Books by Diana T. Kudaibergenova
Toward Nationalising Regimes. Power and Identity in the Post-Soviet Realm, 2020
Why does nation-building become the most powerful space that guides political decision-making mec... more Why does nation-building become the most powerful space that guides political decision-making mechanisms post-1991 in such distinct places from Latvia to as far as Kazakhstan and beyond, to Russia itself? Why is further separation into distinct "nations" seen by political elites as the best legitimating principle for their political competition or for the exclusion of other parties from such competition on the basis of their centrist position, as it happens in Latvia? This question can lead to further examples of why certain regimes and politicians call for building real walls on their borders to stop what they view as "illegal immigration" or why certain political elites push for Brexit. Why do political elites choose to work with constructed boundaries of difference, why do they make the exclusiveness of a certain ethnic or national group the cornerstone of their own legitimation, a source of their own power? In this book I turn to power elites who have the most power in decision making and in determining the limits and frameworks of national ideology or ideologies to explain why and how mechanisms of nationalizing processes guide political competition. The power elites are "composed of men [and women] whose positions enable them to transcend the ordinary environments of ordinary men and women; they are in positions to make decisions having major consequences." 1 But how do these elites exercise their power under different political 1 Mills, Power Elite, 3.
Central Asian Affairs , 2020
[22142290 - Central Asian Affairs] Book discussion by Naomi Caffee, Gabriel McGuire, Aisulu Kulba... more [22142290 - Central Asian Affairs] Book discussion by Naomi Caffee, Gabriel McGuire, Aisulu Kulbayeva and Diana T. Kudaibergenova
Asian Studies • Literary Studies " Rewriting the Nation in Modern Kazakh Literature offers a rare... more Asian Studies • Literary Studies " Rewriting the Nation in Modern Kazakh Literature offers a rare glimpse into the world of the 'writers of the nation' who, in pursuit of their elitist projects, shaped 'total readership' in Soviet Kazakhstan and inscribed the ideals of indigenous history and nationhood. While focused on research and mythology involved in these Soviet projects, it speaks volumes to broader issues and provides important insights to academic debates on totalitarianism, post-colonialism, and national imagination. " —Saulesh Yessenova, University of Calgary " Diana T. Kudaibergenova has written an important book that introduces modern Kazakh literature and issues of Kazakh identity to English-language audiences. She accomplishes this through a careful analysis of selected major works of Kazakh belles lettres. Her study provides a cogent analysis of the relation of works of successive generations of writers to one, another and to the political context in which they worked. Readers of this book will be rewarded with an understanding of how Kazakh literati have conceived of and portrayed the history of the Kazakh people and its relevance to the eras in which they wrote. Kudaibergenova leads the reader up to the present and illustrates the complexity of Kazakhs' and Kazakhstan's identities in the post-Soviet era. " —William Fierman, Indiana University Bloomington " Impressively applying methods of cultural semiotics and the sociology of culture, Kudaibergenova approaches the ideologies that have been accompanying the complex transformations of Kazakh national identity in a non-ideological manner, combining intimate familiarity with her subject with an objective perspective throughout. This renders her monograph a groundbreaking contribution to the study of modern Kazakh society, particularly regarding the ways in which literary texts shaped national discourses during the Soviet and post-Soviet periods. " —Peter Rollberg, George Washington University This interdisciplinary study is a comprehensive survey of cultural discourse and literary production in Kazakhstan. It examines the construction of national narratives before and after Soviet rule and argues that literature has held a central role in the creation of Kazakhstan's national identity.
An excellent review of Rewriting the Nation in Modern Kazakh Literature, 2017 by Eva-Marie Dubuis... more An excellent review of Rewriting the Nation in Modern Kazakh Literature, 2017 by Eva-Marie Dubuisson. Central Asian Survey
Papers by Diana T. Kudaibergenova
In January 2022 mass protests spread quickly across the whole of Kazakhstan, becoming the largest... more In January 2022 mass protests spread quickly across the whole of Kazakhstan, becoming the largest mass mobilization in the country's modern history. We analyze these mass protests through the framework of regime-society relations, arguing that a ey failure of the regime built by Nazarbayev is the inability to reconcile its neoliberal prosperity rhetoric with citizens' calls for a welfare state. We then explore how a tradition of protests has been developing since 2011 and address the structural components of regime (in)stability and how they contributed to violence in the protests.
