Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 September 2021
This article investigates a series of events that occurred in Quaragandy, a postindustrial city in northern Kazakhstan in the mid-2010s. These events led to Evgenii Tankov, an established lawyer, hitting a judge, Arai Alshynbekov, with a fly swatter during a routine court session. This research demonstrates that Tankov's act was not a flash of rage or a real attempt to harm the judge. It was, instead, a calculated strategy in which a political statement was concealed if not sheathed within the form of a grotesque performance. Tankov knew he would be judged for disrespect towards the court: and yet he used his subsequent trial to demonstrate the moral and intellectual impasse of Kazakhstan's judicial system. This article claims that as a performance, Tankov's case is useful because it allows one to re-think the genre itself. Moreover, it argues that the form of the trial per se became a genre of political agency in contemporary Kazakhstan. As an example of political praxis, this case allows one to question the ways in which non-political actors produce and affirm their identities and create new forms of political agency in a reality in which political behavior is bounded by a postsocialist authoritarian state.
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2. The Cyrillic spelling (common during most of the Soviet epoch) for Quaragandy is “Karaganda.” For the Soviet accounts on the city see Mukanov, Sabit, Karaganda (Moscow, 1954)Google Scholar and Mustafin, Gabiden, Karaganda, trans. Gorbunov, K. (Moscow, 1957)Google Scholar. For a different picture of the city as part of Gulag, see Barnes, Steven A., “Reclaiming the Margins and the Marginal: Gulag Practices in Karaganda, 1930s,” in his Death and Redemption: The Gulag and the Shaping of Soviet Society (Princeton, 2011)Google Scholar; and Brown, Kate, “Gridded Lives: Why Kazakhstan and Montana are Nearly the Same Place,” The American Historical Review 106, no. 1 (February 2001): 17–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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5. Anar Bekbasova, “Kakovo eto—otshlepat’ sud΄iu mukhoboikoi. Evgenii Tankov,” Esquire.kz, September 25, 2016, at esquire.kz/kakovo-to-v-otshlepaty-sudyyu-muhoboykoy/ (accessed April 22, 2021).
6. Valentina Tankova (Evgenii Tankov’s mother), interview, Quaragandy, 2016, and Botagoz Omarova, interview, Almaty and Quaragandy, 2019. See also “‘Tri tovarishcha’ ot 27 08 2014 s Aleksandrom Shcheglovym. V podderzhku Evgeniia Tankova,” YouTube video, 28:50, posted by “Novoe Televidenie,” August 29, 2014, at youtube.com/watch?v=QfqlTruBw8E (accessed April 19, 2021).
7. Proceedings, July 18, 10:30 (91) and July 23, 10:30 (103). See also Anastasiia Mashnina, “Besobu vzryvat΄ be budut,” Novyi Vestnik, January 31, 2013, https://nv.kz/2013/01/31/48782/; and Svetlana Chekalova, “Gruppa riska,” Karavan, August 31, 2004.
8. A classical article on post-Soviet performance art remains Yurchak’s, Alexei “A Parasite from Outer Space: How Sergei Kurekhin Proved That Lenin Was a Mushroom,” Slavic Review 70, no. 2 (Summer 2011): 307–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Diana Kudaibergenova, “Prizraki, mankurty i prochee: ‘Postkolonialnoe’ iskusstvo v Tsentralnoi Azii,” Novoe Literaturnoe Obozrenie, no. 161 (2020): 175–99; Matt Flinders, “The Body Politic: Art, Pain, Putin,” in his What kind of democracy is this?: Politics in a Changing World (Bristol, 2017), 140–41; and Andrei Kovalëv, Rossiiskii aktsionizm, special issue of World Art Muzei, no. 28–29 (2007). For insights into political protest in Kazakhstan and Russia see Satpayev, Dossym and Umbetaliyeva, Tolganay, “The Protests in Zhanaozen and the Kazakh Oil Sector: Conflicting Interests in a Rentier State,” Journal of Eurasian Studies 6, no. 2 (July 2015): 122–29CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kazhegeldin, Akezhan, “Shattered Image: Misconceptions of Democracy and Capitalism in Kazakhstan,” Harvard International Review 22, no. 1 (Winter–Spring 2000): 76–79Google Scholar; Robertson, Graeme B., “Managing Society: Protest, Civil Society, and Regime in Putin’s Russia,” Slavic Review 68, no. 3 (Fall 2009): 528–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Reuter, Ora John and Robertson, Graeme B., “Legislatures, Cooptation, and Social Protest in Contemporary Authoritarian Regimes,” The Journal of Politics 77, no. 1 (January 2015): 235–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
9. For Pussy Riot see Anya Bernstein, “An Inadvertent Sacrifice: Body Politics and Sovereign Power in the Pussy Riot Affair,” Critical Inquiry 40, no. 1 (Autumn 2013): 220–41; Sophie Mayer, “The Size of a Song: Pussy Riot and the (People) Power of Poetry,” Soundings: A Journal of Politics and Culture, no. 54 (Summer 2013): 147–58; Tara Tuttle, “Deranged Vaginas: Pussy Riot’s Feminist Hermeneutics,” Journal of Religion and Popular Culture 28, no. 2–3 (Fall 2016): 67–80; and Catherine Schuler, “Reinventing the Show Trial: Putin and Pussy Riot,” The Drama Review 57, no. 1 (Spring 2013): 7–17.
