Abstract

The launch of the book “Baikonur vs Baikonyr” (2025) will be of great interest to the community of Central Asia studies scholars, introducing them to the research conducted by the team of Kazakhstani scholars in cooperation with international partners. The volume is a product of a multidisciplinary research project on the memory of outer space and its afterlife in Kazakhstan's contemporary socio-political and cultural landscape. It presents a collection of articles that address various aspects of the memory of the Soviet space program and its impact on the formation of the nation’s cosmic imaginary in the era of state independence.

The book launch event will address the questions on how the decades-long history of the presence of cosmodrome Baikonur on the Kazakhstani land is reflected in memory narratives and practices, how the perceptions and attitudes among local and regional communities are informed by a variety of factors, associated with experiences of land appropriation, environmental damages caused by operation of Baikonur, the questions of human rights and in(ex)clusion of Kazakhstani people in (from) the space program during the Soviet time.

Through the lens of oral histories, ethnographic studies of memory sites, analysis of representations of the cosmos in museums, art practices and literature, and analysis of space policies, the collection demonstrates the co-existence of multiple voices and perspectives on the cosmic heritage in Kazakhstan. At the book launch, presentations will address 1) theoretical questions of nationalizing the framework of the memory of Soviet space modernity manifested in the cosmodrome Baikonur and its ambiguous impact on the lives of local communities; 2) methodological questions on the research ethics encountered by scholars during their fieldwork, while collecting oral histories and interviewing artists, museum workers, policymakers as well as “space tourist” activists.