Women of Asia Globalization, Development, and Gender Equity, 2018
Although much attention has been paid to national construction in Soviet and post-Soviet Central ... more Although much attention has been paid to national construction in Soviet and post-Soviet Central Asia, the field of literary and cultural analysis of the origins of current national symbols and texts in this region is yet not fully acknowledged and discovered. This article tries to shed light onto the literary construction of an ethnic identity and its historical background in Soviet Kazakhstan and its influence on the post-Soviet ideology in this multicultural country. In doing so it investigates the ways and the time when most of the important historical epics were “re-written,” brought back by the Kazakh writers and intellectuals in the mid-twentieth century. The importance of investigating this period and this phenomenon is twofold. First, it provides further contribution to the Soviet creation of binary approaches to the formation of ethnic identities and the continuous attack on local nationalisms. Following the arguments of some scholars in the field (e.g. [Adams, Laura. 1999. “Invention, Institutionalization and Renewal in Uzbekistan's National Culture.” European Journal of Cultural Studies 2; Dave, Bhavna. 2007. Kazakhstan: Ethnicity and Power. London: Routledge]) this asserts that the local cultural elites found ways of bargaining and re-structuring such identity contributing to its “localization” through the usage of pre-Soviet and pre-Russian historical symbols. In a way, they were able to construct their own “imagined community” and resistance to the past and existing (according to them) colonialism within the given framework of Kazakh-Soviet literature. Secondly, the historicity that became a leitmotif of most important literary works and later on a main focus of national ideology in post-Soviet Kazakhstan must be viewed not just as an instrument of legitimation in this post-colonial state but also as a strong continuity of cultural and ethnic identity lines. The very fact that a detailed and continued genealogy of Kazakh medieval tribes and rulers was the main focus of major works by such famous Kazakh writers as Mukhtar Auezov or Ilyas Yessenberlin demonstrates the importance of the “continuity” and kinship and family lines for Kazakhs. The paper raises the questions of how national and elitist these movements were before the independence and how the further post-independent projects of using and re-establishing these links and continuity formed more questions than answers for the nation-builders in independent Kazakhstan.
European Politics and Society, 2016
If you request the paper, please email me at dk406@cam.ac.uk and I will send you a PDF copy.
Th... more If you request the paper, please email me at dk406@cam.ac.uk and I will send you a PDF copy.
The article analyzes the political and social discourses towards the Eurasian integration in Central Asia. I focus on the independent non-Russian political elites and wider popular response to the integration in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan and on the motivations leading these decision makers and societies into the further Eurasian economic integration. The focus is on Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan – the only Central Asian countries in the Eurasian Economic Union, and on their respective populations. I demonstrate how post-Soviet Kazakhstani and Kyrgyz regimes facilitated ideas and ideals of Eurasianism so closely connected to their own economic but also socio-political contexts. But the focus is also to unveil the complex web of interests, identities and mobilities of groups and individuals behind the political façade of integration talks in Central Eurasia. In doing so the study focuses on the historical approach and elite-led discourses combined with the sociological data of social response to the integration projects at different stages of its development.
Keywords: Eurasia, Eurasian Economic Union, elites, integration, migration.
Proof version coming up in September 2016
The paper analyses the earliest attempts of the first ... more Proof version coming up in September 2016
The paper analyses the earliest attempts of the first generations of Soviet-Kazakh writers, Saken Seifullin and Sabit Mukanov to Sovietize and modernize the past using Soviet uniform frameworks of cultural production and first attempts of the social realist novel. These processes included the reconceptualization of the previous epochs and Kazakh historical development. The first decades of the Soviet order in Central Asia and Kazakhstan brought new ideology and new tools for the intellectual and creative production, educational renaissance and uniformity of cultural censorship. By analyzing the role early Soviet Kazakh writers had played in the processes of educational and cultural modernization in Soviet Kazakhstan, the paper traces the development of narratives, discourses and frameworks which created the Kazakh Soviet tradition of cultural and artistic representations. Although in the contemporary cultural and literary studies of the Kazakh-Soviet literature the early Soviet figures like Sabit Mukanov and Gabit Musrepov became less popular than seminal figures of Mukhtar Auezov, Ilyas Yesenberlin and Olzhas Suleimenov, the paper directs the focus back to the origins of the “Soviet novel” construction in the post-colonial Kazakh literary and cultural field.
