SUMMARY:

This article dissects discourses about gold mining from the Soviet period through the present in Kyrgyzstan, focusing on how residents experience and respond to this industrial development. Residents’ expectations of additional social benefits from heavy industry in rural areas, as well as suspicions and experiences with industrial legacies, continued across these periods. These expectations figure prominently in current conflicts about mining, in questions about the role of the state versus the private sector, and in frustration with environmental consequences and future responsibility. Soviet economic goals and an industrial accident echo in current conflicts, corporate responses, and emerging nationalistic politics.