Decolonisation processes in Kyrgyzstan: How has Russia's war against Ukraine affected another region?

Kyrgyzstan, like Qazaqstan, has been a hostage of Russian occupation for centuries. Russia is still trying to control Kyrgyzstan through propaganda, economic pressure on the government, and armed conflicts with the help of its ally — Tojikiston. But the war in Ukraine forced the Kyrgyz, like most of Russia's enslaved peoples, to realize the colonial trauma and gradually return to their language, culture, and identity.

Bektour Iskender, a Kyrgyz journalist and media manager, one of the founders of the Kloop information portal, told Svidomi about the history of Kyrgyzstan, the decolonisation processes currently taking place there, and the role of Ukraine in this.

Whenever I'm asked anything about Kyrgyzstan, I can't help but think of history and our collective traumas. This is especially acute now. It helps to know that we are not alone and that we were not the only ones who experienced the horror that the Russian Empire did.

The colonisation of Kyrgyzstan by Russia began in the 19th century. Notably, the Kyrgyz and Kazakhs, nomadic peoples, did not have clearly defined borders. So when Russia occupied Kyrgyzstan, we had no statehood as such. And this was a weakness that the Russians pressured us to exploit. We had many tribes, each of which was free and autonomous, and Russia initially did everything to make us quarrel with each other so it was easier to occupy us. In the 1870s, the Russian Empire occupied almost all of Central Asia.

Before World War I, we could speak our own language and had an agreement that all indigenous peoples of Central Asia would not fight in the Russian army. But in 1916, the occupiers violated this agreement. That was the first serious uprising of indigenous peoples against Russia.

The number of victims is still unknown, but most of them are Kyrgyz and Qazaqs — young men who refused to fight for the Russian army.

There is hardly any family in Kyrgyzstan that has not been affected by Russian terror. When Soviet power came, people believed in it at first. Many Kyrgyz returned from China, where they were forced to flee the imperial regime.

When the policy of indigenisation was underway, we really felt our autonomy and published books and newspapers in the Kyrgyz language. But when Stalin's terror began, tens of thousands of Kyrgyz were killed and repressed. It is a terrible figure for our small republic.

Then there were several other anti-Soviet movements in Kyrgyzstan, including the Basmachi and Pan-Türkizm movements. But it was forbidden to talk about this, and we began to learn our history only in the late 1980s, during the ‘reconstruction’.

But still, even when we became independent, Russian narratives remained. We have been heavily Russified. Russian is still the main language in the capital of Kyrgyzstan — Bishkek.

Those several decades of Soviet colonialism and propaganda had such an impact that even after independence, criticising Russia and accusing it of colonialism was considered strange and unnecessary.

Of course, some people do not talk about and are not interested in politics, war, or colonisation, because it seems to them that it does not affect them and their families. However, in 2022, two significant events in the country were related to the war in Ukraine and affected everyone in Kyrgyzstan.

The first was a wave of Russians who came to Kyrgyzstan when they were fleeing mobilisation. Then young people massively started making humorous videos on TikTok. One video went viral: a parody of a Russian who came to rent an apartment in Bishkek.

It was a mockery of the Russians' behavior towards Kyrgyz migrants, which included phrases that mostly Russian residents used towards ours. Then ordinary citizens who were not interested in politics felt its impact.

The second event was a conflict with Tojikiston in September. At some point, a narrative became popular in our country: Russia, using the Tojik government, is trying to destabilise the political situation in Central Asia.

There is no evidence yet that Russia provoked this conflict, but people have started talking about it. It was interesting to see how this opinion affected the way Kyrgyzstan began to treat Ukraine — support for Ukraine grew.

The narrative that we have to defend our country the way Ukrainians do was also spreading.

State media ignore the topic of the war. The government found itself in an uncomfortable position. On the one hand, we are economically dependent on Russia, and our current president is afraid of them. But, on the other hand, they do not want to be so strongly associated with a country guilty of mass murder and war crimes.

Therefore, the position is ambiguous. For example, the country has banned the "Z" symbol. Still, at the same time, a Ukrainian film about Donetsk and Luhansk regions was cancelled at a film festival, allegedly because it was propagandising the war.

In March and April, we had a lot of protests in support of Ukraine near the Russian embassy. And then, in May, the Bishkek City Hall banned rallies near any embassies in the city.

At the UN Security Council meeting, Kyrgyzstan ignored any resolutions related to the war when voting. It is the policy of neutrality. In my opinion, being neutral is almost a crime.

