Soviet History - The Times Of Central Asia

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From Lenin to Kenesary: What Kazakhstan’s Renamed Streets Say About Power

In July 2026, a new constitutional law on Kazakhstan’s administrative-territorial structure came into force. It retained a layered process for changing place names: local authorities must consider residents’ views, while onomastic commissions review proposals before final decisions are made. The previous legal framework dated to 1993. Replacing it with a constitutional law did not dismantle the machinery of onomastic policy but consolidated the roles of public consultation, local government and official commissions. The law formalized a system built over three decades, during which thousands of streets were renamed but the country’s urban map changed at markedly different speeds. Kazakhstan’s experience is often described as a simple substitution of Lenin with Abai and communist terminology with the symbols of independence. The geography of renaming suggests something more precise: a centralized nation-building project whose reach depends on local demography and the political cost of opposition. Research documenting 6,832 cases across 37 cities between 1991 and 2019 shows the disparity. Five cities accounted for 72% of all recorded renamings: Shymkent had 1,767, Almaty 1,064, Astana 860, Aktobe 783, and Kyzylorda 470. Pavlodar recorded 34, Petropavl 28, Oskemen 23, and Rudny only two. Raw totals partly reflect city size and urban expansion, but the study’s statistical analysis identified both city status and ethnic composition as significant factors. Renaming occurred less frequently where the share of Slavic residents was higher, a pattern the author interpreted as evidence of greater state caution in ethnically mixed cities. The procedure helps explain why a national symbolic agenda produced such local variation. Proposals move through public consultation, local representative and executive bodies, and onomastic commissions. These stages do not guarantee that public preferences will determine the outcome, but they create points at which opposition can slow or redirect a proposal. Astana, extensively rebuilt after becoming the capital in 1997, could remake its urban identity quickly. Established industrial cities in the north and east moved more carefully. The contrast between what disappeared and what survived is equally revealing. Explicitly ideological names associated with Lenin, Marx, Engels, and the October Revolution became far less common, while Almaty retained streets named after Soviet scientists, writers, and figures connected to Kazakhstan’s development. The authorities did not treat every Soviet reference alike. They separated communist ideology from cultural and intellectual contribution, producing selective de-Sovietization rather than wholesale symbolic purification. Municipal practice further complicates a purely nationalist reading. Official data from Kyzylorda for 2025 lists 874 city streets: 497 named after individuals, 270 after localities and water features, and 107 carrying conventional names. This snapshot does not identify which streets were renamed, but it shows that the present naming system encompasses historical figures, local geography, and ordinary municipal conventions. In the expanding Arai-Shugyla neighborhood, seven previously unnamed streets received names drawn from localities and water features. Onomastic policy was therefore organizing new urban space as well as redistributing historical visibility. Naming new streets and replacing old ones use the same administrative machinery, although their political consequences are not always comparable. The politics became clearer when...

