SUMMARY:

Anatoliy Remnev’s article focuses on the applicability of postcolonial studies to contemporary Kazakhstan and raises the question of whether “post-Soviet” equals “postcolonial.” Distinguishing between anticolonialism and postcolonialism, the author describes the ways in which postcolonial studies criticize modernity and uncover mechanisms of power and domination connected to modern colonialism. Remnev points out “correctives” to colonialism and postcolonialism in the heterogeneous situation of the Russian Empire. He suggests that often Kazakh activists functioned within the imperial space allying themselves with Russian and other progressives and accepting the modernizing framework of the imperial state and society, while the imperial government conducted contradictory policies of modernization, Christianization, and islamization, fighting off perceived dangers of pan-Turkism, pan-Islamism, and so on. Multiple roles and identities complicate simple dichotomies of the colonizer vs. the colonized. Remnev explores the “awakened” sense of nationality as a shock: multiple ruptures – linguistic, cultural, and social – continue to divide Kazakh society while the politics of history ranges from constructivist calls for the invention of Kazakh tradition to essentialist searches for authentic nationhood. A significant role in Kazakh historical narratives is played by the Soviet versions of “tsarist colonialism” and the “national-liberation struggle of the Kazakh people,” which is now recast in nationalist terms to describe the continuous existence of the Kazakh nation. The author points out that these narratives focus on the traumas of the colonized and gloss over the influences those nomadic cultures and practices had upon the imperial bureaucrats. Focusing on the current state of historical studies of Kazakhstan in Russia, Remnev points out the striking lack of attention to the region. Despite the rise of empire studies, Kazakh history remains marginal for Russian scholars and only minimal coordination and interaction with colleagues in Kazakhstan occurs. Historically, the Russian Empire pursued “colonial” policies on the Kazakh lands. Although initially modernizing efforts of the empire were in vain due to the “metropole’s” own recent Europeanization and weakness of its agents, gradually the life of nomadic societies was increasingly transformed. Remnev points out the complex and interwoven processes of the “civilizing mission” and state building in the Russian empire, which did not necessarily preclude upward social mobility of the Kazakhs within imperial hierarchies, and questions the contemporary Kazakh historiography that depicts the Russian Empire as particularly repressive, backward, and colonialist. Finally, the author explores the porous boundaries between the colonizer and the colonized and suggests that the case of the Kazakh steppe was typologically closer to Siberian territories and that the postcolonial rhetoric promotes the self-orientalization and self-exoticization of Kazakh history. As scholars search for alternatives to the colonizing power of modernity, postcolonial studies expand the horizon of imagination with respect to the imperial history of the Kazakh steppe.