3) Chorasmocentrism. Extrapolating to antiquity the dominant role that Khorezm actually had under the medieval Khwârazmshâh dynasty, Tolstov considers it to have been the main agent in the struggle of Central Asian peoples against Persian, then Greek, then Arab imperialism, and on the contrary the rear base of the Kushan Empire. I've already mentioned his idea of a dynastic confederation with the Arsacids and the Kushans, i.e. the two main Iranian powers that succeeded Greek rule. In this confederation, the Khorezm dynasty would have played the role of a sort of elder branch. It is in these terms, and not in terms of a hold from the south, that we must understand what he meant by the inclusion of Khorezm in the Kushan empire and in the Kushan monetary circulation area.
4) Religious over-interpretations: while admitting that Khorezm had been one of the first countries to be won over by Zoroastrianism (he subscribes to the identification Khorezm - Airyanǝm Vaējah of the Avesta, then accepted by Western Iranology), he sees this religion not as an ethical reform but as the expression of an archaic mentality, with totemic aspects going back to the stage of the "primitive community". He finds these features in a particularly exacerbated form in what can be grasped of the Chorasmian variant of Zoroastrianism. Read today, these speculations seem a bit like a hodgepodge in which it's hard to recognize the great Tolstov writing about canals or fortresses. This weakness was more or less that of the entire Soviet school of anthropology: scrupulous in field description, including racial aspects, but affected by a certain theoretical poverty, with outdated references and a poorly combined eclecticism. The ultimate reference remains Morgan (matriarchy, totemism), as it had been for Marx, Engels and Stalin, far removed from the Anglo-Saxon and French renewals.
