Skip to main content

Advertisement

SpringerLink
Log in

Symbolic Capital of the Memory of communism. The quest for international recognition in Kazakhstan

  • Published:
Theory and Society Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

The article contributes to the theorisation of collective memory involved in building the international representations of a nation, and examines how strategic responses to the legacy of the totalitarian past have been deployed to shape the image of the nations’ remembering agency via the connections with other actors within the global memory field. Drawing on the Bourdieusian concept of symbolic capital, the article develops a concept of the symbolic capital of mnemonics in order to uncover the role of memory in enhancing international standing and prestige, a crucial preoccupation for semi-peripheral states emerging on the global arena. While recent scholarship on traumatic memory as a category of social analysis underlines the role of memory in bolstering the collective identity of nations, the article demonstrates how memories of the communist past provide a platform for connections between nation-states through shared meta-narratives. Through an empirical case study that uses an ethnographic approach, participant observation and analysis of media accounts, the article examines how the official commemorative practices of Kazakhstan have served to realign the country’s mnemonic agenda with that of the global memory of communism and to redeploy the symbolic capital gained through a shared mnemonics to reassert its legitimacy both abroad and at home.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. Karlag is an abbreviation for Karagandinky lager’; ALZHIR is the Russian acronym for Akmolinsk, “a camp housing the wives of traitors to the motherland”.

  2. During the period 1941–1950 fourteen camps operated on the territory of Kazakhstan. Some of them were permanent and some temporary. All such camps were closed by 1950.

  3. See the discussion of the rise of a comparable symbolic capital, or “political currency”, attributed to the ‘global’ field in Selchow 2007, Eagelton-Pierce 2016.

  4. Human Rights Watch. Kazakhstan. https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2020/country-chapters/kazakhstan

  5. The event subsequently provoked a series of diplomatic clashes between the US on the one hand and China and Russia on the other: “China blasts Bush tribute to victims of communism”, 14 June 2007, Reuters, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-usa-communism/china-blasts-bush-tribute-to-victims-of-communism-idUSPEK20924820070614.

  6. “V Astane demontiruyut memorial zhertvam politicheskikh repressii” KTK News, 11 June 2008 https://www.ktk.kz/ru/news/video/2008/06/11/426/

  7. Monuments dedicated to the Soviet Kazakhstani heroes of the Great Patriotic War erected in the capital alone include Baurzhan Momyshuly Monument 2008, Aliya Moldagulova Monument 2008, Panfilov Monument 2015, Homeland Defenders 2015, Rakhimzhan Koshkarbaev Monument 2016, Manshuk Mametova Monument 2018.

  8. Around 70 % of Kazakhstan’s population of 15.5 millions are Muslims, 26 % are Russian Orthodox Christians, http://stat.gov.kz/

  9. “Meeting the Youth of Kazakhstan,” L’Osservatore Romano Weekly Edition in English 26 September 2001, 5.

  10. “Otkryvaya zavesy tragicheskogo proshlogo,” Press-sluzhba KNB RK, 05 October 2012, http://knb.gov.kz/ru/article/otkryvaa-zavesy-tragiceskogo-proslogo

  11. “Secret KGB files on father of Lubavitcher rebbe released,” The Jewish News, 24 December 1999, https://www.jweekly.com/1999/12/24/secret-kgb-files-on-father-of-lubavitcher-rebbe-released/

  12. On the eve of independence in 1991, Kazakhstan was the only post-Soviet republic in which the titular Kazakh population did not constitute the majority. In the last Soviet census, conducted in 1989, Kazakhs in Kazakhstan represented 39.7%, while Russians living in Kazakhstan represented 37.4%, Ukrainians and Belarusians 6.5% and Germans about 7%. “All-Union Census of 1989” National Composition of Population in the Republics of USSR, Kazakh SSR, available at: http://demoscope.ru/weekly/ssp/sngnac89.php?reg=5

  13. https://www.inform.kz/ru/v-karagandinskoy-oblasti-otkryty-pamyatnye-znaki-ispancam-i-estoncam-zhertvam-politicheskih-repressiy-foto_a2781881

  14. „Strasti vokrug pamiatnika,” Vremya, 22 May 2008, https://time.kz/news/archive/2008/05/22/4788

  15. https://www.kt.kz/rus/politics/na_spasskom_memoriale_v_karagandinskoj_oblasti_ustanovleno_eshte_dva_pamjatnih_znaka_zhertvam_politicheskih_repressij_1153657497.html

  16. https://bnews.kz/ru/news/pamyatniki_posvyashchennie_zhertvam_politicheskih_repressii_chehii_i_irana_otkrili_v_karagande

  17. https://timeskz.kz/35859-kazahstan-peredal-tokio-arhivnye-materialy-o-yaponskih-voennoplennyh.html

  18. Author’s interview with Anar K., 16 March 2017.

  19. “Association of Koreans of Kazakhstan” involved in cultural and commemorative initiatives, also promotes business partnership, trade and investment. See: Koreiskie organisatzii, https://koreans.kz/?lang=ru

  20. Japarov, Boris, „Mezhdunarosnyi den Kholokosta”, Qazaqstan tarihy 27 January 2017 https://e-history.kz/ru/publications/view/2750

References

  • “Address at Apostolic Nunciature, Astana,” L'Osservatore Romano Weekly Edition in English 26 September 2001, available at: https://www.ewtn.com/library/papaldoc/jp2apnun.htm

  • Adams, P. C. (2017). Place and extended agency. In N. J. Enfield & P. Kockelman (Eds.), Distributed agency (pp. 213–220). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Alderman, D. H. (2002). Street names as memorial arenas: The reputational politics of commemorating Martin Luther king Jr. in a Georgia county. Historical Geography, 30, 99–120.

    Google Scholar 

  • Anderson, B. R. (1983). Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism. London: Verso.

    Google Scholar 

  • Assmann, A., & Conrad, S. (2010). Memory in a global age, discourses, practices and trajectories. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Assmann, Aleida. (2016). Shadows of trauma. Memory and the Politics of Postwar Identity. New York: Fordham University Press.

  • Bachleitner, K. (2018). Diplomacy with Memory: How the Past is Employed for Future Foreign Policy. Foreign Policy Analysis, 1–17.

  • Basaran, T., & Olsson, C. (2018). Becoming international: On symbolic capital, conversion and privilege. Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 46, 96–118.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bekus, N. (2017). Ideological recycling of the socialist legacy. Reading townscapes of Minsk and Astana. Europe-Asia Studies, 69, 794–818.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bekus, N. (2018). Historical Reckoning in Post-Soviet Belarus.” In Transitional Justice and the Former Soviet Union: Reviewing the Past and Looking Toward the Future, edited by Lavinia Stan and Cynthia Horne. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.109–132.

  • Bekus, N. (2019). Agency of internal transnationalism in social memory. The British Journal of Sociology, 70(4), 1602–1623.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bekus, N., & Medeuova, K. (2017). Re-interpreting National Ideology in the contemporary urban space of Astana. Urbanities, 7(2), 10–21.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bell, D. (2009). Introduction: Violence and Memory. Millennium. Journal of International Studies, 38, 345–360.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bell, D. (Ed.). (2006). Memory, trauma and world politics. Reflections on the relationship between past and present. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

    Google Scholar 

  • Berling, T. V. (2012). Bourdieu, international relations, and European security. Theory and Society, 41(5), 451–478.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bigo, Didier. (2017). “International Political Sociology: Rethinking International through Dynamics of Power.” In Tugba Basaran, Didier Bigo, Emmanuel-Pierre Guittet, R. B. J. Walker (Eds.) International Political Sociology: Transversal Lines (pp. 24–49). Oxon and New York: Routledge.

  • Bourdieu, P. (1979). Symbolic Power. Critique of Anthropology, 4(13–14), 77–85.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bourdieu, P. (1992). Language and symbolic power. Cambridge: Polity Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bourdieu, P. (1993). The field of cultural production. Cambridge: Polity Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bourdieu, P. (1996). The rules of art: Genesis and structure of the Literary Field. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

  • Bourdieu, P., & Wacquant, L. J. D. (1992). An invitation to reflexive sociology. Cambridge: Polity Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Brett, S., Louis, B., Ševcenko, L., & Rios, M. (2007). Memorialization and democracy: State policy and civic action. New York: International Center for Transitional Justice.

    Google Scholar 

  • Brummell, P. (2008). Kazakhstan the Bradt travel guides. Connecticut: The Global Pequot Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Buckley-Zistel, S., & Schäfer, S. (2014). Memorials in times of transition. Cambridge: Intersentia.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Challand, B. (2009). 1989, contested memories and the shifting cognitive maps of Europe. European Journal of Social Theory, 12, 397–408.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Clarke, D. J. (2014). Communism and memory politics in the European Union. Central Europe, 12, 99–114.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Confino, A., & Fritzsche, P. (2002). The work of memory. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Crawford, N. C. (2000). The passion of world politics: Propositions on emotion and emotional relationships. International Security, 24, 116–156.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cummings, S. (2003). Eurasian bridge or murky waters between east and west? Ideas, identity and output in Kazakhstan’s foreign policy. Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics, 19, 139–155.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cummings, S. (2012). Understanding Central Asia: Politics and contested transformations. New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • David, L. (2020). The past Can’t heal us. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • De Cesari, C. and Rigney, A. (2014). “Introduction.” in C. De Cesari and A. Rigney (Eds.) Transnational Memory. Circulations, Articulations, Scales, (pp. 1–28). Berlin: De Druyter.

