Power and Identity in the post-Soviet realm: understanding nationalising processes in Latvia and Kazakhstan
Interview conducted by Layal Niazy, MECACS intern and fourth year International Relations student at the University of St Andrews
Dr Kudaibergenova is a cultural and political sociologist and her research focuses on social theories of power. She is a Research Associate at the University of Cambridge.
In June 2020 Pittsburgh University Press presented Diana T. Kudaibergenova’s second book, Toward Nationalizing Regimes. Conceptualizing Power and Identity in Post-Soviet Realm (link: https://upittpress.org/books/9780822946175/). In this book sociologist Diana T. Kudaibergenova discusses post-1991 nation-building in Latvia and Kazakhstan, two post-Soviet states with the biggest share of ethnic Russian and Slav minority groups and talks about divergent paths democratic and non-democratic political elites take in their imagination of two distinct nations. Kudaibergenova argues that the nationalising processes define political competition and fleshes out why and how power elites shape these nations since 1991. The book is embedded in what the author calls her own attempts to write out the conceptualization of power relations in post-Soviet space with empirical and conceptual findings of the rich context that should contribute to wider political sociology debates. This interview with the author follows her book launch at MECAS on 1 October 2020 (https://events.st-andrews.ac.uk/events/mecacs-seminar-series-book-launch-of-the-toward-nationalising-regimes-conceptualizing-power-and-identity-in-the-post-soviet-realm-up-pittsburgh-2020/).
Why did you choose to compare Latvia to Kazakhstan?
When I started doing my doctoral research as a sociology student at the University of Cambridge in the early 2010s, I knew I wanted to do a comparative study about the nature of post-Soviet nationalisms. Prior to that I conducted a study of surveying cultural elites in Kazakhstan who were very active in the process of “imagining” the community in Soviet period. This research into cultural aspects of building the nation and analysing elite networks in Soviet institutions of publishing formed the base of my first book, Rewriting the Nation in Modern Kazakh Literature (see https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781498528313/Rewriting-the-Nation-in-Modern-Kazakh-Literature-Elites-and-Narratives). So, it was natural that I wanted to focus research on my native Kazakhstan. It brought about a lot of interesting methodological experiences of doing fieldwork “at home”.
Comparative study of two very different cases allowed me to draw better distinctions and similarities to test my hypotheses about the nature of nationalising processes and power mechanisms of decision-making in the field of nation-building in the post-Soviet space. I chose Latvia as a comparative base for a variety of reasons.
First and foremost, Latvia just like Kazakhstan became home for the large migration of the so-called Russian-speaking migrants in the Soviet period. They formed an important part of these states and societies during Soviet period and were considered the biggest ethnic and linguistic minority group in Baltic states, Central Asia, Ukraine and other post-Soviet states and regions after 1991. Luckily, I quickly found a network of friends and gatekeepers in Riga when I moved there for fieldwork in 2013. I lived in Kengaraks, the district of Riga that so vividly represented these existing ethnic and linguistic divisions.
Second, Latvia and Kazakhstan are two worlds set apart and methodologically provided the best comparative ground for the most-differentiated cases. When I chose my case studies, it was important for me to test my questions about the nature of power elites and their competition in two distinct political regimes.
There are growing tensions and competitions in re-defining nation-building politics in both states. Latvia saw major rallies and calls for referendums to make Russian language second official language in the country and pro-Russian minority groups and parties called for more linguistic and cultural inclusivity including more provisions for the “minority” schools with non-Latvian but Russian language of instruction. Kazakh groups, on the contrary, call for more development and inclusion of Kazakh language in public sphere.
In the book I wanted to show the complexity of these issues and challenge the conceptual status quo where these contested processes are usually studied from the perspectives of nationalising states. In my current work that deals with societal and communal debates about identity, ethnicity and broader frameworks of categories of identifications I draw more on the local understanding of power (vlast in Russian) and re-conceptualization of the “state.” Political elites and counter-elites play a great role in challenging the solidified perspective of what the state does in the post-Soviet context. Nationalizing Regimes provides a framework of top-down structures of decision-making and policies where political elites’ competition defines the outcome of nation-building strategies. Their competition is centred within the meaning-making field where discourses of “what nation we are building” are the most dominant even today, thirty years after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
How is discourse related to the framework of nationalizing states?
