What is Russia to US?: Making Sense of Stalinism, Colonialism and Soviet Modernity in Kyrgyzstan, 1956–1965

Abstract

The article analyzes Central Asian debates on de-Stalinization and argues that discussions among the author’s sample of Kyrgyz elites differed decisively from the debates in the central regions of the Soviet state. It seemed clear to most participants that Stalinism had come to Central Asia from the outside. Collectivization and terror were foreign, quasi-colonial phenomena, and de-Stalinization thus had to be about decolonization. In fact, the synchronicity of de-Stalinization and global decolonization provided a framework for simultaneously addressing problems of Soviet modernity, colonialism, and Stalinism, and for challenging the official view that the decolonization (i.e., national liberation [natsional’noe osvobozhdenie]) of Central Asia was already over.