10. Attention in the foreign media and international NGOs is usually focused on such figures while the invisible and routine court violence with respect to thousands of convictions that lead to unlawful sentences is treated with empty calls for improvement. See, for example, Human Rights Watch, “World Report 2015: Kazakhstan,” at hrw.org/world-report/2015/country-chapters/kazakhstan# (accessed April 20, 2021). My analysis echoes and confirms views expressed by Ella Paneyakh and Dina Rosenberg about Russia’s judicial system in the 2010s. For details see their “The Courts, Law Enforcement, and Politics” in Daniel Treisman, ed., The New Autocracy: Information, Politics, and Policy in Putin’s Russia (Washington, 2018), 362.
11. The literature on the judicial system’s role in the state’s legitimacy is massive. For a recent overview see Tom R. Tyler, Anthony Braga, Jeffrey Fagan, Tracey Meares, Robert Sampson, and Chris Winship, “Legitimacy and Criminal Justice: International Perspectives” in Tom R. Tyler, ed., Legitimacy and Criminal Justice: An International Perspective (New York, 2007), 9–29. See also Kathy Mack and Sharyn Roach Anleu, “Performing Impartiality: Judicial Demeanour and Legitimacy,” Law & Social Inquiry 35, no. 1 (Winter 2010): 137–73.
12. The new Civil Code, which came into effect in 2015, introduced fines for many trial subjects that had previously been punished through prison terms. It also introduced a new distinction between “criminal offences” and “crimes.” The former would be punished less severely, mainly through fines, public works, or short-term detentions. Beyond that, the approach to recidivism also changed to comprise fewer wrongdoings within the category of “repeated crime.” See United Nations Human Rights, Office of the High Commissioner, Resolution on Human Rights in the Administration of Justice, including Juvenile Justice, Joint Report of the Republic of Kazakhstan (Supreme Court, Ministry of Internal Affairs, Office of the Prosecutor General), 2015.
13. Evgenii Tankov, interview, Skype, May 2020.
14. Official data from Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs through prisonstudies.org/country/kazakhstan (accessed April 20, 2021).
15. Eduard Mukhametzhanov, “Sudebnaia reforma Republiki Kazakhstan 2019 goda,” Zakon.kz, March 29, 2019, at zakon.kz/4963698-sudebnaya-reforma-respubliki-kazahstan.html (accessed April 20, 2021).
16. For a summary on the implementation of those measures see The Supreme Court of Kazakhstan, Analytical Report on the realization of Kontseptsiia pravovoi politiki, 2010–2020, 2–4.
17. Proceedings, July 8, 2014, 10:30 (28).
18. Proceedings, July 8, 2014, 10:30 (6).
19. Proceedings, July 14, 2014, 14:30 (42).
20. Proceedings, July 14, 2014, 11:30 (50).
21. Proceedings, July 8, 2014, 10:30 (29).
22. Proceedings, July 8, 2014, 11:30 (42).
23. Proceedings, July 8, 2014, 11:30 (42–43).
24. Proceedings, July 14, 2014, 14:30 (58).
25. Proceedings, July 8, 2014, 10:30 (14).
26. Edward Hallett Carr, What is History? (London, 1987), 9–10.
27. Evgenii Tankov, interview, Skype, May 2020.
28. Ibid.
29. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Odin den΄ Ivana Denisovicha (Moscow, 2004), 79.
30. Proceedings, July 18, 2014, 10:30 (93).
31. Valentina Tankova, interview, Quaragandy, September 2016.
32. Proceedings, July 8, 2014, 10:30 (36).
33. There were ten sittings in total from July 8, 2014 to July 24, 2014.
34. Proceedings, July 8, 2014, 10:30 (20–28).
35. Mukhametzhanov, “Sudebnaia reforma Republiki Kazakhstan.”
36. Proceedings, July 8, 2014, 10:30 (13).
37. Proceedings, July 8, 2014, 10:30 (34).
38. Proceedings, July 8, 2014, 10:30 (36–38).
39. Proceedings, July 8, 2014, 10:30 (37).
40. Valentina Tankova, interview, Quaragandy, September 2016.
41. Proceedings, July 23, 2014, 10:30 (100–105).
42. Iuliana Chaus, “V Karagande otmetili ‘samyi sinii’ den΄,” KTK, June 13, 2011, at ktk.kz/ru/news/video/2011/06/13/12912/ (accessed April 22, 2021). After the first “orange” occurrence in 2011, their versions took place in Quaragandy annually in late spring or early summer. Furthermore, since 2014, despite Tankov’s arrest, activists from other cities in Kazakhstan and abroad joined the movement and organized similar events.
43. Another possible reference could have been to Allan Kaprow’s 18 Happenings in 6 Parts of 1959. In one of the spaces at the Reuben Gallery an orange was squeezed during Kaprow’s polyphonic show.
44. Vladimir Maiakovskii, “Vesennii vopros,” in his Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 13 vols. (Moscow, 1955–1961), 5:33. References to oranges were quite popular in Russian poetry in the early 20th century. They can be found in Maiakovskii’s own poems and in other Silver Century and early Soviet poets. In most of these poems, whatever was “orange” had bright and optimistic connotations, interchangeable with the “sun” and conveying similar semantic associations. See, for example, Vladimir Maiakovskii, Bolshoe sobranie stikhotvorenii i poem v odnom tome (Moscow, 2018), 780, 1258; Maksim Gor΄kii, “Idu mezhoi sredi ovsa,” in his Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. 11, Povesti, rasskazy, ocherki, stikhi, 1907–1917 gg. (Мoscow, 1971), 503, 603; Sasha Chernyi, “Apel΄sin,” in his Sobranie sochinenii v piati tomakh, 5 vols. (Moscow, 2007), 1:292; and Dmitrii Merezhkovskii, “Sineet more slishkom iarko” (1897), in his Izbrannye stikhotvoreniia (Moscow, 2017), 206.
45. Elena Ul΄iankina, “Sud absurda,” Novyi Vestnik, March 24, 2010, https://nv.kz/2010/03/24/16937/.
46. Evgenii Tankov, interview, Skype, May 2020.
47. The lamb horns were a reference to Nur-Otar, an oppositional political group which mocked the pro-government political party Nur Otan, whose name itself was a pun (“otar” in Kazakh means “sheep”). Nur-Otar became notorious through their performances that ridiculed parliament members who blindly supported all governmental legislation. Some information on the movement is available at nurotarkz.narod.ru (accessed April 22, 2021). A previous performance is available on “Nur Otar. Aktsiia u ofisa Nur Otana 29.12.2010,” YouTube video, 1:45, posted by “Kazakhstan in the lens,” December 29, 2010, at youtube.com/watch?v=w_fZcvHhd90 (accessed April 22, 2021).
48. Proceedings, July 14, 2014, 14:30 (60).
49. Kaija Kaitavuori, The Participator in Contemporary Art: Art and Social Relationships (London, 2018), 58–92.
50. See Adele Tan, “Lee Wen and the Untaming of Yves Klein: Art and the Iterative Force,” PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art 32, no. 2 (May 2010): 17–23; Mary Richards, Marina Abramović (London, 2010); Janet A. Kaplan, “Deeper and Deeper: Interview with Marina Abramovic,” Art Journal 58, no. 2 (Summer 1999): 6–19; and Cristina Demaria, “The Performative Body of Marina Abramović: Rerelating (in) Time and Space,” European Journal of Women’s Studies 11, no. 3 (August 2004): 295–307. See also Joseph Kosuth and Gabriele Guercio, ed., Art after Philosophy and After: Collected Writings, 1966–1990 (Cambridge, Mass., 1993).