Keywords: early Soviet, Kazakh literature, modernization, culture, Orientalisation.
The discussions of the role and position of the “Soviet woman” have focused on a very linear and ... more The discussions of the role and position of the “Soviet woman” have focused on a very linear and transitional perspective because the Soviet gendered canons portrayed female liberation this way. Instead of contextualizing these social and cultural transformations of roles, positions and categories that women as much as men were going through, Soviet indigenous intelligentsia engaged in the process of “modernizing the past in the present.”
First part of this paper was presented at the “Postcolonial and Postsocialist Dialogues: Intersections, Opacities, Challenges in Feminist Theorizing and Practice” conference in Linkoping in April 2015. The updated, Russian version of this paper was presented at the second SHTAB Symposium “Concepts of Sovietness: Ordering Soviet Gender” in Bishkek in September 2015. I currently work on the combination of two publications (in English and in Russian).
Nationalising Regimes by Diana T. Kudaibergenova
The puzzle over post-Soviet nationalizing nationalisms remains unresolved as questions such as wh... more The puzzle over post-Soviet nationalizing nationalisms remains unresolved as questions such as why some states nationalize more than the others remain open and require a detailed historical study and empirical approach. Why do some democratic states nationalize more than authoritarian states given similar ethno-demographic contexts, Soviet legacy experiences, and more or less similar ethno-lingual divides and challenges? This study focuses on elites—political, cultural, and economic. These powerful men—and, more rarely, women—control decisions about the nationalizing discourses and projects in the post-Soviet states. I contend that an analysis of the motivations , interests, and processes used by power elites to construct and influence the nation-building processes will shed light on how and why post-Soviet states undertake nationalization. The interplay of different elites' power over decision-making, the outcomes of elite competition, the historical and political contexts under which such decisions are made, as well as the final outcome of these motivations are termed here as a nationalizing regime. It is both an analytical tool through which we can piece together different processes and contexts of the nation-building development as well as a concept under which the process of power relations in the nationalizing context occurs. By applying this framework to post-Soviet " democracy " and " authoritarian " political scenarios, I aim to demonstrate the complexity of the processes involved in nationalization and to analyze how different political regimes influence nation-building. The question I pose in this chapter is very specific to the chosen cases of post-Soviet Latvia and Kazakhstan—the two post-Soviet countries with the largest Russian-speaking minorities, as a percentage of total population, Laruelle_9781498525473.indb 113 8/17/2016 2:40:31 PM
After the two decades of post-independence post-Soviet states have produced varying degrees of na... more After the two decades of post-independence post-Soviet states have produced varying degrees of nationalisation policies. These policies were studied under the term of nationalising states (Brubaker 1996, 2011). The nationalising post-socialist and post-authoritarian states were defined by policies of remedial action towards the core ethnicity that was believed to have suffered in the previous (Soviet) regime and underwent series of discriminations to the core of the national ideals and feelings (e.g., language, national culture and traditions, history, national symbols, historic figures and heroes, national and religious rituals and so on) and that those discriminations had to be reverted and changed for better policies of nation-building in the independent era (idem). The countries with significant Russian-speaking minority (currently 23,7 per cent in Kazakhstan, 26,9 per cent in Latvia and 17,3 per cent in Ukraine) became prime focus of scholarly attention and analysis Since this definitive moment the study of post-socialist and post-Soviet nationalising states has focused on state policies of nation-building (language laws, educational reforms, citizenship and naturalisation for minorities), interactions between nationalising states, national minorities and their kin states (so-called triadic nexus proposed by Brubaker) and to a lesser extent the practices of nationalising states and their key actors. The fact that elites – political, economic and cultural, are at the core of processes defining nationalising policies and states has been taken for granted by the students and scholars of nationalism (Brubaker himself admits that more attention has to be paid to the actors of nation-building). Some of the recent studies on post-Soviet nationalisms and nationalising states have focused on both practices and elites) whereas lesser attention is paid to the precise networks and contingent practices of actors and field players of the nationalising elites. Power elites defined by Wright Mills as " men whose positions enable them to transcend the ordinary environments of ordinary men and women, " they who are " in positions to make decisions having major consequences " (1956, p. 3) are in control and in power to define and shape discourses (programs, projects, state and leadership visions, the course of political development and power competition) and practices (policies, law making, discourse and ideology creation and shaping) of what defines nationalising states. For the purposes of more detailed and nuanced analysis of current processes I propose a term of nationalising regimes to define and analyse the post-socialist elite regimes. Nationalising
