4th webinar in the series “Decolonial Shaping of the Post-Soviet World”

Lecture: Destalinization as Decolonization

This talk challenges a common assumption in current debates about Russia’s future: that dismantling its authoritarian legacy can happen without confronting its imperial one. It argues that meaningful democratisation in Russia is only possible through a process of decolonisation. What does it mean to recognise the Soviet Union and post-Soviet Russia as a colonial project, and why is this understanding essential today? This talk explores why acknowledging Soviet and post-Soviet colonialism is not merely a matter of historical accuracy, but a necessary step toward imagining a democratic future.

Speaker: Prof. Dr. Botakoz Kassymbekova (University of Zurich)

Her sustained interest lies in the study of colonialism, imperialism, and dictatorships, exploring these as systems of power structure and as lived experience. Her first book, entitled Despite Cultures: Early Soviet Rule in Tajikistan (Pittsburgh University Press, 2016), examines Soviet colonial strategies in Central Asia and analyses how Moscow communicated and enforced rule across large distances, with a particular focus on how Soviet officials in the colonized peripheries (mis)understood the system they were building. Her research interests include Soviet colonial photography, comparative analysis of “merit” under capitalism, communism, and colonial systems, Russian colonialism in comparative perspective, the history of childhood and ageing, post-Stalinism, urban and food history.

Prof. Kassymbekova is currently working on a manuscript that investigates how older people aged after Stalinism in the Soviet Union. Another book project, titled Imperial Innocence (under contract with Cambridge University Press, Elements Series), is a cultural history of Soviet imperialism co-authored with Yevhenii Monastyrskyi (Harvard University).

She conceptualized and co-convened the online exhibition Soviet Central Asia in 100 Objects together with Professor Alexander Morrison (Oxford) and Edmund Herzig (Oxford) at the Oxford Nizami Ganjavi Centre in 2021, and co-founded the RUTA Association, based in Ukraine.

Prof. Kassymbekova holds a Ph.D. in Modern History from Humboldt University in Berlin, an M.A. in Social and Cultural History from the University of Essex, and a B.A. from the American University – Central Asia, with a Major in Comparative Political Science and a Minor in Sociology and Social Anthropology. She has held postdoctoral positions at the Technical University of Berlin and the Liverpool John Moores University, and was also a Visiting Fellow at the Harriman Institute at Columbia University and at the Center for Advanced Studies LMU (CAS LMU) at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich. Source: https://www.hist.uzh.ch/…/lehrstuhlin…/kassymbekova.html

Moderator: Dr. Anton Saifullayeu (University of Warsaw)

Discussant: Prof. Izabela Blackwood-Kalinowska (Stony Brook University)

We look forward to your participation!