51. In 2017 Pavlensky left Russia for France.
52. Shaun Walker, “Petr Pavlensky: why I nailed my scrotum to Red Square,” The Guardian, February 5, 2014, at theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/feb/05/petr-pavlensky-nailed-scrotum-red-square (accessed April 22, 2021).
53. For more on Kazakh artists, including performance artists, see Diana Kudaibergenova, “Between the State and the Artist: Representations of Femininity and Masculinity in the Formation of Ideas of the Nation in Central Asia,” Nationalities Papers 44, no. 2 (March 2016): 225–46.
54. Aibek Begalin, personal communication, Quaragandy, 2016. Photos and videos from the personal archive of Aibek Begalin.
55. Valeria Ibraeva, “Rustam Khalfin’s Art,” in Nadim Samman and Aliya Abykayeva-Tiesenhausen, eds., Rustam Khalfin: Seeing through the Artist’s Hand (London, 2007), 10.
56. For more on Rustam Hal΄fin see Aliya Abykayeva-Tiesenhausen, Central Asia in Art: From Soviet Orientalism to the New Republics (London, 2016), 250–51.
57. Saule Suleimenova, interview, Berlin, 2018, and Almaty, 2019.
58. Ibraeva, “Rustam Khalfin’s Art,” 10.
59. Ada Yu, interview, Paris, June and July 2019.
60. Kudaibergenova, “Between the State and the Artist,” 233–35.
61. “Gniushchei golove otrubili golovu,” Radio Azattyq, February 23, 2010, at rus.azattyq.org/a/1965783.html (accessed April 23, 2021).
62. Sanat Urnaliev, “Kanat Ibragimov: ‘S ostrova kannibalov na rabskie galery,’” Radio Azattyq, January 18, 2018, at rus.azattyq.org/a/kanat-ibragimov-artist-us-kazakhstan/28982145.html (accessed April 23, 2021).
63. Kudaibergenova, “Prizraki, mankurty i prochee.”
64. Ada Yu, interview, Paris, June and July 2019. For the aspects related to the bodily experience one could see Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phénoménologie de la perception (Paris, 1976).
65. Proceedings, July 14, 2014, 14:30 (59).
66. Ekaterina Samutsevich, another member of the group, was also arrested but later she was released because she had not been on stage during the performance.
67. Bernstein, “An Inadvertent Sacrifice,” 223.
68. Sentence of the Khamovnicheskii Court, August 17, 2012, Case no. 1–170/12, 41.
69. Bernstein, “An Inadvertent Sacrifice,” 223.
70. See, for example, Frida Vigdorova, Zapisi suda nad Iosifom Brodskim, 1960–1965, Fontanka, 22, Zal Kluba Stroitelei, arzamas.academy at https://arzamas.academy/materials/710 (last accessed May 7, 2020).
71. Marina Zateichuk, “Tekst prigovora Pussy Riot: Besovskie dryganiia, 15-e pravilo Laodiiskogo sobora, smeshannoe rasstroistvo lichnosti i drugie shedevry Hamovnicheskogo suda,” Republic.ru, August 22, 2012, at republic.ru/posts/l/821705 (accessed April 23, 2021).
72. “Prodolzhenie suda. Chast΄ 4/4. Karaganda. Delo Evgeniia Tankova. Kasatsiia,” YouTube video, 1:34 to 1:51, posted by “Tankov. Arkhiv”, November 18, 2014, at youtube.com/watch?v=_s4VmaFgbH4 (accessed April 23, 2021).
73. Nata Potëmkina, 12 world-famous live performances by Marina Abramović, at https://arthive.com/publications/3518~12_worldfamous_live_art_performances_by_Marina_Abramovi (accessed July 5, 2021, no date).
74. Proceedings, July 14, 2014, 14:30 (59).
75. Proceedings, July 14, 2014, 11:30 (50).
76. Proceedings, July 23, 2014, 10:30 (102–103).
77. Radio Ekho Moskvy, “Uslovno vash” (program), Alexeĭ Navalnyĭ in conversation with Egor Zhukov, March 25, 2020, at echo.msk.ru/programs/conditional/2612055-echo/ (accessed April 23, 2021).
78. World Justice Project, Rule of Law Index: 2019, 8, available online at worldjusticeproject.org/sites/default/files/documents/ROLI-2019-Reduced.pdf (accessed April 27, 2021).
79. Evgenii Tankov, interview, Skype, May 2020.