  • Diez, T. (2017). Diplomacy, papacy, and the transformation of international society. The Review of Faith & International Affairs, 15, 31–38.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Diez, T. (2005). Constructing the self and changing others: Reconsidering “normative power Europe. Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 33, 613–636.

  • DiMaggio, P. (1990). Cultural aspects of economic organization and behavior. In R. Friedland & A. F. Robertson (Eds.), Beyond the marketplace: Rethinking economy and society (pp. 112–136). Chicago, IL: Aldine.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dujisin, Z. (2020). A history of post-communist remembrance: From memory politics to the emergence of a field of anticommunism. Theory and Society. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-020-09401-5.

  • Eagelton-Pierce, M. (2016). Neoliberalism: The key concepts. London: Routledge.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Emirbayer, M., & Johnson, V. (2008). Bourdieu and organizational analysis. Theory and Society, 37(1), 1–44.

  • Finkel, E. (2012). V poiskakh ‘poteriannykh genotsidov’: istoricheskaya politika i mezhdunarodnaya politika v Vostochnoi Evrope posle 1989 g. In A. Miller & M. Lipman (Eds.), Istoricheskaya politika v XXI v (pp. 292–328). Moskva, RF: Novoye literaturnoye obozrenie.

    Google Scholar 

  • Forsdick, C., Mark, J., & Spišiaková, E. (2020). Introduction. From populism to decolonisation: How we remember in the twenty-first century. Modern Languages Open, 1(17), 1–34.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gieryn, T. F. (2000). A space for place in sociology. Annual Review of Sociology, 26, 463–496.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gillis, J. R. (1994). Commemorations: The politics of National Identity. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Goffman, E. (1959). The presentation of self in everyday life. Garden City, NY: Doubleday.

    Google Scholar 

  • Goffman, E. (1963). Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity. New York: Prentice Hall.

    Google Scholar 

  • Grosescu, R. (2017). Judging communist crimes in Romania: Transnational and global influences. International Journal of Transitional Justice, 11(3), 505–524.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Grosescu, R., Baby, S., & Neumayer, L. (2019). Justice, memory and transnational networks. European and south American entanglements. Global Society, 33, 307–315.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Grosescu, R., Neumayer, L., & Pettai, E.-C. (2020). Transnational activism and the globalisation of anti-communism after 1989. Introduction Revue d’études comparatives Est-Ouest, 2-3(2), 9–19.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gugushvili, A., Kabachnik, P., & Gilbreath, A. (2016). Cartographies of Stalin: Place, scale, and reputational politics. The Professional Geographer, 68, 356–367.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Halbwachs, Maurice. (1992).On Collective Memory. Chicago: University of Chicago press.

  • Hall, T. (2015). Emotional diplomacy: Official emotion on the international stage. Ithaca: NY: Cornell University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Hilgers, M., & Mangez, E. (2015). Bourdieu’s theory of social fields. Concepts and applications. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hite, K., & Collins, C. (2009). Memorial fragments, monumental silence and reawakening in 21st-century Chile. Millennium Journal of International Studies, 38, 379–400.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hobsbawm, E. J., & Ranger, T. (Eds.). (1983). The invention of tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Holston, J. (1989). The Modernist City: An anthropological critique of Brasılia. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hutchison, E. (2016). Affective communities in world politics: Collective emotions after trauma. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Jervis, R. (1989). The logic of images in international relations. New York: Columbia University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kalinovsky, A. (2018). A Laboratory of Socialist Development: Cold war politics and decolonization in soviet Tajikistan. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Kelertas, Violeta. Ed. (2006). Baltic Postcolonialism Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi.

