In this roundtable, we aim to provide a conceptual intervention in the ongoing debates on the nature of Soviet-ness in nation-building strategies of Central Asian states and regimes. Through our short presentations and discussion, we want to illustrate the workings of Soviet-ness in the contemporary ideas of ethnicity, ideology, class, and minority relations. The roundtable is a collection of ongoing discussions in the greater group of scholars led by Tutumlu and Kudaibergenova seeking to critically analyse and conceptualize the workings of the nationalizing processes from the top-down to bottom-up approach and with everything in-between still bound with the remaining metamorphosis of Sovietness. Instead of viewing these processes as “legacies” of Sovietness, we see them as metamorphosis – the fluid process of transformations, clashes, contradictions, processes of simultaneous erasure and reconstruction of the “past” and Soviet experience when it comes to peoples’ understanding of their “national” identity. In our workshop, we combine talks by Zulfiya Imyarova, Anar Valiev, Viktoria Akchurina, as well as Assel Tutumlu and Diana T. Kudaibergenova. Zulfiya Imyarova is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of International Exchange Programs at Narxoz University. She received her PhD degree from Al-Farabi State National University in Almaty, Kazakhstan. Her research focuses on the studies of ethnicity and nation-building using ethnographic methods and archival sources. Anar Valiev is an Associate Professor and a Dean of the School of Public and International Affairs of Azerbaijani Diplomatic Academy. His areas of expertise are public policy of post-Soviet republics; democracy and governance; urban development and planning. Dr.Valiev is the author of numerous peer-reviewed articles and his research works appeared in journals such as Problems of Post Communism; Communist and Post-Communist Studies; Eurasian Geography and Economics; Cultural Geographies; Cities, Urban Geography, and others. Viktoria Akchurina is a Senior Lecturer in OSCE Academy in Bishkek. Her research focuses on state-building in Central Asia and the Middle East, comparatively. Previously, Viktoria worked for EXOP-Consulting in Germany, International Women’s Media Foundation in Washington D.C., and taught at the MA program in Peace and Development at Dauphine University in Paris. Viktoria received her PhD in International Relations from the University of Trento (Italy) and her MA in Social Theory and Global Governance from Jacobs University Bremen (Germany). Assel Tutumlu (former Rustemova) is an Assistant Professor at the Near East University in Northern Cyprus. She mainly specializes in studying the nature of politics in the authoritarian regimes of Central Asia and beyond, but also writes on democratization, nation-building and foreign policy issues. Before holding academic positions in Turkey, Kazakhstan and the United States she worked at the United Nations, International Foundation for Election Systems, Kennan Institute of Advanced Russian Studies, and the Center for Non-Proliferation Studies in the United States. Diana T. Kudaibergenova is a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Political Sociology at the Department of Sociology at the University of Cambridge (UK). Her research focuses on the study of power relations in democratic and non-democratic contexts, ideology and nationalism. Kudaibergenova’s forthcoming work deals with the persistence of nationalizing regimes and the resistance of the grassroots movements and with the conceptualization of authoritarianism.
The Institute for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies (IERES)
at the Elliott School of International Affairs
