At a meeting of the Kyrgyz-Russian Expert Council on History in Moscow, Russian scholars reviewing Kyrgyz secondary school textbooks reprimanded their Kyrgyz counterparts for describing the periods of Tsarist and Soviet rule as "colonialism." The Kyrgyz historians who authored the textbooks refused to bend to Moscow. Instead, they went on record to argue that both the Soviet and Tsarist regimes were indeed colonial in nature. 

Russian historians appear detached from the intense debates on the legacies of Russian occupation currently unfolding in Central Asia, as well as unable to extract loyalty to Russian culture from academic communities in the region.  

The perception of Russia in Kyrgyzstan has changed significantly since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Intellectuals in Bishkek no longer debate whether Russia’s occupation of the region was colonialism. Today’s decolonial discourse in Central Asia focus on exposing the atrocities commited under Russian rule through military campaigns, economic exploitation, nuclear testing and environmental degradation. 

Younger generations of scholars especially view Sovietization as an inherently colonial experience on par with Europe’s colonization of Africa and Asia. They are re-examining historical accounts written by Russian military conquerors and colonial ethnographers with a newfound critical perspective on the meaning of the modernity imposed on the Central Asian people. No amount of Soviet industrialization projects justifies purges and cultural and linguistic erasure.

For example, Soviet authorities praised 19th-century explorer Nikolai Przhevalsky for contributing to the establishment of Russian control over the region. But Przhevalsky infamously regarded Central Asians as uncivilized aborigines, stating, “The Kirghiz are a lazy, thieving people. You can hunt them, but you can’t eat them.” What also remained unexamined during the U.S.S.R. was that during........

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