Abstract

This panel examines the transformation of Kyrgyz political and social institutions from the late Russian imperial period through the early Soviet decades, with a particular focus on how pre-existing structures—especially traditional institutes of governance, lineage organization, and patterns of nomadic mobility—were not simply displaced but reconfigured within new state frameworks. Bringing together three studies that span the imperial and Soviet eras, the panel challenges linear narratives of modernization that assume a rupture between “traditional” and “modern” forms of governance.

The first paper (presented in Russian) analyzes the impact of the Russian imperial electoral system on the institution of the manap, hereditary lineage chieftains who played a central role in Kyrgyz political life. It argues that the Russian Empire’s self-imposed mission to “civilize” local nomads by introducing competitive elections did not merely modernize local governance. Rather, this policy destabilized traditional authority and generated new forms of corruption, factionalism, and administrative manipulation. The resulting crisis of legitimacy, visible during the Central Asian Revolt of 1916, reflected both resistance to colonial rule and attempts to restore alternative governing norms more attuned to local political experience.

The second paper explores how early Soviet political institutions became arenas for the transformation of lineage politics. Focusing on factional struggles between “nationalist” and “socialist” elites, it demonstrates that genealogical networks continued to structure political competition, even as they were reframed through the language of class and socialism. These rivalries unfolded within a colonial administrative hierarchy dominated by European cadres, further complicating the relationship between local agency and imperial power.

The third paper shifts the focus to the 1920s–1930s, examining how overlapping processes of Soviet state-building and national delimitation in Central Asia produced new forms of mobility across and within borders. It explores how various forms of mobility, both internal and cross-border, emerged in the context of the overlapping processes of Soviet construction and national state-building. It conceptualizes this period as a moment of “transnational Kyrgyzstan,” in which movement—of people, ideas, and administrative categories—was central to the making of Soviet Central Asia.

Together, these papers argue that both imperial and Soviet reforms did not eradicate existing social structures but instead reshaped them, producing hybrid forms of governance, mobility, and political practice that persisted across regimes.