Abstract

This paper explores the origins of sinophobia in contemporary Kazakhstan by analyzing the evidence from Kazakh Soviet historical novels. Despite the general statements regarding the role of literature in building anti-China sentiment in Kazakh society during the Sino-Soviet split, there has been no in-depth analysis of such works and discourses. Thus, I attempt to address this gap in the scholarly literature by undertaking a thematic and critical discourse analysis of two famous Kazakh novels, comprising four books, from the late 1960s and early 1970s. Namely, the trilogy Koshpendiler (Nomads) by Ilyas Esenberlin and Gonetz (Rider) by Anuar Alimzhanov were investigated for their rhetoric on China and the Chinese. I reveal anti-China or sinophobic narratives from these historical fiction pieces and, consequently, argue that they coincide with the Soviet colonial discourse strategies towards Soviet Asia and ethnic minorities that instrumentalize China as the historical “other”. I demonstrate that Soviet-Russian notions of "lesser evil", "besieged fortress", and "Chinese lebensraum" were the main pillars of the anti-China rhetoric in the novels. I conclude that otherization of China can be seen as one of the trade-off strategies that allowed for the ethnic nationalist rhetoric in these novels to get through Soviet censorship. The paper applies critical constructivist theory and treats the concept of sinophobia as a social construct. The work is based on my 2024 undergraduate thesis and is being reformulated for the conference.