Abstract

This article examines how memorial sites of Soviet political repression in hybrid authoritarian contexts function as arenas of negotiated memory production. Focusing on Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, it analyzes two understudied sites: the Zhanalyq mass execution burial site near Almaty and the Ata-Beyit memorial complex in Kyrgyzstan. The article engages with the concept of authorized heritage discourse, which privileges state-sanctioned narratives while marginalizing alternative voices, as well as scholarship on difficult or dark heritage. While existing research has often emphasized either state control or oppositional memory activism, this article argues that memorialization in hybrid authoritarian contexts is neither fully monopolized by the state nor purely oppositional. Instead, it emerges through processes of negotiation and co-production among state institutions, memory activists, and religious actors. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, semi-structured interviews, and analysis of commemorative practices, the study demonstrates how vernacular memory and religious forms of remembrance create alternative spaces of meaning within politically constrained environments. In particular, religious rituals enable the articulation of memory beyond formal state frameworks. By foregrounding negotiation and interaction, the article contributes to debates on heritage politics by showing how memory in non-democratic contexts is shaped through accommodation, contestation, and co-production among diverse mnemonic actors.