There has been variation in top-down state-building and nation-building projects since independence,⁶ but some popular imaginaries of Kyrgyz state-ness and elite self-legitimation have involved Russia and the Russian leadership. Popular desires to associate with Russia usually go hand in hand with narratives of fragile statehood. Political power in the region is often perceived as plagued by corruption and nepotism, which is compounded by the fact that the Kyrgyz state often fails to meet the expectations of its citizens. In addition, Kyrgyzstan went through three popular revolts with ensuing economic crises and interethnic conflict, which adds to the feeling of permanent instability. In longing for a strong state, ordinary citizens have borrowed from omnipresent Russian state TV channels hot images of a resolute Putin taming the oligarchs and increasing people’s living standards. In many discussions with Kyrgyz citizens, Russia appears as an economically and militarily robust state, while the Russian leadership symbolizes a type of a sovereign that many in Kyrgyzstan wish for.

Ortmann notes that the presence of “Russia” in popular understandings of Kyrgyz state-ness and the legitimation of Kyrgyz elites is so pervasive that it led to a striking blurring of spatial imaginaries of domestic/foreign. For example, it was “normal” for electoral campaigns of Kyrgyz political parties and independent candidates to have Putin in their visibility materials and electoral agendas. Electoral banners displayed local candidates shaking hands with Russian politicians as the most effective campaign message. An electoral law had to be introduced in 2011 banning the display of foreign leaders in Kyrgyz presidential campaigns.⁷ Yet Kyrgyz candidates – both regime and oppositional – publicly sought Russian support, paying the Kremlin visits shortly before the elections. A political party called SSSR (standing for USSR) made union with Russia a central piece of their program. Kyrgyz elites have made statements about ceding independence and becoming part of Russia, including such high-level politicians as Felix Kulov, one of the two main candidates for president in 2005.

On the societal level, people used to envisage joining Russia as one of its republics, if not just a province, at the time of internal conflicts or tensions with bigger neighbors.⁸ Further blurring of spatial imaginaries is reflected in the mobile livelihoods developed by labor migrants. In 2015, during my fieldwork ahead of parliamentary elections, people in the southern provinces were saying, “I don’t vote. What for, if Russia feeds me?” Migrants would say that the space between Russia and Kyrgyzstan is one continuum in the ways people can earn a living in between the two countries, in the ways people enjoy double pensions and state allowances, etc. One female migrant told me in a focus group discussion conducted in 2018, speaking on the topic of great power influences: “going to Russia for us is like going to a grocery store to buy bread. It is that easy. Whereas China has been forever closed off for ordinary people like us. We don’t know China, whereas we know Russia and the Russian people well.”⁹ This spatial blurring makes migrants pay less attention to the lived experiences of xenophobia and racism in Russia and prioritize other existential concerns and pragmatic possibilities.

But Russian influence is not static and has been questioned and subverted or endorsed by ordinary citizens on numerous occasions. The invasion of Ukraine is one such big occasion. In spring 2022, I conducted qualitative focus group discussions in all provinces of Kyrgyzstan, where I included questions on the invasion. While the sample of these focus groups is not representative, their results can be useful in outlining the main lines of thinking among the population. On the issue 175 participants of focus groups were polarized, partly along a generational divide. The majority of respondents deplored the war as an unnecessary tragic development, while roughly one third of respondents between 18 and 35 condemned Putin outright, another third of respondents between 40 and 60 supported the Russian leader, and the rest had difficulty formulating an opinion. The latter might be related to the distance of Ukraine from people’s daily concerns and news consumption.

Younger participants condemned Putin for meddling in the affairs of a sovereign nation, showing strong support for an independent politics in Ukraine. But only a few made critical reflections about the ways ethnic groups have been instrumentalized for the purposes of Russian and Soviet wars of 1916 (the Steppe revolt),¹⁰ the Second World War¹¹ and the Soviet-Afgan war.¹² I attribute this failure to see parallels with one’s history to Kyrgyzstan’s unaddressed colonial past and fragmented memory politics. Neither history textbooks nor university curriculum critically assess these major historical events. As we know from other examples, secondary and higher education can remain a product of coloniality long after independence. However, Elmira Nogoybaeva, the head of the Kyrgyz Research Center Esimde, which conducts important public research related to memory of the past, says memories are transmitted orally and by collective practices from one generation to the other, and hence this knowledge persists within society if even fragmentarily.¹³

What was interesting about those who supported Putin is that they echoed Russian state propaganda word for word. There were typical references to the “evil West” that provoked Putin and that Russia was only defending itself. There were also references to the shared history and culture, however. Many seniors underscored their nostalgia for the “great Soviet Union,” because Soviet identity provided them with a feeling of being part of a bigger, glorious project. The present-day Kyrgyzstan, with its perceived ever-corrupt elites and ineffective state, could not but offend that image of a great past.