Cultural Sociology by Diana T. Kudaibergenova
Central Asian Affairs , 2019
The contemporary art movement attempts to remain independent from official sources of power in or... more The contemporary art movement attempts to remain independent from official sources of power in order to generate ideas and discourses focusing on temporality and contemporaneity. In addition to art works and performances, some artists transmit their ideas through their public discussions and activism. But without a new value systems, a post-socialist society may fall into the trap of " inventing and re-inventing traditions, " and thus many social actors tend to block artists' access to the discourses of temporality, " tradition, " nation, and gender. This article analyzes three instances where these " traditions " guided artistic discussions in the fields of sexuality, gender roles, and the sacredness of nation, which are all connected to the newly formed conservative values of the national and traditional that allow many nationalist conservatives to justify control over and criticism of independent cultural production.
This article analyses new waves of cultural production in the late Soviet and post-Soviet period.... more This article analyses new waves of cultural production in the late Soviet and post-Soviet period. It focuses on contemporary artists' self-perception and self-positioning in the new realities of the postsocialist cultural realm and national awakening discourses. Independent contemporary artists of the post-Soviet period form new artistic movements, such as Punk Shamanism in Kazakhstan, to produce alternative truth and authentic discourses on nation and its history. This production is juxtaposed to the production of state-sponsored artists and writers. The article focuses on this struggle for defining the nation and claiming power in the discursive realm. It contributes to further conceptualization of the power of contemporary artists and non-state-sponsored cultural elites to participate in the processes of alternative and powerful discourses on nation and national imagination that become successful domestically and abroad. Through the discussion and production of Punk Shamanism – a new wave of cultural production identified with the search for lost memory and cultural codes, the article demonstrates how this cultural struggle developed in post-1991 Kazakhstan.
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Books by Diana T. Kudaibergenova
Papers by Diana T. Kudaibergenova
The article analyzes the political and social discourses towards the Eurasian integration in Central Asia. I focus on the independent non-Russian political elites and wider popular response to the integration in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan and on the motivations leading these decision makers and societies into the further Eurasian economic integration. The focus is on Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan – the only Central Asian countries in the Eurasian Economic Union, and on their respective populations. I demonstrate how post-Soviet Kazakhstani and Kyrgyz regimes facilitated ideas and ideals of Eurasianism so closely connected to their own economic but also socio-political contexts. But the focus is also to unveil the complex web of interests, identities and mobilities of groups and individuals behind the political façade of integration talks in Central Eurasia. In doing so the study focuses on the historical approach and elite-led discourses combined with the sociological data of social response to the integration projects at different stages of its development.
Keywords: Eurasia, Eurasian Economic Union, elites, integration, migration.
The paper analyses the earliest attempts of the first generations of Soviet-Kazakh writers, Saken Seifullin and Sabit Mukanov to Sovietize and modernize the past using Soviet uniform frameworks of cultural production and first attempts of the social realist novel. These processes included the reconceptualization of the previous epochs and Kazakh historical development. The first decades of the Soviet order in Central Asia and Kazakhstan brought new ideology and new tools for the intellectual and creative production, educational renaissance and uniformity of cultural censorship. By analyzing the role early Soviet Kazakh writers had played in the processes of educational and cultural modernization in Soviet Kazakhstan, the paper traces the development of narratives, discourses and frameworks which created the Kazakh Soviet tradition of cultural and artistic representations. Although in the contemporary cultural and literary studies of the Kazakh-Soviet literature the early Soviet figures like Sabit Mukanov and Gabit Musrepov became less popular than seminal figures of Mukhtar Auezov, Ilyas Yesenberlin and Olzhas Suleimenov, the paper directs the focus back to the origins of the “Soviet novel” construction in the post-colonial Kazakh literary and cultural field.
