Bektursunov, Mirlan | 京都大学 東南アジア地域研究研究所

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Interview with Mirlan Bektursunov »

What are your favorite things?

Reading
Reading for relaxation is one of my two consistent hobbies. Ideally, a considerable part of my professional working hours should consist of reading and writing for my research project. However, I often catch myself reading on a variety of topics that are not directly related to my research and which I enjoy just for the sake of reading (sort of a guilty pleasure). While my favorite subject used to be Russian literature of the 19th and 20th centuries, now it is more about individual psychology, classical Greek philosophy, and historical books about different world regions and societies. 

Walking
I have had motion sickness since childhood, so I have always had difficulty riding any form of transport. I lived in Sapporo for ten years, and from April to October, I used to ride a bicycle, only resorting to public transportation in the winter months. However, in the last two years, I’ve picked up probably my second most consistent hobby—walking. I walk eight kilometers a day (at least, according to Google Maps) to and from my workplace, even in the winter. I try not to think deeply while walking. Still, as you cannot stop your mind from focusing on specific subjects at will, I often find myself walking and thinking about my research projects. Surprisingly, this works well for me, as I often come up with interesting research insights, especially on my walk home.

Playing with my kids
I have two daughters, who are eight and four years old. Just spending time alongside them on sunny Saturdays in a nearby park or cycling and engaging in micro adventures is so relaxing for me. They also suffer from motion sickness, so we are in the same situation as a family. Therefore, we mostly spend our time playing and cycling in parks, doing outside exercise, eating sushi, watching Japanese anime, and doing a lot of crafting.

Interview


Building of “Nomadic Socialism”: State and Society in the Making of Soviet Kyrgyzstan


01

Please tell us about your research.

In my home country, Kyrgyzstan, we often joke that “every taxi driver in Bishkek is potentially a professor of political science,” because whenever you get in a taxi, the driver ends up talking to you about local politics (or maybe you’re the one talking to the driver). Growing up in a politically contentious society, I naturally became interested in modern political systems in developing countries. I was particularly interested in understanding how the political processes in Central Asia are explained from the perspective of modern comparative politics. However, I soon realized that merely explaining the “now” was not enough, as the current situation had deep roots and a specific history of its own. Therefore, when I decided to pursue my master’s degree at Hokkaido University, I already had a plan to study the history of nomadic Central Asia with a focus on Kyrgyzstan.

Initially, I decided to investigate the history of the Central Asian national republics during the early Soviet period (1920s). I explored the role of national elites in Soviet state-sponsored nation-building processes. Did the Central Asian national elites have any leverage in their interactions with the Soviet center, or was it a one-way decision-making process dominated by Moscow? These investigations resulted in three journal articles written in Russian, Japanese, and English. In these articles, I argued that the Soviet nation-building process was contingent upon many local conditions, and not everything was decided in Moscow. On the contrary, most decisions in Central Asia originated among the local elites rather than their supervisors in the center.

Most importantly, I revealed that an excessive focus on the activities of national elites within the borders of a given republic obscures their cross-cultural and cross-ethnic interactions with representatives of other ethnic groups in the region. I also urged scholars to closely examine the interactions of different national elites with each other, as the socially and politically integrated Central Asian space (the Turkestan Governor-Generalship) during the Russian Imperial period (1860s-1917) was more natural and common for them.

While writing about national republics, elites, and their interactions with the Soviet center and among themselves, I became increasingly aware that Central Asian Soviet studies were overly focused on “high politics,” while simultaneously ignoring a large segment of society that neither spoke Russian nor understood the Soviet state’s policies of sovietization. I realized that despite the importance of unpacking the socialist system in Central Asia from the perspective of the state and the national elite, we scholars had become too fixated on the normative conceptual and chronological frameworks offered by the official Soviet discourse.

