Memory and Space in the Post-Soviet / Post-Socialist City

September 18, 2013

September 18, 2013

September 11, 2013

Dr. Natalya Kosmarskya, Institute of Oriental Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences

Two presentations united under the given title will deal with macro- and micro-level perspectives of memory and place in the post-socialist urban context.

Many studies today have focused upon the more official (and also the most visible) processes of the “resymbolisation” of the urban space in post-socialist countries, brought about by shifts in the historical and political stance of ruling elites in the “new nationalizing” states. These politically inspired changes to the urban environment have primarily been studied from a macro-level perspective. Research has explored how the (re)defining by those in key societal positions of a new national identity has led to the reshaping of urban spaces and objects overburdened with political/symbolic meanings.

In the first lecture entitled “Search of a National Identity through the Reshaping of Urban Space: Views from Above and from Below”, the merits and limitations of this “top-down” research will be identified (embracing Russian- and English-language literature). In spite of all the merits, this “top-down” approach fails to take into account the perceptions of ordinary citizens and how the latter both respond and adapt to the changes ongoing in their urban environment. These micro-level attitudes might vary, being, first, responses to modifications of institutionalized, state-sanctioned “places to remember”. Moreover, alternative forms of attachment to the past might emerge, at the level of the individual and/or group, in opposition to or in parallel with the symbols, markers, and sites proposed or imposed by the state.

In the second lecture entitled “Reminiscences of the ‘Soviet Past’ as a Form of Alternative Grass-Root Memory: Contexts and Images”, these forms of remembering will be analyzed using rich empirical data collected among long-term residents of Ferghana and Bishkek between 2008 and 2012.

Bio: Natalya Kosmarskaya is a Senior Researcher at the Dpt. of Central Eurasian Studies, Institute of Oriental Studies (RussianAcademy of Sciences, Moscow). She has published extensively on Russophone minorities in Central Asia, post-Soviet diasporas, gender and migration and, in recent years, on perceptions of urban change by the residents of Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. Between 2007 and 2012 she was a participant of the international research project “Exploring Urban Identity and Community Relations in Post-Soviet Central Asia” supported by the Leverhulme Trust (UK).

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