National-Territorial Delimitation an Instrument of Soviet Ethnopolitics: the Case of the Uyghur and Dungan Initiatives (1920s — 1930s)

The reform of national-territorial demarcation was a key element in Soviet nation-building, involving various ethnic communities, including the Uyghurs and Dungans. Regardless of their legal status, all peoples of the USSR underwent similar stages of cultural institutionalization and ethnopolitical mobilization. This article examines the appeals made by Soviet Uyghurs and Dungans to establish separate national districts and, in the case of the Uyghurs, an autonomous republic called “Taranchina”. These initiatives demonstrate the active participation of national minorities in the transformation of the administrative and regional structure and offer valuable insight into the Soviet reforms of the 1920s — 1930s. Despite the differences in their demands — from republican autonomy to the formation of national districts — both ethnic groups became part of the broader implementation of the Soviet nation-building model. The analysis reveals how the nature of interactions between the central government and ethnic groups shaped the limits of cultural and administrative self-determination. Furthermore, the experiences of the Uyghurs and Dungans played an important role in promoting the successes of the Soviet model abroad, particularly in neighboring Xinjiang, which had close ethnic and cultural ties to both groups. Although the proposed projects were not fully realized, the compromises reached ensured that both peoples fully participated in the stages of Soviet national construction during the 1920s and 1930s.