So, this nostalgia serves as a bridge between past Soviet belonging and current loyalty to Russia as the USSR’s main successor. The catastrophic transition in the 90s, together with the ongoing difficulties in building a new identity, explains the longevity of nostalgia as an identity specific to the older generation in Kyrgyzstan. From their perspective, the net effects of association with Russia are positive for the Kyrgyz people. “What is bad about a closer partnership with Russia? Russia is building schools, providing teachers with salaries and our children with a hot meal. Russia has opened its doors to our migrants, in the absence of jobs at home, and they can feed their families. Russia sells us its cheap gas and fuel. Kyrgyzstan has only benefited from the partnership.”¹⁴

Among this older generation there were, however, also those who categorically disapproved of Russia’s war against Ukraine. While having lived in the same Soviet Union, they were aware of the other, dark side of the Soviet modernization experiment. These citizens were able to connect to the pain of Ukrainians through their own experiences of subjugation during the Soviet period.¹⁵ They see in present-day Ukraine the possibility of getting rid at last of Russian domination. “Despite the official discourse of Soviet brotherhood and sisterhood, Russians always came first. If at work and there was just one Russian, we all had to speak Russian. Russians were promoted faster than us. Our village boys and girls received the worst treatment due to their bad Russian. How much humiliation we had to swallow due to this daily feeling of inferiority. Today, our boys and girls are still treated as animals in Moscow.”¹⁶

Still others were focused on realpolitik: they see Kyrgyzstan as being geographically stuck between two major powers, and Russia’s defeat would mean falling into China’s hands. The considerable Sinophobia in the country, built up over decades, creates a false geopolitical binary in which Russia appears as a lesser evil. Moreover, strong anti-Americanism, spread by Russian state propaganda and the domestic regime, helps rooting Russian power in these places further. For the majority Muslim population of Kyrgyzstan, Western presence in the region only means LGBT rights, feminism and NGOs, which have been vilified in past decades. Thus, Putin’s conservative ideology centered on family values, religion and clearcut hierarchies between man and woman, between state and society serves as a frame that helps to make sense of larger geopolitical developments.

Despite these diverse opinions, when asked how the Kyrgyz government should respond to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the respondents agreed that due to the heavy historical dependence on Russia, the Kyrgyz government must not openly oppose Putin. These typical narratives of fragile statehood were recently further deepened by the escalating conflict between Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. During Tajik aggression in Kyrgyzstan’s border areas in Batken in September 2022, the Russia-led CSTO did little to intervene and deescalate the conflict. Moreover, in Batken and other southern provinces rumors among civilians were spreading about Russia’s backing of Emomali Rahmon, the president of Tajikistan.¹⁷

People I spoke to at that time were associating this shifting Russian allegiance toward the Tajik leadership with the invasion of Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan’s position on it. For them, the escalation of the conflict was nothing else but a signal from the Kremlin that should Kyrgyzstan dare to support Ukraine, the punishment from Russia would be swift. Local people were angry with fellow activists who had been staging anti-war and pro-Ukraine protests in the capital of Bishkek – a careless act of rocking the boat, according to them.

Whereas in the previous essay I looked at various grassroots initiatives that aimed at countering Russian hegemony, in this memo I drew on large segments of society who still entertain positive representations of Russia. Because of the ways Russia has been intertwined in people’s understandings of Kyrgyz sovereignty, there is currently resistance to believe that Russia, their historical ally, can be wrong. Hence consumption of only certain mass media is a choice that serves to maintain the image of Russia that people got used to from previous times. Until recently, popular representations of Russia in Kyrgyzstan were hegemonic. However, they are neither permanent nor stable. Future entanglements with Russia will depend not only on developments in Ukraine, but also in Russia. If images of declining Russian military and economic strength come in, they may shake up the established representations of Russia in Kyrgyzstan.

More importantly, they will evolve alongside the ability of the current populist regime to shift sources of legitimacy and sovereignty on the one hand, and their perception by the population on the other. Current unresolved security threats to the border areas and the unreliable Russia-led regional security mechanisms argue for cautious changes within President Sadyr Japarov’s government. Russia’s decision not to intervene in Batken shook up popular imaginaries of Russia as Kyrgyzstan’s unfailing ally. Further diversification of partners in the direction of Asia and the Middle East and increased leaning on Turkic identity have become new avenues for shaping Kyrgyz sovereignty.