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Abstract

The long Mongolian tradition of statehood was an essential factor in the Inner- Asia state-making processes in the first half of the 20th century. From the Indian idea of the Chakravartin (Universal Emperor) to the worship of the Great Khubilai Khan’s concept of Two Orders, the Mongolian ideas about power and charisma constituted a cultural base of new protectorate states. The strong and powerful anti-Communist uprising initiated by Transbaikalian Ataman Semenov was deeply connected with Inner Mongolian Pan-Mongolists (Babuujab’s circle) and their ideas of rejoining Buryat-Mongolia and Barga. The proclamation of the Great Mongolian Federal State in February 1919 with its provisional government on the Dauria station was perceived as the first step to unification of Mongol tribes. The new government consisted of people with different political and social experience: Russian academics, Buddhist monks, warlords, Transbaikalian Cossacks and Inner Mongolian nobility. This paper aims at showing – using the example of the Great Mongolia Federal State – the connection between the Mongolian political imagination and frontier protectorate building practices. The paper is based on new approaches towards political anthropology of frontier state-making and new sources on the Great Mongolian Federal State.

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This paper explores the concept of civic identity and its implementation in Kyrgyzstan and compares it with approaches in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. After gaining independence Central Asian states have started to build new forms of national identities for their diverse societies. The focus of the study is how Kyrgyzstan has conceptualized civic identity through the recent official document The Concept for the Development of Civic Identity “Kyrgyz Zharany” (2021–2026). This document promotes equality, diversity, social cohesion and civic responsibility. Using discourse and content analysis this research examines how the concept of civic identity is institutionalized in education, media and youth policy. In comparative analysis, the thesis shows similarities and differences with Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan approaches. By analyzing official discourses and documents, this research contributes to understanding how these three post-Soviet states use civic identity as a tool of nation-building and social integration in Central Asia.

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This paper studies the role of Kazakh-Soviet historical prose from the period of the Sino-Soviet split (1960s-1970s) in constructing the image of China and the Chinese as the historical Other. Drawing on a thematic analysis of two novels – spanning four books – the trilogy Koshpendiler [Nomads] by Ilyas Yessenberlin and the novel Gonetz [Rider] by Anuar Alimzhanov, this paper argues that the canonical Soviet period literary works produced sinophobic narratives depicting China as the “eternal enemy”, “existential threat”, “greater evil”, among others. Building on the established argument regarding the role of late Kazakh-Soviet literature in constructing post-Soviet Kazakh ethno-nationalism, this paper claims that these narratives reified China’s image as the Other for the Kazakh Self. The results of the paper also suggest that othering of China can be understood as one of the trade-off strategies that allowed Kazakh ethno-nationalist rhetoric in these novels to pass censorship by serving Moscow’s anti-China propaganda during the Sino-Soviet ideological divergence.

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How should post-Soviet nation-building in Kazakhstan be analysed: as a project driven by state elites from above, or as a process negotiated from below through everyday identities, language practices, and citizen responses? This paper argues that the opposition between top-down and bottom-up approaches is analytically limiting. Drawing on Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe’s discourse theory, and engaging Rogers Brubaker’s concept of the nationalizing state, it reconceptualises post-Soviet nation-building in Kazakhstan as a single hegemonic field in which official state projects, minority responses, and citizen-level perceptions are articulated together rather than operating as separate domains.

The paper examines three interrelated dynamics. First, it analyses how Kazakh state elites constructed a hegemonic project in the 1990s around language policy, citizenship, demographic restructuring, and diaspora repatriation. Through these processes, Kazakhness was articulated as the core signifier of post-Soviet restoration and legitimate statehood. Second, it shows how this project was later reformulated through broader and more incorporative discourses of national unity, Kazakhstaniness, and Eurasianism, enabling the state discourse to widen its legitimacy without relinquishing the privileged position of the titular nation. Rather than displacing the earlier project, these discourses reworked and stabilised it under changing domestic and international conditions. Third, the paper investigates why Russian and Russophone minority actors failed to consolidate a durable counter-hegemonic project despite early resistance to language reform, bureaucratic restructuring, and demographic change. Their claims remained fragmented, while state strategies of selective accommodation, depoliticisation, and symbolic inclusion limited the emergence of a coherent rival discourse.

Rather than separating elite projects from everyday negotiations, the paper reads legal and political texts, minority responses, and citizen-centred studies within a single hegemonic field. In doing so, it argues that the top-down/bottom-up distinction obscures the processes through which “the nation,” “the people,” and legitimate belonging are constructed in Kazakhstan. More broadly, the paper suggests that discourse theory offers a useful way to rethink post-Soviet nation-building beyond static analytical binaries.