Recasting the Nation: Monuments and Meaning-Making in the 21st Century

Over the last several years in the United States, there has been substantial public reappraisal of the legacy of monuments to Confederate soldiers and other figures. The fatal aftermath of conflict between protestors and counter-protestors in Charlottesville Virginia in August 2017 shows how fraught public memory often is. What should be done with monuments and sites of public memory in the face of changing tides of official ideology and public opinion?  

This presentation offers a case study investigating the valorization of two Soviet-era World War II soldiers in independent Kazakhstan and argue that the Kazakhstani state has recast these heroes as significant figures in the official centuries-long history of Kazakhstan. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the newly independent states faced the challenge of making sense of outmoded institutional and ideological legacies, including reappraising how sites of public memory should be used towards new nation-building goals.  

Incorporating and commemorating the Soviet experience of World War II provides an avenue for legitimating Kazakhstani nation-building efforts. This also demonstrates the symbolic and instrumental roles monuments in public spaces play in reinforcing gender roles and in structuring power relations domestically and internationally. This case study shows one approach to reimagining politically charged sites of public memory, offering lessons applicable to other contexts. This project was supported by a grant from the American Councils for International Education and an IUE Summer Faculty Fellowship. Article out now in Central Asian Survey.