Keywords: early Soviet, Kazakh literature, modernization, culture, Orientalisation.
First part of this paper was presented at the “Postcolonial and Postsocialist Dialogues: Intersections, Opacities, Challenges in Feminist Theorizing and Practice” conference in Linkoping in April 2015. The updated, Russian version of this paper was presented at the second SHTAB Symposium “Concepts of Sovietness: Ordering Soviet Gender” in Bishkek in September 2015. I currently work on the combination of two publications (in English and in Russian).
Nationalising Regimes by Diana T. Kudaibergenova
Cultural Sociology by Diana T. Kudaibergenova
The article analyzes the political and social discourses towards the Eurasian integration in Central Asia. I focus on the independent non-Russian political elites and wider popular response to the integration in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan and on the motivations leading these decision makers and societies into the further Eurasian economic integration. The focus is on Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan – the only Central Asian countries in the Eurasian Economic Union, and on their respective populations. I demonstrate how post-Soviet Kazakhstani and Kyrgyz regimes facilitated ideas and ideals of Eurasianism so closely connected to their own economic but also socio-political contexts. But the focus is also to unveil the complex web of interests, identities and mobilities of groups and individuals behind the political façade of integration talks in Central Eurasia. In doing so the study focuses on the historical approach and elite-led discourses combined with the sociological data of social response to the integration projects at different stages of its development.
Keywords: Eurasia, Eurasian Economic Union, elites, integration, migration.
The paper analyses the earliest attempts of the first generations of Soviet-Kazakh writers, Saken Seifullin and Sabit Mukanov to Sovietize and modernize the past using Soviet uniform frameworks of cultural production and first attempts of the social realist novel. These processes included the reconceptualization of the previous epochs and Kazakh historical development. The first decades of the Soviet order in Central Asia and Kazakhstan brought new ideology and new tools for the intellectual and creative production, educational renaissance and uniformity of cultural censorship. By analyzing the role early Soviet Kazakh writers had played in the processes of educational and cultural modernization in Soviet Kazakhstan, the paper traces the development of narratives, discourses and frameworks which created the Kazakh Soviet tradition of cultural and artistic representations. Although in the contemporary cultural and literary studies of the Kazakh-Soviet literature the early Soviet figures like Sabit Mukanov and Gabit Musrepov became less popular than seminal figures of Mukhtar Auezov, Ilyas Yesenberlin and Olzhas Suleimenov, the paper directs the focus back to the origins of the “Soviet novel” construction in the post-colonial Kazakh literary and cultural field.
Keywords: early Soviet, Kazakh literature, modernization, culture, Orientalisation.
First part of this paper was presented at the “Postcolonial and Postsocialist Dialogues: Intersections, Opacities, Challenges in Feminist Theorizing and Practice” conference in Linkoping in April 2015. The updated, Russian version of this paper was presented at the second SHTAB Symposium “Concepts of Sovietness: Ordering Soviet Gender” in Bishkek in September 2015. I currently work on the combination of two publications (in English and in Russian).
legitimize their existing territorial integrity, their rights to their titular ethnicities, and the position of political elites. This process expressed itself through the creation of particular
symbols, myths, and rituals which distinguished the nation but were also used to legitimize the nation’s right to exist. The symbolic and ideological construction was influenced by the former Soviet era. For example, symbolically the country was still called Rodina (motherland), but most of the symbols of power were represented by male images, for example, Amir Timur in Uzbekistan or Ablay Khan in Kazakhstan. The tradition of representing power through a male connotation had a long history in Soviet Central Asia. Interestingly, however, some contemporary artists took an alternative view and used feminine images as strong, central symbols of their
interpretation of national identity, contesting the official view of nation-building. This paper seeks to trace the development of the feminine and masculine dichotomy of representation by comparing official iconography with works of famous female artists such as Umida Akhmedova from Uzbekistan and Saule Suleimenova and Almagul Menlibayeva from Kazakhstan.