To deconstruct the discursive reality of the Soviet state, I delved deeper into society, seeking to understand how nomads in localities made sense of, domesticated, and proactively exploited the new socialist constraints. In doing so, I discovered how the most potent social construct among Kyrgyz nomads at that time, the lineage logic, played a crucial role in state-society relations, overshadowing all other considerations. The first part of this inquiry will be published in the first issue of the journal Ab Imperio in the summer of 2024.


02

Can you share with us an episode about any influential people, things, and places you have encountered whilst doing your research.

I consider myself undeservedly blessed to have been mentored by some of the very best specialists in their field. Two people in particular have shaped me as both a scholar and a human being. The first is my former supervisor at Bishkek State University, Nami Ujihara. It was she who first instilled in me a passion for scientific curiosity and for working with people in professional settings. The second person who has been a tremendous source of inspiration to me is Uyama Tomohiko. His expertise spans a broad range of topics related to Central Asia, Central Eurasia, Imperial Studies, and comparative politics. I have yet to meet another person with such a deep understanding of all the nuances of the history and contemporary issues of the former Soviet space.


03

How do you overcome the difficulties in putting together the results of your research into a research paper or book?

I struggle every time I try to articulate my ideas into concise and yet refined and elaborate sentences. This realization was one of the reasons why I started walking every day. I understood that, in my case, my research ideas seemed promising only when they were confined to my mind, but once exposed to the light of day, they appeared marginal. In this age of information overload, producing an original work requires time and patience like never before. In turn, finding one’s originality brings immense pleasure to the research process (which we lack most of the time). I think Daniel Kahneman’s idea about Thinking, Fast and Slow is crucial for any research activity. Hence, I make a conscious effort to engage in unhurried walks, contemplating the intricate concepts, ideas, and structures of my research project and actively engaging in taking notes and partial writings.


04

Do you have any essential reads (books) that you can recommend to younger people?

Although most of the books that have recently inspired me come from the field of Central Eurasian studies, they may not be directly related to Southeast Asia.

Adeeb Khalid’s works are particularly noteworthy, and his 2021 masterpiece, Central Asia: A New History from the Imperial Conquests to the Present offers invaluable insights into the wider Central Asian region, including East Turkestan (Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region in China).

Alexander Morrison’s 2020 book, The Russian Conquest of Central Asia: A Study in Imperial Expansion, 1814–1914, provides an excellent reference for understanding the mechanics of the Russian Empire’s conquest of Central Asia and serves as a valuable resource for other imperial expansionist projects.

Nomads and the Outside World, written by Anatoly M. Khazanov in 1984 has been a classic since its first publication, offering invaluable insights for researchers interested in understanding the nomadic world.

Writers and Rebels: The Literature of Insurgency in the Caucasus, Rebecca Gould’s 2016 book, explores historical anticolonial violence and its representation in literature in three Caucasian states: the Chechen Republic, Dagestan, and Georgia. This book has shown me new directions for growth as a researcher and writer.


05

What is your ideal image of a researcher, and do you have any advice for those who aim to become researchers?

My ideal image of a researcher is someone who thinks and engages with ideas and concepts within their specific field or topic and across disciplines. And most importantly, they are keenly aware of the limitations of human knowledge. 


06

What are your future ambitions as a scholar?

One of my current goals is to publish the monograph that I am currently working on. Broadly speaking, it will focus on the convergence and evolution of traditional institutions among Central Asia’s nomads under the institutional impositions of the Russian imperial and Soviet regimes.

 (May 2024)

Mirlan Bektursunov is a research fellow with a background in area studies who mainly focuses on 19th and 20th-century Central Asian history. His main research interests cover such topics as studies of the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union, nomadism, modernization, colonialism, and decolonization. His professional career began in Japan rather than his home country, Kyrgyzstan. In September 2022, he defended his PhD thesis on nomadic culture and tradition in the late Russian Empire and the early Soviet Union period. He is currently writing his first monograph based on his doctoral thesis. His articles have been published in such journals as Central Asian SurveySurabu kenkyu, and Ab Imperio (forthcoming).


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