Authors

Tamar Koplatadze¹;  ¹ University of Oxford, UK

Discussion

This paper examines how postcolonial writers, artist and filmmakers from Central Asia have treated the legacies of Soviet policies affecting their local environments, such as the Aral Sea, since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Works under focus include Uzbek author Hamid Ismailov’s novella The Dead Lake (Mertvoe ozero) (2014), Kazakhstani filmmaker Zhana Isabaeva’s feature film Bopem (2015) and Kyrgyz author and activist Syinat Sultanalieva’s short story ‘Element 174’. I argue that authors tend to employ the character of an adolescent protagonist navigating their grim environmental surroundings in order to comment on the broader existential crisis facing the new generations in both post-Soviet societies and beyond. While critical of Soviet colonial policies, many of the authors simultaneously eschew depicting characters as victims, moving away from emotional narratives on the struggles of postcolonial societies, and an outright rejection of Communism (thwarted as it was, according to them, by the Soviet regime). Notably, in Sultanalieva’s revenge fantasy where the Russophone coloniser arriving for a spy mission on a supposedly backward planet is taken aback by its advances, in particular its environmental policies in part inspired by Soviet Marxist philosophy (Genrikh Altshuller; Evald Il’enkov). Furthermore, I will argue that while Western posthumanist theories (notably by Donna Haraway) also hold some force for creative artists like Sultanalieva in their intellectual tackling of environmental legacies of Soviet colonialism, their works suggest that harmonious co-existence of human and animals has been central to the societies inhabiting Central Asia since antiquity. Thus, as a way out of the crisis, they create unique post-Soviet utopias of highly advanced technological societies reviving the positive potential of Communist ideology and rooted in shamanistic tradition whereby living human, non-human and spirit realms interweave seamlessly.