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Abstract

This study analyzes the role of Kazakh Muslim poetic traditions from the Zar Zaman period—commonly translated as “The Era of Sorrow” or “The Era of Lamentation”—in shaping anti-Soviet dissent during the 1950s. It concentrates on the lives and legacies of two key individuals: Shortanbay Qanaiuly (1818–1881), a prominent Kazakh anti-colonial poet and singer (aqïn), and Kämel Zhu̇nīstegī (1939–2023), a Soviet-era Kazakh dissident, writer, and former political prisoner.

The article argues that the pre-Soviet Islamic poetic tradition of Zar Zaman, particularly Shortanbay’s work, exerted a lasting influence on the post–Second World War generation of Kazakh rural intellectuals. This cultural inheritance was transmitted to and reinterpreted by young Kazakh nationalists, including Kämel Zhu̇nīstegī, who later played a central role in establishing the clandestine anti-Soviet organization ESEP (also known as Zhas Qazaq), active from 1958 to 1962. Shortanbay’s figure and poetry served as an ethical and artistic reference point for Kämel, whose own literary output helped inspire the movement’s ideological foundations.

Growing up, Kämel experienced firsthand the rapid Sovietization of Kazakh society, marked by the expansion of Soviet cultural norms and the increasing predominance of the Russian language. The immediate impetus for the formation of ESEP stemmed from the consequences of Nikita Khrushchev’s agricultural policies of the 1950s, most notably the Virgin Lands Campaign (Tselina).

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Abstract

The paper examines a relatively understudied aspect of Soviet–American contacts during the Cold War on the distant periphery of the USSR, namely in [then] Middle Asia, focusing specifically on Tselinograd—the future capital of modern Kazakhstan—and Dushanbe, the capital of Tajikistan. These cities were chosen by the United States Information Agency (USIA) as locations for the traveling exhibition "Agriculture USA" (or AGUSA), which started in Kyiv in March 1978. Tselinograd was the second (July – September 1978) and Dushanbe was the third (September – November 1978) destination of the traveling exhibit.

Despite its seemingly neutral title, intended to attract audiences in agricultural regions, the exhibition was viewed with considerable suspicion by the Soviet authorities. Demonstrating the technological superiority of American farming and the impressing diversity of food products in US supermarkets was seen as an effective tool for psychological influence on the Soviet public, especially since the USSR had been forced to purchase grain from the West since the early 1960s. The American organizers did indeed note a high level of tension in the atmosphere of AGUSA largely “due to the particular sensitivity of the exhibit theme”.

The author used analytical documents (research memoranda) from the USIA (from April 1978 until August 1982 – USICA, the United States International Communication Agency), memoirs of American guides, and Soviet visitors to the exhibition as sources. The events in Tselinograd and Dushanbe are also relatively well documented in photographs, thanks to the work of Nurmukhamat Imamov (a correspondent for the Tselinogradskaya Pravda newspaper) and the American guide Lawrence Sherwin who took pictures in both cities. Their photographs reveal the real life of the Soviet Central Asian cities, and the mutual perceptions of Soviet citizens and American guides across the Iron Curtain.

The “Agriculture USA” exhibition is of particular interest because it marked the end of détente, when relations between the USA and the USSR were clearly heading for a cooling. After Tselinograd and Dushanbe, the exhibition traveled to Chisinau, Moscow, and Rostov-on-Don. The tour concluded in June 1979 and in September, the USICA presented an analytical report on the exhibition's results. In December of that same year, 1979, Soviet troops entered Afghanistan, after which the Jimmy Carter administration imposed sanctions against the USSR, including a grain embargo.

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Abstract

This paper examines the evolution of the Soviet publishing world during the relaxation of Soviet censorship brought about by Perestroika. It focuses on the so-called "returned literature" ("vozvrashchennaia literatura"), or the texts that were previously censored from the Soviet official press that became available during Perestroika. By focusing on the magazine Druzhba Narodov, the paper argues that the restructuring of the Soviet literary canon began with a focus on Russian-language literature, which gradually expanded to include the “Executed Renaissance” — writers from non-Russian Soviet republics who were repressed during the Stalinist era. Starting as an enterprise in the literary history, this process required editors to consciously work with readers’ horizon of expectations, explaining the impact of Soviet policies on the composition of Soviet literary canon. Consequently, readers and editors of the “returned literature” began criticizing Soviet models of cultural production based on state monopoly over printed media and demanding more cultural autonomy for non-Russian republics of the USSR. However, while the editors of Moscow-based periodicals sought to revisit the outcomes of Stalinist nationality policies, they still operated within the existing regime of power relations by publishing repressed writers — most notably Ukrainians — in Russian translations. In the final years of Gorbachev’s rule, however, this editorial work enabled local political activists to reach Union-wide audiences.