Memory Politics in Independent Kazakhstan: The Great Famine and National Identity
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- Stalin’s collectivization policies created a famine that killed around 1.5 million people in Soviet Kazakhstan from 1932 to 1933. However, the Kazakhstani state remains reluctant to incorporate the famine into official historical narratives and marginalizes public discourse about this period of history. This paper analyzes the evolution of official rhetoric about the 1932-33 famine from 1991 to today as a lens through which to understand elite-level political concerns behind national identity building in Kazakhstan. I find that an instrumental relationship to history and political expediency governs debates about the famine in Kazakhstan, including the desire to create a civic “Kazakhstani” national identity and concerns about Russia’s stake in Kazakhstan’s memory politics.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Date created | June 2, 2022 |
| Date modified | December 5, 2022 |
| Publication date | June 3, 2022; June 2, 2022 |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Black, Alexa |
|---|---|
| Thesis advisor | Naimark, Norman |
| Thesis advisor | Weiner, Amir |
Subjects
| Subject | Kazakhstan |
|---|---|
| Subject | Famines |
| Subject | Memory |
| Subject | Memory > Political aspects |
| Subject | Nazarbaev, Nursultan |
| Subject | Tokaev, K. K. (Kasymzhomart Kemelevich) |
| Subject | Central Asia |
| Subject | Kazakh-Russian relations |
| Genre | Text |
| Genre | Thesis |
Bibliographic information
Access conditions
- Use and reproduction
- User agrees that, where applicable, content will not be used to identify or to otherwise infringe the privacy or confidentiality rights of individuals. Content distributed via the Stanford Digital Repository may be subject to additional license and use restrictions applied by the depositor.
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 4.0 International license (CC BY-NC).
Preferred citation
- Preferred citation
- Black, A. (2022). Memory Politics in Independent Kazakhstan: The Great Famine and National Identity . Stanford Digital Repository. Available at https://purl.stanford.edu/ts478xz4513
Collection
Masters Theses in Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies
View other items in this collection in SearchWorksContact information
- Contact
- anblack@stanford.edu
Also listed in
Loading usage metrics...