Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-9q27g Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-18T10:38:34.384Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Leaving Lenin: Elites, official ideology and monuments in the Kyrgyz Republic

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Sally N. Cummings
Sally N. Cummings*
Affiliation:
International Relations, University of St Andrews, St. Andrews, UK, Email: snc@st-andrews.ac.uk
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Many Lenin monuments remain in cities around the former Soviet republics and a few national or regional authorities have decreed it against the law to deface or remove them. The Lenin monument in Bishkek, capital city of the Kyrgyz Republic, is an example of both policies. On two main counts, however, the fate of this particular bronze statue of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin has been unusual. Only in the Kyrgyz case was the country's central Lenin monument left untouched for over a decade after the collapse of communism, a decree for its preservation as a national treasure being put in force as late as 2000. And, when, in 2003, the government after all decided to remove the monument, it was then relocated only some 100 yards from its original location. These twin issues of timing and new spatial framing offer a window on the relationship between state ideology and politics in the Kyrgyz Republic. I propose to use an official ideology approach to understand the Kyrgyz ruling elite's ideological relationship to the Lenin monument after the collapse of communism.

Keywords

Lenin monumentSovietKyrgyz RepublicCentral Asiaofficial political economy
Type
Articles
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 41 , Issue 4: Special Issue: From Socialist to Post-Socialist Cities Guest Editors: Alexander C. Diener and Joshua Hagen , July 2013 , pp. 606 - 621
Copyright
Copyright © 2013 Association for the Study of Nationalities 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Beshimov, Bakhyt. International Crisis Group. 2010. Kyrgyzstan: A Hollow Regime Collapses, Asia Briefing No 102, 27 April.Google Scholar
Bokonbaev, Gamal. 2007. “The Epoch. Visual Culture: Cinema. Advertising. Painting. Contemporary art. Photo.” In Visual Culture: Cinema. Advertising. Painting. Contemporary art. Photo, edited by Bokonbaev, Gamal, 2–8. Bishkek: Bishkek Publishing House.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1990. The Logic of Practice. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Burch, Stuart, and Smith, David. 2007. “Empty Spaces and the Value of Symbols: Estonia's ‘War of Monuments’ from Another Angle.” Europe-Asia Studies 59 (6): 913–936.Google Scholar
Dave, Bhavna. 2007. Kazakhstan: Ethnicity, Language and Power. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Ferris, David S., ed. 2006. Walter Benjamin: Theoretical Questions. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Forest, Benjamin, and Johnson, Juliet. 2002. “Unraveling the Threads of History: Soviet-Era Monuments and Post-Soviet National Identity in Moscow.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 92 (3): 524–547.Google Scholar
Freeden, Michael. 2003. Ideology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Gill, Graeme. 2008. “Lenin Lives': Or Does He? Symbols and the Transition from Socialism.” Europe-Asia Studies 60 (2): 173–196.Google Scholar
Grant, Bruce. 2001. “New Moscow Monuments, or, States of Innocence.” American Ethnologist 28 (2): 332–362.Google Scholar
Harrison, S. 1995. “Four Types of Symbolic Conflict.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 1 (2): 255–272.Google Scholar
Huskey, Eugene. 1997. “Kyrgyzstan: The Fate of Political Liberalization.” In Conflict, Cleavage and Change in the Caucasus and Central Asia, edited by Dawisha, Karen and Parrott, Bruce, 242–276. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Ibraimov, Talip. 2007. “My Ne Fantomy.” In Epokha, edited by Bokonbaev, Gamal, 7–9. Bishkek: Bishkek Publishing House.Google Scholar
Konchalovsky, Andrei. 1965. First Teacher. DVD, 95 minutes.Google Scholar
Koshar, Rudy. 2002. From Monuments to Traces: Artifacts of German Memory, 1870-1990. Berkeley, CA: California University Press.Google Scholar
Marat, Erica. 2008. “March and After: What has Changed? What has Stayed the Same?” Central Asian Survey 27 (3&4): 229–240.Google Scholar
Martin, Terry. 2000. “Modernization or Neo-Traditionalism? Ascribed Nationality and Soviet Primordialism.” In Russian Modernity: Politics, Knowledge, Practices, edited by Hoffmann, David and Kotsonis, Yanni, 161–184. New York: St. Martin's Press.Google Scholar
Masaliev, Absamat. 2003. “Soviet Power and Lenin Were the First to Give the Kyrgyz Republic Statehood.” Accessed December 20, 2009. www.turkiosk.ru Google Scholar
McCann, E. J. 1995. “Neotraditional Developments: The Anatomy of a New Urban Form.” Urban Geography 16 (3): 210–33.Google Scholar
Michalski, Sergiusz. 1998. Public Monuments: Art in Political Bondage 1870-1997. London: Reaktion Books.Google Scholar
Müller, Jan-Werner. 2002. Memory & Power in Post-War Europe: Studies in the Presence of the Past. Edited by Müller, Jan-Werner. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Mumford, Lewis. 1961. The City in History. London: Secker & Warburg.Google Scholar
Murzakulova, Asel, and Schoeberlein, John. 2010. “The Invention of Legitimacy: Struggles in Kyrgyzstan to Craft an Effective Nation-state Ideology.” In Symbolism and Power in Central Asia: Politics of the Spectacular, edited by Cummings, Sally N., 144–163. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Musil, Robert. 1978. “Die Denkmäle.” Gesammelte Werke II: Prosa and Stuck, Kleine Prosa, Aphorismen, Autobiographisches, Essays und Reden, Kritik, edited by Frisé, Adolf, 506–509. Berlin: Reinbek.Google Scholar
Musil, Robert. 1987. Posthumous Papers of a Living Author. Hygiene, CO: Eridano Press.Google Scholar
Nelson, Robert S., and Olin, Margaret. 2003. Monuments and Memory, Made and Unmade. Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press.Google Scholar
Nora, Pierre. 1989. “Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire.” Réprésentations 26: 7–25.Google Scholar
Olcott, Martha Brill. 1992. “Central Asia's Catapult to Independence.” Foreign Affairs 71 (3): 118–128.Google Scholar
Pollock, Griselda. 1994. “Feminism/Foucault - Surveillance/Sexuality.” In Visual Culture: Images and Interpretations, edited by Norman Bryson, Michael Ann Holly and Moxey, Keith. Hanover: Wesleyan University Press.Google Scholar
Poole, Deborah. 1997. Vision, Race and Modernity: A Visual Economy of the Andean Image. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Smith, Trevor J. 2007. “The Collapse of the Lenin Personality Cult in Soviet Russia 1985-1995.” The Historian 60 (2): 325–343.Google Scholar
Strom, Elizabeth. 2001. Building the New Berlin: The Politics of Urban Development in Germany's Capital City. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.Google Scholar
Turner, Victor. 1967. The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Usubaliev, Turdakun. 1982. “Sovetskii Kirgizstan v sem'e bratskikh respubli.” In Kirgizskaya sovetskaya sotsialisticheskaya respublika entsiklopediya, edited by Oruzbaeva, B. O., 85–112. Frunze: Bishkek Publishing House.Google Scholar
Wertsch, James. 2002. Voices of Collective Remembering. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Yurchak, Alexei. 2006. Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar