Programme: accepted abstracts

Abstract ID: 1217

Part of Session 133: Ethnicity, Language and Culture in a Post-Soviet Multi-Ethnic City (Other abstracts in this session)

Staying Urban, Becoming Urban in Post-Soviet Central Asia: Cultural Worlds and Language Behavior in Bishkek

Authors: Kosmarskaya, Natalya
Submitted by: Kosmarskaya, Natalya (Institute of Oriental Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences, Russian Federation)

Bishkek (former Frunze), capital of Kyrgyzstan, provides a unique ground for exploring diversity of cultural orientations and practices in a post-Soviet transitional society and their inter-linkages with language behavior of various ethno-cultural groups.

From the one hand, Kyrgyzstan has followed route of many other former Soviet republics launching “national revival” campaign which, together with a socio-economic turmoil, provoked massive out-migration of Russians and other Russian-speakers during the first post-Soviet decade. From the other hand, due to a combination of subjective and objective reasons, Kyrgyz turned out to be one of the most Russified ethnic groups in the FSU and the most Russified in Central Asia. As a result, Kyrgyz population of the capital consisted, by 1991, mainly of the so-called urban Kyrgyz — Russified, modernized and tangibly different from their rural co-ethnics. Another consequence of Russification of titular group lies in the legislative sphere: Kyrgyzstan is one of the few post-Soviet states where Russian was proclaimed (on a constitutional level) as the official language.

Two more contradictory factors contribute to a specificity of Bishkek as a ground of linguistic and cultural interaction. The country’s openness to external (Western) cultural influences supports modernizing trend in the urban linguistic-cultural landscape. Massive inflow of Kyrgyz seeking better life in the city (since the late 1980s it has tried to withstand pressures of the three waves of internal migration from depressive rural areas) contributes, on the contrary, to de-modernization of urban order and lifestyle.

One might expect the city to be divided into two cultural worlds, with this division being supported by a spatial and linguistic boundary: city centre and micro-districts of multi-storied buildings of late socialism — zone of habitual settlement of “old residents” (Russians-speakers and “urban Kyrgyz”) widely using Russian both in private and public spheres, in inter- and intra-ethnic communication, versus “migration belt” of Bishkek — vast zones of small self-built houses, without modern facilities, where only Kyrgyz is spoken.

However, the picture is more complicated and diverse at both ends. The paper seeks to highlight vibrant diversity of cultural worlds in present-day Bishkek as they are experienced and narrated by the city residents of various ethno-cultural origin. Questions of a special interest for the author include:

- interdependence between individual’s ability to upgrade cultural repertoires and her/his linguistic competence, as compared with the respective role of educational level and social status;

- forms and scale of resilience to pressures of ruralized popular cultures brought by rural migrants;

- urban cultural spaces as scenes of cultural encounter between “old residents” and migrants of different waves;

- incorporation of traditionalized cultural practices into urban cultural setting; rise of “symbiosis cultures”;

- most efficient strategies of “staying urban”, for the “old residents”, and “becoming urban”, for rural migrants, under existing conditions of social turmoil in present-day Kyrgyzstan.

Field-work was conducted in autumn 2008 and spring 2011 within the framework of the international research project “Exploring Urban Identities and Community Relations in Post-Soviet Central Asia” funded by the Leverhulme Trust (the UK, 2008-2012).

Sociolinguistics Symposium 19

Programme: accepted abstracts

Staying Urban, Becoming Urban in Post-Soviet Central Asia: Cultural Worlds and Language Behavior in Bishkek