Women's History

Opinion: A Century Apart, Two Official Visions of Uzbek Womanhood

A century ago, in 1926, the Russian-language Uzbek newspaper Pravda Vostoka published an appeal to the “working women of the Soviet East” written by Clara Zetkin – a Marxist and a women’s rights advocate from Germany. In its appeal for women’s unveiling, it asked where the mullahs had been while women suffered through the “dark past” and promised that Soviet law now shone “bright rays” over a liberated and free Soviet present. It closed not with a tribute to women, but with a slogan: “Forward to socialism! Always ready to fight for world revolution!” There was a significant problem with this text. Literacy among Uzbek women was extremely low, particularly in rural areas, and those who could read generally read Uzbek rather than Russian. Historian Marianne Kamp documents this gap in her book The New Woman in Uzbekistan. The article calling women to political consciousness was, therefore, not directly accessible to the overwhelming majority of its stated audience. That gap is not just a flaw in the propaganda or evidence of its exaggerated reach. Rather, it explains how the propaganda worked. A Russian newspaper speaking to Uzbek women who largely could not read it depended on party cadres, activists, public readings, meetings, and other literate intermediaries who could disseminate the message in Uzbek. It did not address an existing constituency so much as construct one – handing local organisers a model of the politically awakened Soviet woman they were expected to promote in villages where practically no woman could have read the article herself. [caption id="attachment_54189" align="aligncenter" width="1774"] Uzbek women in the old city of Tashkent before going out into the street on International Women’s Day, March 8, 1924. Photo: Public domain.[/caption] The “working women of the Soviet East” were therefore both an audience and an emerging political category. That category served a larger claim the Soviet state was making about Central Asia: that the region was “backward” and required revolutionary socialist transformation. In Soviet rhetoric, as in some earlier Russian imperial writing, the condition of women became one of the principal measures by which a society’s level of development was judged. A society’s position on the imagined path from feudalism to modernity could be read from whether its women were veiled or unveiled, secluded or employed, illiterate or educated. Transforming women’s appearance and public role offered the state an especially visible means of demonstrating that Central Asia was leaving its supposedly backward past behind. This does not mean that Soviet female emancipation was merely an empty disguise for imperial domination. Many contemporary works by historians such as Adrienne Edgar, Marianne Kamp, and Shoshana Keller showcase the genuine changes produced by Soviet literacy campaigns, education, employment, family law, and women’s political participation. Soviet gender policy did not simply reproduce the restrained paternalism of the tsarist administration. It attempted, and in many ways succeeded, at a much more radical transformation in the realm of gender politics. What it does complicate is who was doing the defining. It is tempting to read...

Historical Archives

Berlin Archive Reveals Rare Records of Uzbekistan’s Past

A centuries-old archive in Berlin holds documents on Central Asia from two pivotal periods: the Russian Empire’s expansion into Turkestan in the second half of the 19th century and the first decades of Soviet rule. The materials include diplomatic correspondence and German accounts of the Turkestan-Siberian Railway. Other papers concern Soviet policies toward nomadic communities and a student from Tashkent who lived in Germany in the early 1930s. The materials are held by the Prussian Secret State Archives (Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz, GStA PK) in Berlin. Muhayyo Isakova, a senior researcher at the National Archive of Uzbekistan, identified documents concerning present-day Uzbekistan and neighboring territories. Despite its name, GStA PK is a public archive. Its origins date to the 13th century, and it has occupied its purpose-built home in Berlin’s Dahlem district since 1924. One of the earliest groups of documents dates to 1865, when the Russian Empire was expanding into Central Asia. Russian forces captured Tashkent in June of that year. In 1867, the city became the capital of the newly established Turkestan Governor-Generalship. The archive preserves official correspondence involving Karl Hermann von Thile, then an undersecretary in the Prussian Foreign Ministry.. The documents describe political developments in Turkestan and related diplomatic affairs, offering a Prussian perspective on Russia’s expansion into Central Asia. Other materials date from the early Soviet period. German publicist and researcher Georg Cleinow traveled through Central Asia in 1928 and 1929. He visited Tashkent and Bukhara before continuing through Semirechye to Alma-Ata. Cleinow paid particular attention to the Turkestan-Siberian Railway, a major infrastructure project of the early Soviet period. His reports addressed the railway’s geopolitical significance and Soviet policies to settle nomadic communities. They also covered land and water reforms and national-territorial delimitation. Cleinow later examined the railway in his book Roter Imperialismus: Eine Studie über die Verkehrsprobleme der Sowjetunion, published in Berlin by Julius Springer in 1931. Two sections deal directly with the railway, including Die Turksib als soziales Experiment (The Turksib as a Social Experiment). The papers of German Orientalist Carl Heinrich Becker, who was Prussia’s minister of culture, contain correspondence about Vali Kayum Khan, a Tashkent native who came to Germany to study in 1922. One letter, dated March 30, 1933, was written by Becker’s son Walter shortly after his father’s death. It says Kayum Khan had previously received Becker’s support but was left in serious financial difficulty after the Nazis came to power. Walter Becker sought funding for Kayum Khan and explored how he might continue his education outside Germany. The letter mentions an appeal to Stephen Duggan, a founder of the Institute of International Education, for help arranging further study in the United States. Kayum Khan’s activities during World War II make the 1933 letter especially notable: he worked with Nazi Germany and led the United States Turkestan Committee. The correspondence offers a little-known view of Central Asia’s connections with German academic circles in the 1920s and 1930s. Alongside the 19th-century diplomatic reports, Cleinow’s papers show how German officials and researchers viewed the region during two different...

