Botakoz Kassymbekova and Erica Marat

Days before the invasion of Ukraine began, Russian President Vladimir Putin delivered a speech justifying what was to come. “Modern Ukraine was entirely and fully created by Russia, more specifically the Bolshevik, communist Russia,” he said on February 21. It was familiar language to those who have been listening to Putin’s laments overs the end of the Soviet Union since his rise to power in 1999. It was familiar and worrying language to the states of Central Asia, too, which have heard the same claims directed their way. In essence, it was the language of a colonizer about the colonized.

In an April article for PONARS Eurasia (Program on New Approaches to Research and Security in Eurasia), scholars Botakoz Kassymbekova and Erica Marat wrote that it was time to question Russia’s imperial innocence. “The Kremlin’s propaganda builds on seeing Russia as both victimized by the West and entitled to regional dominance in the former Soviet territories,” they wrote. “In such Russian imperial imagination, enforcing the Russian language, culture, and rule on non-Russian populations is not colonialism but a gift of greatness.” It’s time, they argued, to strip away that fantasy and see the past for what it truly was.

Kassymbekova, a lecturer at the University of Basel in Switzerland, and Marat, an associate professor at the National Defense University’s College of International Affairs in Washington, DC, spoke to The Diplomat’s Catherine Putz about how Russia views Central Asia and the importance of decolonizing how both Russia and Central Asia view themselves.

In an April article for PONARS Eurasia – titled “Time to Question Russia’s Imperial Innocence” – you write that in order to “solve Russia’s antagonistic relations with its neighbors, both the Russian state and society need to confront their country’s imperial identity.” What is that imperial identity? And why are the Russian state and many Russian people reluctant to honestly grapple with it?

Kassymbekova: The Russian state has no incentive to deal with its imperialism, but neither, it seems, does Russian society or Russian academia. The reasons for the reluctancy to grapple with Russia’s imperialism, past and current, is that Russia has not undergone decolonization. In the 1990s, when the Soviet past was still critically debated, the pre-Soviet past was idealized in popular imagination and the Soviet Union was not perceived as an empire.

In Russian popular imagination, Russia and Russians were victims of the Soviet regime, and Russians were “feeding” and “developing” the Soviet non-Russian republics and regions at the cost of Russians. This is, in fact, the imperial myth that Stalin promoted since 1932 and it became an important part of the Russian national identity. This myth was based on earlier Russian imperial idea of martyrdom and saviorship.

According to this self-representation, Russia did not attack and colonize, but liberated and saved the colonized. The Soviet imperial discourse in Central Asia told the local population that they were liberated from Russian tsarism and prevented from falling prey to British colonialism. But the Soviet imperial myth did not break with the Russian tsarist myth of liberation; instead it built on it.

In what ways do Russian narratives about the Soviet past influence the actions taken by the government of Vladimir Putin, especially in Ukraine but also in regard to Central Asia?

Marat: Putin is clear about his ambition to restore the Soviet Union and he recently said that all former Soviet territories rightfully belong to Russia. The sentiment resonates with a large part of the Russian public. The Russian government conducts its foreign policy based on a sense of entitlement to spread Russian cultural and political influence in neighboring countries. Kremlin sees as an attack against Russia any attempts by its neighbors to diversify political affiliations with other countries, especially in the West, or prioritize indigenous culture ahead of Russian culture.

The war in Ukraine is a direct manifestation of Putin’s ambition to rule over the “neighborhood” and continue to impose Russian cultural influence. In Central Asia Putin expects direct and constant loyalty both from the region’s governments and societies. Moscow expected Kazakhstan would send troops to Ukraine. Reportedly similar pressure has been exerted on Kyrgyzstan as well. The Kremlin Russian embassies frequently intervene in domestic affairs of Central Asian countries.

The Soviet Union, as you note in that same article noted above, proffered itself to the Global South as everything the West wasn’t. If the West was racist and colonial, the Soviet Union was a bastion of equality between peoples and definitely didn’t have colonies. And yet the attitude taken by the Soviets (and later, many Russian intellectuals) was arguably racist: The Soviets brought the “gift of modernity” to the backward peoples of Central Asia; the price of that “gift” is rarely discussed and the notion of the region’s backwardness rarely challenged. What was the price of Soviet modernity in Central Asia?

