealizing the proletariat, the revolutionary belief in progress also came to be seen as the driving force of history and, combined with another conception, formed the first theory of revolution. Marx evaluated production as the fundamental economic activity and stated that all other categories remained secondary, relying on Enlightenment thinkers and classical economists. Since the key to the future was seen to be in the hands of the industrial worker, peasants were now treated as outdated producers. Marx considered the mode of production to be one of the most important elements constituting society and said, "the purpose and essence of revolution is to change the mode of production." That is, the task of the proletariat was to increase total productive forces as quickly as possible. While all this was being debated in the central and industrialized regions of Europe, the Revolution broke out in an entirely different place. Even though it was a country inhabited by a peasant society that largely maintained feudal traditions, Russia became the ground on which this dream was realized.

Although it was not initially expected to affect world history so much, in its consequences the Russian revolution profoundly affected not only Europe and Asia but the whole world. While the proposition that individuals are equal to one another lay behind the French Revolution, in the Soviet Revolution, as a consequence of being multi-national, the emphasis on the "equality of peoples" came more to the fore. When projected to the whole world in this way, this idea and belief became a goal for nations to remain independent that was at least as vital and exciting as the freedom of individuals. This understanding and the political attitudes it brought with it became an important dynamic element that affected the history of the whole world in the 19th and 20th centuries, after the French revolution. Although Marx ultimately supported the goal of a classless and nationless world, he saw the "liberation" of colonized nations as a milestone on the road to revolution. The interest that began with India and China turned in the 19th century into a fire of liberty for all the backward peoples of Asia and Africa under colonial rule. During the last quarter of the 19th century, the ideas of freedom and the brotherhood of peoples became an important tool for escaping the severe commercial and political influence that European powers had established over other continents.

While the Revolution, which flourished in the crisis-ridden environment created by the First World War, rushed to the support of all the countries waging struggles for independence at the end of the war, new authoritarian states began to emerge from the ashes of the war in the middle of Europe and new camps began to form. Against the expansionist attitudes of Nazi Germany, the Soviet bloc also began war preparations in the economic, technological and political fields. While the Soviets emerged stronger and victorious at the end of the inevitable war, the war economy and repressive policies implemented in all Soviet countries during and after the war brought with them ruthless deportations and exiles. As Stalinist policies came to dominate both the party and the Soviet administrations, the equality and brotherhood of peoples was no longer mentioned.

In the restructuring after the Revolution, the motherland of Tsarist Russia and its two-hundred-year sphere of hegemony naturally emerged as the first target. Before long, parties and trade unions were organized in the ancient settlement centers of all the regions under Tsarist rule and sided with the Revolution, which emerged as an egalitarian government against feudal tradition and monarchy. The leaders of the Revolution were quick to find wide support for themselves around the axis of equality, freedom and the brotherhood of peoples. Most of these supporters were young people from landless peasant families. Setting aside the political course of the Revolution, as soon as the Soviet regime was established it embarked on planned change and transformation everywhere. An important goal of the system was to take radical steps to ensure that all social groups were included in production in a planned manner in order to increase production. While the basic means of production were nationalized for the transformation, the arguments of the brotherhood of peoples and of having more of a say than before were widely used. As a result, together with the local policies developed, the Turks were included in the process under the Soviet umbrella in many areas such as population, agriculture, urbanization and industrialization. This participation also played an important role in the formation of today's identities. While religion and traditional social structure were excluded as one of the basic arguments of the Marxist revolution, a secular and communal form of social organization became widespread; modernization was also part of this process. Moreover, the process of change sometimes brought national/local identities to the fore, and often, with proletarian discourses, allowed cultural, artistic and literary movements and scientific developments to take shape in a different way.

The Soviet process of change was effective in a significant part of the geographies where the ancient Turkic heritage prevailed. From Siberia to the Balkans, from the Far East of Asia to Anatolia, the geography inhabited by Turkic peoples became an important part of this transformation. Soviet ideology and practices completely changed the traditional forms of governance, production and social organization in this geography and gave them a new form. However, the passing time witnessed developments that made the functioning of the system impossible, and the Soviet system, also under the influence of the Cold War atmosphere it had entered, began to disintegrate. While the disintegration and the process of change it brought were painful and saw counter-revolutions in some regions, in some countries and geographies it took place more calmly. After the process known as Glasnost and Perestroika, a mental transformation began anew in all the former Soviet countries. The parameters of the capitalist economic order began to settle on the Soviet infrastructure. While the change and the winds it stirred continued, the Soviet ideology and behavior patterns, which preserved their existence at the bottom and deeper down, went on living. Seeing the phases of change of the Soviet ideology and system of governance, whose first intellectual foundations were laid in Europe exactly 150 years ago and which turned into a revolution in a different geography 100 years ago; trying to understand the situation of the peoples who lived under the Soviet system; following the differentiations and transformations that occurred in each region; evaluating the social, political and economic order that was created within an academic framework in terms of the present and the future; and discussing this with local and foreign scholars from historical, cultural and sociological perspectives are among the main aims of the symposium.

The effects of the Soviet Revolution, which took place on 25 October 1917 according to the Julian calendar (7 November 1917 in the Gregorian calendar) and is referred to by names such as the October Revolution, the Bolshevik Revolution and the Russian Revolution, have been seen all over the world, whether it is accepted or not. This effect was directly lived and experienced by the Turks living in the region and the surrounding Turkic world. The traces of this experience can be seen in every corner of today's Turkic world.

For all these reasons, on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the Revolution, and also taking into account that enough time has passed to make a healthy evaluation, the Hacettepe University Institute of Turkology Research has planned to organize such a symposium within the framework of the discipline of Turkology Research on the effects of the Soviet Revolution on the Turkic world, primarily in cultural, economic, political and other respects. The aim is to discuss the causes, process and consequences of the Revolution scientifically, to deliberate its effects in all aspects and to share them with the scientific world within a scientific framework. In addition to relatively populous Turkic communities such as the Chuvash, Tatar, Bashkir, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Uzbek, Turkmen and Azeri Turks, the linguistic, historical and cultural changes of small Turkic communities and the effect of the Soviet revolution on these changes are among the priority topics to be discussed at the symposium. Academics who carry out studies in this field are expected to participate in the 6th International Turkology Research Symposium on "The Soviet Revolution and the Turkic World on Its 100th Anniversary". Thus, the process of change that the Turkic communities, whose existence continues in a wide geography from Eastern Europe to the Far East of Asia, have undergone as a result of the Soviet Revolution in language, culture, history and many other respects will be addressed with a holistic perspective and an interdisciplinary approach within the framework of a comparative method.