Political Memory

Opinion: The Specter Is Back – A Kazakh Warning to America

I was educated and began my career under Soviet communism in Kazakhstan. For many Americans, communism may sound like a policy argument. For us, it is also family memory — famine, confiscation, repression, camps and fear, all justified in the language of equality and justice. When communism returns to the American political debate, people from Kazakhstan listen carefully. “A specter is haunting Europe, the specter of communism.” That is how The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels began in 1848. Nearly two centuries later, the specter has not disappeared. It has changed its vocabulary, its political costumes and its geography. But the old temptation remains. It promises justice by concentrating power. In late June, U.S. President Donald Trump warned that communism was the greatest threat to the United States, greater, he said, than World War I, World War II, Pearl Harbor, or September 11. His language was characteristically blunt. Critics were right to say that democratic socialism is not the same thing as Soviet communism, and that the word “communist” should not be used carelessly in ordinary partisan debate. Still, the historical concern behind the warning should not be dismissed. Not every welfare program is communism. Not every democratic socialist is a Bolshevik. Every modern state helps its citizens in some form. The real question is when help becomes control. When does compassion become coercion? When does the state begin claiming the right to decide prices, property, production, speech and moral legitimacy in the name of “the people”? People who lived under communism know the danger. Why a Kazakh Voice Belongs in This Debate For an outside observer, it may seem strange that socialism and communism are again being debated in the United States, the stronghold of advanced capitalism, as Soviet theorists once described it. Yet the explanation is not mysterious. Congressional elections are approaching. Recent primary victories by candidates who identify with democratic socialism have brought these questions back into mainstream American politics. Of course, this does not mean the United States is on the eve of a Bolshevik revolution. America has elections, courts, private property, constitutional limits, and a free press. The Soviet Union had none of these in any meaningful sense. That distinction should be kept clear. But the first words of any political movement should be taken seriously. The early promises are usually humane. They speak of fairness, dignity, affordability, workers, tenants, food, and peace. Only later does society discover how much power must be handed to the state to make those promises real. The Democratic Socialists of America describes itself as the largest socialist organization in the United States and says working people should run “both the economy and society democratically” to meet human needs rather than profits. To many Americans, that may sound compassionate. To those of us trained in Marxist-Leninist doctrine, it also sounds familiar. I am not a political scientist or a specialist in party-building. I am simply a person who, because of my age, studied under the communists and...