The level and number of conversations about colonialism in Kyrgyz discourse have increased. Even in my bubble, there was much less talk about colonization before 2022. I can judge it by the reactions to the material we write about colonisation or war.

Support for Ukraine has increased since 2014. This is shown in the number of protests. For example, in 2014, we had a protest against the occupation of Crimea — 15 people came out with posters. In February-April, protests near the Russian Embassy took place almost every week. The largest one gathered 200 people. This is a lot for our country.

Kyrgyz is the most popular language in Kyrgyzstan if we look at the number of people who speak it. But Russian remains the language that grants privileges; Russian is spoken in the capital, where there are opportunities, work, and education.

If you speak only Kyrgyz in Kyrgyzstan, your chances of building a successful career are low. And this is a problem, especially if we look at the fact that Russia is directing its propaganda at the Russian-speaking part of the population of Kyrgyzstan.

In the mid-1930s, the Soviet government closed all Kyrgyz-language schools in Bishkek, except for one, where you could not study if you had a Bishkek residence permit. That is, this school functioned as a boarding school for those coming from small towns and villages.

Until 1991, Russian-language schools did not even have such a subject as the Kyrgyz language. The Soviet government did everything to make sure that the Kyrgyz language had an image of being unprestigious.

We managed to preserve the language because it was still spoken in the regions. Now the problem is what status it has and what opportunities it offers. For example, if you want to learn English, which is available only in the capital, you cannot do it without knowing Russian.

Usually, the regions of Kyrgyzstan where Russian is not spoken at all are the poorest. This is another consequence of colonisation. We lack content in the Kyrgyz language, it has been increasing in recent years, but it's still not enough.

Another problem is that the Kyrgyz and Russian languages are different. Therefore, if a person grew up in a Russian-speaking environment and spoke only Russian all their life, learning Kyrgyz is much more difficult. I grew up in a Russian-speaking family, I still do not speak Kyrgyz perfectly, and I still need to work on myself a lot.

I recently found old audio recordings that my parents made when I was little, and there I was talking to my mother in Kyrgyz. When I asked her why we stopped speaking our native language, she said that back then everyone around us spoke Russian. Work, studies - everything was in Russian, and to avoid inconvenience, our family switched to Russian. It was easier then.

Once, when I was older, I tried to speak Kyrgyz with my relatives, and they made fun of me for speaking Kyrgyz with an accent. Later I discovered that many of my friends had similar stories of Kyrgyz-speaking people making fun of those who tried to speak Kyrgyz.

We were so ashamed of speaking Kyrgyz badly that we just stopped doing it. But at the same time, I believe that Kyrgyz is the first language I spoke, and it laid a solid foundation for me.

We also have the opposite situation, when Kyrgyz people who did not know Russian came to the capital and spoke Russian with an accent, then people started making jokes and being aggressive towards them.

In 2014, I went to the Maidan and Donetsk, where I saw the war begin. For me, this was the moment when I realised that the colonisation of Russia did not end after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

In the 1990s and 2000s, Chechnya, Transnistria, and Sakartvelo (Georgia) happened. Until 2014, I didn't think it was such a big problem, I thought the occupation was in the past, we were independent, and everything would be fine.

After the occupation of Crimea and the areas of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, I saw that Russian colonialism had not disappeared. Then I decided that something had to change in Kyrgyzstan as well.

In 2022, there were even more such people. But at the same time, it is still not enough, a significant part of the population is in a state where they are not interested enough to do anything. People are not interested in history and contemporary Russian neocolonialism. They know that the war is near, but they continue to live their lives. Russia remains a big threat to Kyrgyzstan. It's just that many people still don't realise it.  

I expect more and more people in my country to be interested in their history. It is especially important now to start analysing what happened at the beginning of Russian colonisation, and in 1916, as one of the biggest terrors against the Kyrgyz and the 1930s of Stalinist terror. We must reflect on these traumas and understand their impact on us.

No republic that Russia has attacked has been able to fight back. And then [there was] Ukraine's brave resistance.

If Ukraine hadn't done that, Russia would have attacked all of us because it saw that the world was not responding. The war against Ukraine finally opened our eyes to what Russia was like.

It has protected us from attack and eventually made us take an interest in our history of colonisation. And also start thinking about strengthening solidarity between regions because we have a shared history and traumas.

It is painful to see the price Ukraine is paying for the freedom of all of us. For me, Ukraine is the main decolonising force in Central Asia. We relaxed in the 90s because we thought the Soviet Union had collapsed and the occupation was over. But this is not true. We still have a lot to do.