Registration REQUIRED by 4pm on March 31, 2025 in order to attend this event.

Please join the Harriman Institute for a lecture by Asel Doolotkeldieva. Moderated by Alexander Cooley.

Three years after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, on the surface, there seems to be a continuity of Russian influence in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, but this belies significant shifts under the surface in a rapidly evolving geopolitical context. Drawing on insights from critical geopolitics, as well as previous work in the region, this talk will show how and why we should look beyond an elite-centric view of geopolitics to the geopolitical imaginations of ordinary people. Asel Doolotkeldieva argues that this is not just an ethical concern but can help us better understand empirical processes currently underway. The full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 sent shock waves throughout the region, with public demonstrations in support of Ukraine taking place in Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. At the time, analysts predicted that Central Asian countries would move away from Russia; however, three years later, the relationship of these countries with Russia is as close as ever, in spite of a renewed interest in the region by the West. Does this demonstrate that elite geopolitics is all that matters?

This talk will argue that this isn’t the case, and that there are reasons why popular support for a close relationship with Russia has remained high, but also that this is in light of important reconfigurations affecting different strata of society (differently in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan). Reconfiguration of labor migration, the emergence of a younger generation of a well-educated urban middle class beginning to question historical legacies of Soviet rule, and the emergence of both Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan as hubs of Russian sanction evasion are all part of how entanglements with and imaginaries of Russia are changing among populations and businesses. Kazakh and Kyrgyz elites are navigating the issue of association with Russia more carefully than before, but regime legitimacy remains an important element of how the relationship with Russia is conducted. This talk will conclude that popular imaginaries and practices co-produce a strong association with Russia, but parameter are shifting.