Nuclear Legacy

Kurchatov: Kazakhstan’s Atomic City Finds New Life After Nuclear Tests

Strong winds, scorching sun, abandoned five-story apartment blocks standing next to occupied homes, crows and horses wandering the streets: this is how Kurchatov appears to visitors today. Once closed to outsiders, the city was the heart of Soviet nuclear science and military power. More than three decades after the closure of the Semipalatinsk Nuclear Test Site, how does this unique corner of Kazakhstan live now? Construction of the test site began on August 21, 1947. It covered 18,500 square kilometers at the intersection of what are now the Abai, Pavlodar, and Karaganda regions. Two years later, on August 29, 1949, the Soviet Union conducted its first nuclear test here. Soviet nuclear scientists helped create the country’s “nuclear shield,” but it was Kazakhstan that decades later brought the tests to an end. On August 29, 1991, by decree of President Nursultan Nazarbayev, the Semipalatinsk test site was officially closed. Over 42 years, at least 456 nuclear tests were carried out at the site, affecting more than 1.5 million people. The history of Kurchatov began as a military garrison. Because of its secrecy, the city changed names several times, including “Moscow-400,” “Nadezhda,” and “Bereg.” It later became known as Kurchatov, after Soviet physicist Igor Kurchatov, although for many years it remained better known by its code name: Semipalatinsk-21. The first builders and military personnel lived in extremely harsh conditions. “At first, many lived in dugouts, and the walls froze through completely,” older residents recall. “In winter, hair froze to the beds, and fingers were often frostbitten.” “I came to serve here from Moldova and thought I was going to a regional center. Instead, they sent us into the steppe, to the dugouts. No electricity, no heating, no gas. Cold, mud, wind. But I stayed anyway. I got married and later brought my parents here,” Viktor Bordei, who has lived in Kurchatov for 47 years, told The Times of Central Asia. [caption id="attachment_51250" align="aligncenter" width="1600"] Viktor Bordei, a resident of Kurchatov; image: TCA[/caption] For many who served at the test site, their work felt like a matter of honor. “We didn’t think about the consequences,” Bordei admits. “We believed we were strengthening the Soviet Union’s nuclear shield. Nobody spoke about the harm until Nazarbayev announced the damage done to nature and people. Of course, it’s painful to realize we were kept in the dark.” Over time, memories of that period have become intertwined with nostalgia. Former residents recall developed infrastructure, well-stocked stores, and strict order. After the military left, Kurchatov took years to recover, losing both people and housing while preserving the spirit of its unusual past. “I remember how the walls shook during the explosions. I also remember the day the military left. It was frightening, and nobody knew what would happen next. Now it hurts to see abandoned buildings and horses wandering the streets, but I don’t want to leave. The city is changing, and I believe in it,” says local resident Elena Kazachuk, who was born in Kurchatov. Zoya Lapshina...

TCA Interviews

Ukrainian Ambassador to Kazakhstan: From Chornobyl to Zaporizhzhia – Lessons Humanity Risks Forgetting

April 26 marks a date that changed the course of world history. This year marks the 40th anniversary of the Chornobyl nuclear disaster, one of the world’s worst nuclear accidents, the consequences of which are still felt today. In an interview with The Times of Central Asia, Ukraine’s Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to Kazakhstan, Victor Mayko, spoke about the scale of the tragedy and emerging threats to nuclear safety. TCA: Forty years have passed. Why does Chornobyl remain a relevant issue today? Ambassador Mayko: Because it is not a story that has ended. It is an ongoing process, the consequences of which continue to unfold. Chornobyl is not only the explosion of a reactor; it is the long-term impact on people, nature, and the economy. In terms of scale, it is, without exaggeration, the largest manmade disaster in human history. TCA: What exactly defines that scale? Ambassador Mayko: First and foremost, the territory. Around 150,000 square kilometers were contaminated. The most dangerous area is the 10-kilometer zone. Isotopes were recorded there that had not previously been observed; they were formed as a result of processes during the explosion. According to estimates, this territory will only become suitable for habitation in about 20,000 years, once the decay of radioactive isotopes reaches safe levels. These were fertile lands, chernozem soils suitable for agriculture. Today, the area is a protected zone, essentially a vast natural reserve where wild animals live. But this is a forced outcome. TCA: As far as we know, you were personally a liquidator. What did you witness? Ambassador Mayko: I was sent there through mobilization. I spent almost a month at the plant, in two rotations. I saw people working on the reactor roof, clearing debris and removing radioactive materials. These were difficult, frightening scenes. People went there understanding the risk, but not always fully realizing its scale. TCA: How many people were affected? Ambassador Mayko: We still don’t know the exact figures. The Soviet system concealed information. I believe the immediate death toll was at least 10,000. But if we include those who later died from radiation-related illnesses, thyroid cancer, stomach cancer, and others, the number rises into the hundreds of thousands. In total, around 600,000 people took part in the cleanup. That is an enormous figure. TCA: Why was information about the accident concealed for so long? Ambassador Mayko: Because the system was built that way. Until the radioactive cloud moved beyond the borders of the USSR, there was silence. Only when elevated radiation levels were detected in Sweden, Finland, and the United Kingdom did international inquiries begin. Then the Soviet Union was forced to acknowledge the accident. TCA: How did this affect people in the first days? Ambassador Mayko: People continued living their normal lives. On May 1, there was a public demonstration. I was there myself with my family, with a small child. No one warned us about the danger. Many felt throat irritation and coughing, but didn’t understand the cause. If people had been...