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Abstract

Decolonisation processes are gaining momentum in Kazakhstan. The reinterpretation of history is becoming increasingly important in the context of a new objective view of national history. In our opinion, decolonial discourse can help to identify 'white spots' in the rehabilitation of the repressed. The Holodomor, repressions, and economic experiments conducted by the Soviet state left a tragic mark on the history of the Kazakh people. This caused a significant shift in the mentality and values of the Kazakh nation. Therefore, an objective political assessment of that period is necessary, not for revenge, but for historical justice and remembrance.

Kazakhstan commemorates the Day of Remembrance of Victims of Political Repression on 31 May. However, unlike the heated debates that have recently erupted on the eve of Victory Day, this day is relatively quiet. It is crucial to maintain objectivity and avoid subjective evaluations when discussing such sensitive topics. It is important to note that historical dates associated with the Soviet past can be points of contention for some sectors of post-Soviet society, leading to a divisive «us» vs «them» mentality.

Today, some members of Kazakhstani society believe that the official ideology deliberately downplays the significance of this date. This perspective is evident in discussions on social media. Those who are patriotic view this «default figure» as a political gesture towards Russia, the successor of the Soviet Union.

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Abstract

Often people who suffered from Soviet repressions look faceless in the research. Scholars such as Terry Martin, Norman Naimark, and Pavel Polyan discuss them in terms of numbers, as countless innocent victims or as idealized heroes and saints. In this way, these people are perceived as what an African American historian Saidiya Hartman calls “human commodities” both by the Soviet state and some of the historians who study them. I want to focus on the voices of Gulag survivors as heard in their oral history interviews, in order to think about how their intimate gaze could refocus this perspective on Soviet repressions. The key questions for this paper are: (1) How did Gulag survivors sense the world around them during the catastrophe? and (2) How did they perceive their interactions with an external world during that period? For thinking about these questions, I focus on the Gulag survivors’ testimonies that were recorded for the last ten years by Russia’s Museum of Gulag History.

When a child of Gulag Aleksandr Zakgeim told about his mother’s 1936 arrest seventy years later, the strongest memory he had was about the smell of her perfume and color of her blouse. For Irina Somova, the moment of her father’s arrest in 1937 was associated with the sound of shaking windows’ glass on their terrace, caused by two men knocking on their door late at night. Faina Loskueva remembered that when she was in a cell waiting for the next interrogation at night and was not allowed to sleep, her cellmates came close to her pretending that they were fixing their hair and thus covered Loskueva, so that she could have a rest for some time and take a nap.

Looking at the Soviet repressions through Gulag survivors’ gaze by focusing on these and similar episodes that stayed in their memories can thus offer an alternative paradigm to the state’s and contemporary academic literature’s narratives in which those who went through the Gulag system are simply perceived as victims. It shows the internal world of Gulag survivors as a fact of history that deserves to be heard, seen, felt, and who were more than victims.

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Abstract

Soviet power did every effort to build “Homo-Sovieticus” ignoring major traditional values. Representatives of all strata willing or proposing reforms for better conditions for the population were under the threat of repressions. Torture and repressions were of high instruments of terror during whole existence of Soviet State.

Soviet repressions were held in 3 phases throughout the state and in four phases in SSR of Uzbekistan where “Cotton Affair” was a specific policy. Peasants being aware of the fertility level better and suggesting growing other things besides cotton were called sabotagers, clergymen were massively arrested or exiled, poets and writers were executed as “dissidents”, politician were accused of being foreign agents.

The accusations were in the following sequence: 1) ignoring the fulfilment of state commands; 2) counterrevolution and anti-Soviet propaganda; 3) sabotage; 4) having connection with fascism; 5) reconnaissance.

Because Soviet regime was built in a new ideology and economic way, every event happening there was in the attention of foreign press. Repression policy of Soviet power from kulakization to cotton affair [Uzbek Deal] was continuously highlighted too. The early articles about Central Asia on the issue were published in English-speaking newspapers in 1924 with short texts. Articles gradually grew in both number and format since then.

As is known, the period between 1937 and 1938 was the peak of Soviet mass repression. This is the reason of sharp increase in the number of articles in the UK and the US newspapers. One of the key points of high interest to the issue is connected with calling British Embassy staff in judicial processes as witnesses and their participation in 1938. A trial on former 21 high-status statesmen and accusing some of them such as Bukharin, F. Khodjaev, Rykov, Akmal Ikramov to collaborate with British power on the 1920s in order to build a buffer state in Turkestan with the help of British support was one of the highest accusations and the reason to make the British embassy staff come to the trial.

The presentation at the CESS conference highlights British-Soviet relations in the 1920s, the participation of the British embassy staff at the court, the predictions of judgement after their provided evidences that might have happened.

Dear Commission Team, this abstract was submitted in the CESS conference in 2022 and was approved.