Authors

Evgeny Manzhurin¹;  ¹ University of Eastern Finland, Finland

Discussion

With the Russian expansion into the steppes of Northern Eurasia came their incorporation into the imperial symbolic space. Heraldic symbols for newly acquired spaces were visions of a Christian empire’s military triumph over the religious and cultural Other. Created and adopted centrally at St. Petersburg, these symbols exoticized the diversity of the new colonial possessions and highlighted the use of force in the subjugation of these areas.

In the Soviet Union the imperial symbols were disused and no new ones had been adopted until the mid-1960s when local authorities took the bold effort to adopt territorial symbols themselves without approval from the central leadership. Elsewhere in the USSR such designs embraced locally-relevant agendas by incorporating ethnic elements and reflecting important features of local urban and natural environment; while some, mostly in Russia, even referred to imperial-period heraldry. However, in the steppe towns of the former frontier these elements were often controversial. The national statement in northern Kazakhstan was relatively weak and many of the former imperial frontier towns had mixed ethnic composition dominated by non-titular groups. The imperial symbols reflected a forced incorporation. Natural environment elements in them were tainted by the colonial gaze, while urban elements featured in some symbols were tainted by the history of forced sedentarization. Fortifications, so often featured in the imperial symbols of the region, could remind of the crushing of the Cossack resistance to the Bolsheviks during the Civil War.

My paper explores the late Soviet city symbols of the steppes of northern Kazakhstan and Asian Russia and examines how these tensions played out. What meanings did the new symbols ascribe to the steppe environment? Did local authorities use the new symbolic imaginaries to decolonise the symbolic space or did they associate with the colonizers? How did they balance the emerging popular interest in the pre-Soviet heritage with its colonial gaze? What national sentiment, if any, did the new symbols endorse: Kazakh? Russian? Cossack?.. or Soviet?

Note. This abstract crosses several fields. Should it be deemed a better fit for a panel in a different stream, I hereby give permission to reallocate it from Central Asia and Caucasus Studies, to History, Geography or Cultural Studies.