  • Koch, N. (2010). The monumental and the miniature: Imagining ‘modernity’ in Astana. Social and Cultural Geography, 11, 769–787.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kopecek, M. (Ed.). (2008). Past in the making: Historical revisionism in Central Europe after 1989. Budapest: Central European University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • “Koreitzy v Kazakhstane,” Qаzaq Uni 1 April 2019. https://qazaquni.kz/basty-makalalar/96465-korejcy-v-kazahstane-qazaq-halqyna-my

  • Kudaibergenova, D. T. (2016). The use and abuse of postcolonial discourses in post-independent Kazakhstan. Europe-Asia Studies, 68, 917–935.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kundakbayeva, Z., & Kassymova, D. (2016). Remembering and forgetting: The state policy of memorializing Stalin's repression in post-soviet Kazakhstan. Nationalities Papers, 44, 611–627.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kuryatov, V. (2017). Memory for the sake of future. In M. Oralov (Ed.), Descendants Remember (pp. 19–27). Astana: Alzhir.

    Google Scholar 

  • Japarov, B. (2017). Zhit radi buduschego. In A. Suleimenov (Ed.), National digital history digest (pp. 282–289). Astana: NDH biblioteka.

    Google Scholar 

  • Levy, D., & Sznaider, N. (2002). Memory unbound. The holocaust and the formation of cosmopolitan memory. European Journal of Social Theory, 5, 87–106.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lim, J.-H. (2010). Victimhood nationalism in contested memories: National Mourning and global accountability. In A. Assmann & S. Conrad (Eds.), Memory in a global age (pp. 138–162). Basingstoke: Palgrave.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Lind, J. (2009). Apologies in international politics. Security Studies, 18, 517–556.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mälksoo, M. (2009). The memory politics of becoming European: The east European subalterns and the collective memory of Europe. European Journal of International Relations, 15(4), 653–680.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mälksoo, M. (2014). Criminalizing communism: Transnational Mnemopolitics in Europe. International Political Sociology, 8(1), 82–99.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mark, J. (2010). The unfinished revolution: Making sense of the communist past in Central Eastern Europe. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Medeuova, K., et al. (2017). Praktiki i mesta pamyati w Kazakhstane. Astana: Eurasian National University.

    Google Scholar 

  • Misztal, B. A. (2004). The Sacralization of memory. European Journal of Social Theory, 7, 67–84.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • “Meeting the Youth of Kazakhstan,” L'Osservatore Romano Weekly Edition in English 26 September 2001, 5.

  • Neumann, I. B. (1996). Self and other in international relations. European Journal of International Relations, 2(2), 139–174.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Neumayer, L. (2017). Advocating for the cause of the “victims of communism” in the European political space: Memory entrepreneurs in interstitial fields. Nationalities Papers, 45, 992–1012.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Neumayer, L. (2019). The criminalisation of communism in the European political space after the cold war. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nora, P. (1989). Between memory and history: Les Lieux de Mémoire. Representations, 26, 7–24.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Olick, J. (2007). The politics of regret. New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Oushakine, S. (2013). Postcolonial estrangements: Claiming a space between Stalin and Hitler. In J. Buckler & E. D. Johnson (Eds.), Rites of place: Public commemoration in Russian and Eastern Europe (pp. 285–314). Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Pavlyshyn, M. (1992). Post-colonial features in contemporary Ukrainian culture. Australian Slavonic and East European Studies, 6(2), 41–55.

    Google Scholar 

  • Perrone, Arragon. (2012). “Pope John Paul II’s role in the collapse of Poland’s communist regime: Examining a religious Leader’s impact on international relations.” University of Connecticut. http://digitalcommons.uconn.edu/srhonors_theses/244

  • Pettai, E.-C., & Pettai, V. (2015). Transitional and retrospective justice in the Baltic States. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • “Pope begins Central Asian visit” CNN World, 23 September 2001, http://edition.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/asiapcf/central/09/23/gen.kazak.pope.0300/index.html

  • Probst, Lothar. (2003).”Founding Myths in Europe and the Role of Holocaust.” New German Critique 90, 45–58.

  • Rigney, A. (2017). Materiality and memory: Objects to ecologies. A response to Maria Zirra. Parallax, 23, 474–478.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rivera, L. A. (2008). Managing “spoiled” National Identity: War, tourism, and memory in Croatia. American Sociological Review, 73, 613–634.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rothberg, M. (2009). Multidirectional memory. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schudson, M. (1989). The present in the past versus the past in the present. Communication, 11, 105–113.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schwartz, B. (1996). Introduction: The expanding past. Qualitative Sociology, 9(3), 275–282.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Selchow, S. (2007). Language and 'Global' politics: De-Naturalising the 'Global. Global Civil Society, 8, 224–243.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sharipova, D., Burkhanov, A., & Alpeissova, A. (2017). The determinants of civic and ethnic nationalisms in Kazakhstan: Evidence from the grass-roots level. Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, 23, 203–226.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Snow, D. A., & Benford, R. D. (1992). Master frames and cycles of protest. In A. Morris & C. Mueller (Eds.), Frontiers in social movement theory (pp. 133–155). New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stan, L. (2009). Transitional justice in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union: Reckoning with the communist past. London: Routlegde.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Thompson, C., & Heathershaw, J. (2005). Introduction: Discourses of danger in Central Asia. Central Asian Survey, 24, 1–4.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Todorov, T. (2003). Hope and memory: Lessons from the twentieth century. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Todorova, M. (2018). Scaling the Balkans: Essays on eastern European entanglements. Leiden Boston: Brill.

