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DFG Research Training Group 2571 "Empires. Dynamic Change, Temporality and Post-Imperial Orders"
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Verena Zabel

Portrait of Verena Zabel, doctoral student, wearing a black shirt with floral pattern, in front of a neutral background

Verena Zabel

Doc

PhD project: “From Modernisation to Catastrophe. The Soviet Empire in Literature from Qazaqstan”

In my dissertation, I explore how the Soviet empire is depicted in Russophone and Qazaq literature from Qazaqstan from an interdisciplinary point of view, combining literary studies and history. For this, I focus on two main topics that reflect the shift in narratives about the Soviet Union in Qazaq literature: the desiccation of the Aral Sea and the nuclear test site Semipalatinsk. During the height of Socialist Realism, depicting the Soviet Union in terms of modernisation and progress was standard procedure. While some critiques appear early on particularly in the Qazaq equivalent to Village Prose, i.e. prose that is situated in rural Qazaq auls (qaz. Village), this change becomes more openly visible throughout the 1980s. Importantly, first through engagement with the ecological catastrophe of the Aral Sea, and only since the late 1980s with literary reflections on the nuclear test site Semipalatinsk. In the late 1980s and early 1990s this culminates in the catastrophic and even apocalyptic storytelling of Russophone author Seisenbaev that postulates the Soviet Union as a chain of catastrophes. Another important depiction of the Soviet Union as catastrophe is reflected in the work of Qazaq language author and playwright Roza Muqanova. She wrote a short story about nucear testing in 1990 which was adapted for stage in 1996 and continues to be widely popular to this day. In her play, Muqanova moves beyond Seisenbaev’s catastrophic and apocalyptic storytelling to an almost cathartic experience that relives trauma in order to overcome it.

This narrative shift from modernity to catastrophe is also reflected in the broader socio-political discourse, reflected in sources such as newspapers and archival material. Taken together, the dissertation traces literary, social and political discourses about two Soviet catastrophes: the desiccation of the Aral Sea and nuclear testing to show how visions of modernity and catastrophe are interwoven with, compliment, and condition each other. Simultanesouly, both visions are heavily informed not only by socio-political or cultural points of view or by interpretations of history, but, importantly, by interpretations of time and temporalities. Past, present and future, then, exist not only as distinct temporal planes, but are constantly intervowen and implicated in the visions of modernity and catastrophe built and dismantled in Soviet and Post-Soviet Qazaqstan.

Publications