Kassymbekova: The price is enormous. It is also important to question the term “modernity” here, as it is a key concept of Russian imperial innocence. Violent military colonization cost millions of lives, during the war against the Bolshevik occupation, but also during collectivization and WWII. Less visible are deaths and disabilities due to the destruction of nature. Kazakhstan was a primary place for Soviet nuclear testing; the Soviet focus on cotton production emptied the Aral Sea and destroyed livelihoods, while the heavy use of highly dangerous defoliant Agent Orange in the harvesting of cotton across Central Asia destroyed not only flora and fauna, but also the health of many generations of Central Asians.

One must highlight that the indigenous people of Central Asia suffered disproportionately from these consequences. For example, poisonous chemicals used in the growing and harvesting of cotton contaminated rivers, which were used by rural populations (mostly Uzbeks). The Russian population in Central Asia mostly lived in towns and cities and drank ground, not river, water. Also, the peoples of Central Asia and its diverse array of non-Russian groups, many of which were deported against their will to Central Asia, were forcefully Russified.

Since the cultural and political leaders of Central Asia were eliminated in the late 1920s and 1930s, Central Asians lost not only their scripts, which allowed access to their cultural heritage, but also traditions and religious knowledge and practices. It was dangerous to study one’s own history throughout the Soviet Union and even speaking Kazakh and studying the Kazakh past in Kazakhstan could get one deemed a suspicious nationalist. Central Asians had to forget their past and their cultures and study themselves only through the Russian lens, i.e. backward cultures that were enlightened by Russia and Soviet Russians. Finally, full dependence on Moscow and seizure of political sovereignty eliminated local traditions of rule and civic initiatives.

What role did defining and acknowledging ethnic differences play in the politics of the Soviet Union and how has that influenced the Central Asin states in their efforts to construct their own independent identities?

Kassymbekova: The Bolsheviks used the notion of Soviet titular nations to depoliticize Central Asia, marginalize its leaders and networks, but also cultures. Although the language of national self-determination was used, in reality, historical polities were dismantled and new Soviet entities were created. In that process, the term “nation” has been folklorized and ethnicized to strip it of its political meaning. Soviet ethnicization marginalized the people of Central Asia in that it broke previous logic of political solidarities and communication, exchanging it with those which could be manipulated and controlled from Moscow.

How has contemporary Russia responded to the development of a stronger flavor of Central Asian nationalism in some quarters?

Marat: Russian embassies in Central Asia and nationalists inside Russia regularly communicate a sense that the region must appreciate the Soviet past and Russian cultural heritage. Russian ambassadors publicly state their preference that Central Asian countries should limit their cooperation with the West. In private conversations they also often hint to officials in Central Asia at the importance of appreciating Soviet “gift” of modernity and Russia’s current “protection” of regional security. Russian political leaders also rebuke any attempts in Central Asia to discuss mass purges and genocides by tsarist or Soviet Russia.

Thirty years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, how is that history taught in the region and how does it influence regional politics?

Marat: History is still taught in a Soviet manner of telling one narrative about the past without critical reflections. Soviet archives remain largely closed, making it difficult to understand the full scope of violence deployed in the region over the past century. Despite these limitations, academics and activists have been raising public awareness on the past atrocities. In Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, where governments allow more freedom in reevaluating the Soviet past, discussions are especially spirited. In Kazakhstan, the trauma of the great hunger in the 1930s is now discussed more broadly, while in Kyrgyzstan, there is a broader awareness about the great revolt of 1916 when Kyrgyz fled Russian tsarist repressions.

What do you make of the nostalgia, espoused by some in Central Asia, for the Soviet period?

Kassymbekova: The nostalgia has generational character. Older people like to remember their youth warmly. Also, the instability of the 1990s had an impact on how the Soviet period was remembered. However, more and more young people are reassessing the Soviet past critically. Central Asian scholars, writers and cultural leaders are starting a decolonial conversations about the Soviet past. With the aggression war against Ukraine, these debates are getting stronger attention.