Between First, Second, and Third Worlds: Olzhas Suleimenov and Soviet Postcolonialism, 1961–1973

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This article investigates the themes of global postwar decolonization, Soviet internationalism, and national identity in the works of the Russophone Kazakh poet Olzhas Suleimenov (b. 1936). Through an analysis of his early autobiographical and historical poems, which commemorate a variety of events ranging from the Second World War and the successes of the Soviet space program to Indian Independence and the American Civil Rights movement, I argue that Suleimenov’s synthesis of postcolonial writing and Soviet anticolonial discourse paved the way for a sophisticated critique of cultural imperialism that coincided with, and also contributed to, the birth of postcolonial literature worldwide.