Vorukh – the Territory of the Tajik-Kyrgyz Discord. On the Issue of the Initial Demarcation of the Soviet Period. Part 1

Niyazi A.S.

Abstract

The Tajik enclave of Vorukh on the territory of Kyrgyzstan is an explosion-dangerous point of tension, which is very difficult to defuse. Many sections of the Tajik-Kyrgyz border near Vorukh remain non-delimited. Interethnic conflicts are constantly taking place there. In the course of the negotiations on the drawing of clear lines of borders, the opposing parties turn to various kinds of documents that are beneficial for their positions. Tajik experts prefer to rely on documentary sources of the initial period of national65 territorial demarcation in Soviet Central Asia, their Kyrgyz colleagues – on post-war documents confirming the separation of Vorukh from the main part of Tajikistan. At the same time, there exists an ideologized radicalization of views on the status of Vorukh in the media of the two republics. Some argue that it has always been and remains an enclave. Others say that it was not originally an enclave and is not at present, since the lands connecting it with the “mother territory” were illegally annexed. In the article based on the analysis of modern expert assessments and documents of the 20s of the twentieth century on the drawing of borders between the Kara-Kyrgyz Autonomous Region of the RSFSR (later the Kyrgyz ASSR) and the Uzbek SSR, and later In the Tajik SSR, it is concluded that Vorukh was not an enclave at that time.

Keywords

interethnic conflicts; Central Asia; Ferghana Valley; Vorukh enclave; Kyrgyzstan; Tajikistan; national-territorial division.

DOI: 10.31249/rimm/2022.04.05

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