Contrast and Continuity in Colonial Genocide: The 1916 Urkun in Kyrgyzstan and the 1931-33 Asharshylyk in Kazakhstan

• In Event: The Evolution of Russian/Soviet Genocides of the Kyrgyz, Kazakhs, Ukrainians, Chechens, and Lithuanians in a Comparative Perspective

Abstract

The steppes and mountains of Central Asia were the site of two major democides in the twentieth century: the 1916 Urkun (Exodus) in Kyrgyzstan and the 1931-33 Asharshylyk (Famine) in Kazakhstan. Under very different colonial regimes (Imperial Russian and Soviet) in very different circumstances hauntingly similar dynamics played out for the victims of state violence. These included violent rebellion, state repression, dispossession, mass flight, devastating famine, and social marginalization. That such diametrically opposed ideological and governing regimes as the Tsarist and Soviet should produce different outcomes is a conundrum that will be addressed, as well as the question as to whether both states should be characterized as settler colonial states.

Author

• Matthew John Payne, Emory U