I think Rogers Brubaker’s seminal work on nationalizing states was very important throughout what I call in my research the post-independent period of these “new” states from the Baltic Sea to the Caspian Sea and Russia proper. Of course, nation-building is the constant process, it is not fixed and remains in-flux. In my fieldwork I constantly observe how many categories are still contested by various groups. Brubaker’s framework described and analysed the claims used for the legitimation of building nation-states. However, it was too ambiguous and required further research into the understanding of state-nations – contexts where state framework was a lot more important than consolidating just one nation within the state, for example, Kazakhstan.
Nationalising states also did not scrutinize the power relations and did not provide the frame for understanding the mechanisms of decision-making behind these major nationalising attempts. While I think it was a useful framework in the beginning and it was good to grasp the early moment of post-Soviet nationalizing processes, I did not find it as encompassing and explanatory in the context of power relations after this post-independence moment. In the introduction to my book I analysed how and why nationalising states frame does not serve the purpose of explaining nationalising processes anymore, but I also pay tribute to it for highlighting the “nationalising” part because it is definitely constantly ongoing. However, I do believe that regime in this context is a lot more useful to explain it as a power contesting field where elites close it off for their own engagement and competition.
The book develops this argument further by demonstrating how elites construct these powerful fields through discoursesand political framing, how they engage in this competition by appropriating the “nation.” In the latter part of the book I also demonstrate how non-elites – citizens and non-citizens respond to these imaginations of nations where the state is overshadowed by the “regime”. I find this latter part quite useful and continue to study how non-elite groups question and contest the base of the state in their everyday lives.
What does your research bring to the discipline of IR – what are its implications?
I think my research would be interesting to the IR specialists from the perspective of studying power relations, elitist decision-making and my focus on meaning-making within nationalising regimes. There are quite a few intersections between political sociology and IR. I hope that some of my methodological approaches might also be interesting to IR research. For example, I use a lot of archival research where different states interact with nationalising regimes. I am very grateful to the staff at the OSCE Secretariat Archival Centre in Prague where I was able to find a great amount of data for my book and for the contextualisation of the 1990s nation-building in Kazakhstan, Latvia, Estonia, other Central Asian states and also in Ukraine. My type of research hopefully could bring more perspectives on elitist decision-making within their respective states and regions and this might be a useful framework for IR discipline. I also touch upon EU and Eurasian Economic Union as contexts in which nationalising regimes operate and how these organisations influence foreign and domestic policy.
Why is it important to conduct the research you have been doing?
My research deals with the complexity of power relations, meaning-making, claims for self-agency and the study of identity. I can think of many ways why it is important to study these processes, structures and concepts. But most importantly my work is driven by the understanding of local communities and contributing back to the region where I am from. I think post-Soviet space is so vibrant and so rich in contexts, it has so much to offer and there is still so much to study, including the frame of “post-Soviet” itself. I also believe that research can contribute back to the communities we study. It is important to give space to the voices that come from this region, to value local scholarship and continuously engage with emerging scholars and their work for the benefit of the community. For me personally it is also important to bring scholarship from Central Asia and Central Asians themselves to the fore of the global debates without underestimating their agency or subjecting them to the space from which the data is extracted and nothing is offered in return. We wrote collectively about it in the series Feminist Subjectivities in Central Asia (https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/odr/when-your-field-also-your-home-introducing-feminist-subjectivities-central-asia//) and currently we are working collectively in the support network for Eurasian scholars where we discuss our current writing projects, engage in seminars and soon hoping to launch epistemological discussions about scholarship forming in this region. My current research within the ambitious GCRF COMPASS project on capacity-building and communal engagement in Eurasia deals with the crucial understanding of local communal needs, their self-identification and everyday strategies of navigating challenges and power structures. I am inspired by the stories from the community, by the voices of the new generation of citizens, activists, artists and experts who are re-defining these “new” states of Eurasia.
Want to learn more? Hear Diana T. Kudaibergenova discuss Nationalising Regimes on New Books network podcast: https://newbooksnetwork.com/diana-t-kudaibergenova-toward-nationalizing-regimes-conceptualizing-power-and-identity-in-the-post-soviet-realm-u-pittsburgh-press-2020/
Follow her on Twitter: @CreativeCorazon
Find and join Central Asian Academic and Analytical Writing Support Group on Facebook