The copy of this paper is available at http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00905992.2015.1057559#abstract or via the author (please message me if you need a PDF copy)
Diana T. Kudaibergenova
ESCAS 2013
Abstract
This paper analyses the symbolism of “nomadism” and its heritage in intellectual thought of Kazakh Soviet and post-Soviet intellectuals (artists and writers). It also draws on their engagement with this lost yet romanticized concept in their search for cultural authenticity and opposition to the dominant ideology – of social realism or authoritarian frame of identity building. Through the analysis of in-depth interviews, memoirs, articles and their works I draw on the parallel notions of “nomadism” and its development into a particular artistic discourse that is used by several generations of cultural elites in Kazakhstan although unsystematically and almost subconsciously. The second part of the paper considers the artistic opposition to the official paradigms and views on Kazakhstani identity building projects and how new wave of cultural “nomadism” already re-interpreted by a new generation of cultural elites opposes to the regime through alternative projects of art spaces mostly in Almaty. Through the analysis of these two visions on the same initial narrative of “nomadism” I trace not only the development of this thought as an urge for internal and external independence of the cultural field in Kazakhstan but also the reasons for particular cultural elites within the field to push for these changes.
The relocation of Kazakhstan’s capital from Almaty to Astana and the Nazarbayev-led modernization project have attracted considerable interest from social scientists in the region and in Western academia. Alima Bissenova’s addition to this literature is one of the most valuable contributions to the field of anthropology of social configuration. It is also a significant contribution to the study of the real estate boom, and of authoritarianism, modernization and the transformation of the social classes in the field of post-Soviet and post-socialist studies.
At the core of the study is the modernization project of post-Soviet Kazakhstan – the promise of greater and more advanced development and economic growth in the aftermath of those unfulfilled promises of the Soviet state. Bissenova analyzes both sides involved and interested in this modernization project – “the aspiring middle classes striving, among other things, to better their housing conditions, and the state/government promising improvement and designing policies to enhance the quality of life for its citizens” (p. 11). Through a detailed analysis of both state and social transformations, the dissertation reveals an important societal change – the emergence of a new type of middle class driven by consumption and aspiration to own in spite of insecurity for its future.
While arguing that Russian post-Soviet projects of national identity shifted from the demonstrations of Soviet historical progress towards what she calls ‘imagined geographies’ – ‘geographical images endowed with complex post-Soviet attitudes toward self and other, tradition and change, ethnicity and multiculturalism, the state and nature of citizenship’ (p. 2), she gives vivid examples from selected literary works. These notable works that become focus of her detailed and sophisticated analysis represent different paradigms of ‘geographical imagination’ – from the perspectives of Dugin's neo-Eurasianism to different variations of the ‘imagined’ South of Liudmila Ulitskaia and the Caucasus of Anna Politkovskaia and Makanin.
Through the interdisciplinary approach (when analysed both literary and academic works, essays, monuments and images) and later detailed study of films (e.g. Prisoner of the mountains), Clowes shows how the Self (centre) and the Other (periphery) are constructed in contemporary Russia. Moreover, she reveals different views and approaches of defining the periphery and the centre from ultranationalist to constructive forms of ‘Russianness’ to mixture of Slavophonic, neo-Nazi, postmodern Eurasianism to more multicultural ideas. Clowes argues that the debate about the identification of the nation in Russia went further beyond the traditional borders of theoretical understanding of the nation based on language, culture, history or ethnicity to the territory and its symbolic meaning.
This debate among local scholars and writers themselves becomes another focus of the book. How Dugin's ideas of neo-Eurasianism parodied in Pelevin's ‘Chapaev and the Void’, how different perspectives and stereotypes about Chechen South represented in the contemporary Russian discourse? All of these subtopics form an interesting multifaceted analysis of intellectual debates about national identity in Russia. Another interesting point of the book is the analysis of early post-Soviet deconstructions of the Soviet and imperial past in Russia, and of course different approaches to the studies of various peripheries in Russia – from the West to the North.