    Google Scholar 

  • Trimçev, R. (2017). Two models of universalizing memory practices. European Review of History, 24, 631–644.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Trochev, A. (2018). Transitional justice in Kazakhstan. In C. M. Horne & L. Stan (Eds.), Transitional justice and the former Soviet Union. Reviewing the past, looking forward towards the future (pp. 88–108). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Verdery, K. (1999) The political lives of dead bodies: Reburial and postsocialist change. New York: Columbia University Press.

  • Vinitzky-Seroussi, V. (2002). Commemorating a difficult past: Yitzhak Rabin’s memorial. American Sociological Review, 67(1), 30–51.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • “Vystuplenie Prezidenta Respubliki Kazakhstan Nursultana Nazarbayeva na otkrytii Monumenta pamiati zhertv goloda 1932–1933.” Ofitsial’nyi sait Prezidenta Respubliki Kazakhstan. 31 May, 2012. http://www.akorda.kz/ru/special/speeches/internal_political_affairs/in_speeches_and_addresses/vystuplenie-prezidenta-respubliki-kazakhstan-nursultananazarbaeva-na-otkrytii-monumenta-pamyati-zhertv-golo.

  • Uffelmann, D. (2013). Theory as memory practice. The divided discourse on Poland’s Postcoloniality. In U. Blacker, A. Etkind, & J. Fedor (Eds.), Memory and theory in Eastern Europe (pp. 103–124). New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Wagner-Pacifici, R. (2015). Reconceptualising memory as event. In L. Tota & T. Hagin (Eds.), Routledge international handbook of memory studies (pp. 22–27). London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wagner-Pacifici, R., & Schwartz, B. (1991). The Vietnam veterans memorial: Commemorating a difficult past. American Journal of Sociology, 97, 376–420.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wendt, A. (2000). A comment on Held’s cosmopolitanism. In I. Shapiro & C. Hacker-Cordon (Eds.), Democracy’s edges (pp. 127–133). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wood, N. (1999). Vectors of memory: Legacies of trauma in postwar Europe. Oxford: Berg.

    Google Scholar 

  • Young, J. E. (1989). The biography of a memorial icon: Nathan Rapoport’s Warsaw ghetto monument. Representations, 26, 69–103.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • “Zaklyucheniye komissii Presidiuma Verkhovnogo Soveta Respubliki Kazakhstan po izucheniyu normativnykh aktov provedshikh k golodu vo vremya kollektivizatsii” Kazakhstanskaya Pravda December 22, 1992.

  • Zaretsky, E. (2009). Collective memory and narrative: A response to Etkind. Constellations, 16(1), 201–204.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zerubavel, Y. (1995). Recovered roots: Collective memory and the making of Israeli National Tradition. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zhunusova, Zhumabike. (2008). “Pamiat’ o zhertvakh repressii vyvezli podal’she ot Astany,” Zona.kz 20 June, https://zonakz.net

  • Zelizer, V. (1997). The social meaning of money. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zombory, M. (2020). The anti-communist moment: Competitive victimhood in European politics. Revue d’études comparatives Est-Ouest, 2-3(2), 21–54.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Funding

This study was funded by the Leverhulme Trust, within the project ‘1989 after 1989: Rethinking the Fall of State Socialism in Global Perspective’, grant number RL-2012-053. I also thank for help and support to Kulshat Medeuova and to the team of research project “Sites of Memory in the contemporary culture of Kazakhstan: commemoration processes in public spaces” awarded by the Ministry of Education and Science of Kazakhstan.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Humanities College, University of Exeter, Amory Building, Rennes Drive, Exeter, EX4 4RJ, UK

    Nelly Bekus

Authors
  1. Nelly Bekus
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Nelly Bekus.

Ethics declarations

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Additional information

Publisher’s note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Bekus, N. Symbolic Capital of the Memory of communism. The quest for international recognition in Kazakhstan. Theor Soc 50, 627–655 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-020-09425-x

Download citation

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-020-09425-x

Keywords

Search

Navigation