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‘Building the Internationalist City from Below’: The Role of the Czechoslovak Industrial Cooperative “Interhelpo” in Forging Urbanity in early-Soviet Bishkek

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 November 2020

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Abstract

The paper explores the historical trajectory of Interhelpo, an industrial cooperative from Czechoslovakia, and its role in forging urbanization “from below” in early-Soviet town of Pishpek (now Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan). In light of scarce literature available on the success and failures of Western internationalist communes in the early Soviet period, this paper draws from intensive field work in Kyrgyzstan and understudied sources in Czech, Kyrgyz, Slovak and Russian to offer a novel, bottom-up narrative on the socialist city in Central Asia.

Founded 1914 by Czech, Slovak, Hungarian, German internationalists and Ido-learners around the mountaineer and Bolshevik Rudolf Pavlovič Mareček in the Czechoslovakian town Žilina, the cooperative actively shaped urbanization in what would be become known as the capital of Soviet Kyrgyzstan. From 1925 until its liquidation during WWII, the cooperative built from scratch a whole district including the first electric power station of the city, textile and furniture factories, workshops for tailors, shoemakers and joiners, a school, a kindergarten, a tannery, a brewery as well as unique residential district. In the process, the cooperative forged an organic patchwork language referred to as spontánne esperanto to secure translocal collaboration between internationalists from Central Europe, on the one hand, and a heterogeneous mix of workers including Armenians, Kyrgyz, Dungans, Uygurs, Uzbeks, Russians and Ukrainians, on the other.

Transcending a purely historical analysis, the paper ultimately turns to the urban landscape of present-day Bishkek. There it argues that while the district built by Interhelpo corresponds today to an exiled site dislocated by the hegemonic ethno-national memory regime, its materiality harbors relicts of another future capable of mobilizing alternative narratives on the city and her socialist and multi-ethnic past.

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Research Article
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International Labor and Working-Class History , Volume 100 , Fall 2021 , pp. 22 - 59
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Copyright © International Labor and Working-Class History, Inc., 2020

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References

NOTES

1. I extend my gratitude to Lukáš Onderčanin for sharing with me extensive material from the Museum of the Wallachian Region in Vsetín, and the Bishkek-based Czechoslovak-Hungarian cultural association NAZDAR for assisting me in accessing the Central State Archive of the Kyrgyz Republic. I further thank Ronald G. Suny, Lewis Siegelbaum, Natalia Andrianova, Rahat Yusubalieva, Kate Brown, Heike Liebau, and the ZMO research unit “Representations of the Past as a Mobilising Force” for their feedback and thought-provoking ideas.

2. Mamedov, Georgy and Shatalova, Oksanna (ed.), Bishkek Utopicheskiy. Sbornik Tekstov (Bishkek, 2015), 10Google Scholar.

3. Pavel Pollák, Internacionálná pomoc československého proletariátu národom SSSR. Dejiny československého robotníckeho družstva Interhelpo v sovietskej Kirgízii (Bratislava, 1961); Samuel, I.I., Chekhoslovatskiy Promyslovy Kooperativ v Kirgizii (Leningrad, 1935)Google Scholar; Számuel-Szabó, Janos, V Znameni Proletarskeho Internacionalizmu ('Interhelpo’) (Bratislava, 1958)Google Scholar.

4. For recent research on Interhelpo in Czech, German, and Russian, see Kokaisl, Petr and Usmanov, Amirbek, Istoriya Kyrgyzstana glazami ochevidtsev (Prague, 2012), 165–81Google Scholar; Mamedov, Georgiy and Shatalova, Oksana, “Proletarskiy Internatsionalizm. Kooperativ Intergel'po,” in Bishkek Utopicheskiy. Sbornik Tekstov (Bishkek, 2015), 56–71Google Scholar; Jaromír Marek, “Interhelpo. Stručné dějiny československého vystěhovaleckého družstva v SSSR,” a rigorous thesis defended at the Univerzita Karlova Prague (2013); Miroslav Schneider, “Die tschechoslowakische Auswanderung in die Sowjetunion in der Zwischenkriegszeit (1921-1939),” PhD thesis defended at the Universität Regensburg (2007).

5. Lomíček, Jan and Mervart, Jan. “Evenings in Interhelpo: Two Views of Czechoslovak Writers on the Soviet Union,” Prager Wirtschafts- Und Sozialhistorische Mitteilungen 13 (2011): 29Google Scholar.

6. Ibid.

7. P. Nikishov, “Ulitsa Intergel'po,” Sovetskaya Kirgizia, September 2, 1972.

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10. cf. Bernstein, Seth and Cherny, Robert, “Searching for the Soviet Dream: Prosperity and Disillusionment on the Soviet Seattle Agricultural Commune, 1922–1927,” Agricultural History 88 (2014): 22–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar; David-Fox, Michael, Showcasing the Great Experiment: Cultural Diplomacy and Western Visitors to Soviet Union, 1921-1941 (Oxford, 2012)Google Scholar; Lam, Kitty, “Forging a Socialist Homeland From Multiple Worlds: North American Finns in Soviet Karelia, 1921–1938,” Revista Română pentru Studii Baltice şi Nordice 2 (2010): 203–24Google Scholar; Siegelbaum, Lewis H. and Moch, Leslie Page. Broad Is My Native Land: Repertoires and Regimes of Migration in Russia's Twentieth Century (Ithaca, NY, 2014)Google Scholar; Siegelbaum, Lewis H., Cars for Comrades: The Life of the Soviet Automobile (Ithaca, NY, 2008)Google Scholar; Siegelbaum, Lewis H., “Production Collectives and Communes and the ‘Imperatives’ of Soviet Industrialisation,1929-1931,” Slavic Review 45 (1986): 65–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wesson, Robert Gale, Soviet Communes (New Brunswick, 1963)Google Scholar.

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12. Siegelbaum, Cars for Comrades: The Life of the Soviet Automobile, X (preface).

13. Thanks to the art curator Natalia Andrianova for her tremendous help in digitizing these newspaper articles.

14. In addition to extensive visits to the site of Interhelpo, twelve biographical-narrative interviews were conducted with descendants and residents of the district.

15. Translated from German by the author. Pollák, Pavel, “Die Auswanderung in die Sowjetunion in den zwanziger Jahren,” In Bohemia 10 (1969): 287Google Scholar.

16. Pollák, “Die Auswanderung in die Sowjetunion in den zwanziger Jahren,” 308.

17. Bernstein and Cherny, “Searching for the Soviet Dream,” 25.

18. Bernstein and Cherny, “Searching for the Soviet Dream,” 27; Pollák, “Die Auswanderung in die Sowjetunion in den zwanziger Jahren,” 290.

19. Andrea Graziosi, A New, Peculiar State: Explorations in Soviet History, 1917-1937 (Westwood, CN, 2000), 223–56.

20. Siegelbaum, Cars for Comrades: The Life of the Soviet Automobile, 14.

21. Translated from German by the author. Pollák, “Die Auswanderung in die Sowjetunion in den zwanziger Jahren,” 292–3.

22. For a study on the successful experiment of a US rural cooperative in the Soviet Union, see Bernstein, Seth and Cherny, Robert, “Searching for the Soviet Dream: Prosperity and Disillusionment on the Soviet Seattle Agricultural Commune, 1922–1927,” Agricultural History 88, 1 (2014): 22–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Lam, Kitty, “Forging a Socialist Homeland From Multiple Worlds: North American Finns in Soviet Karelia, 1921–1938,” Revista Română pentru Studii Baltice şi Nordice 2: 2 (2010): 203–24Google Scholar.

23. The first group that requested emigration to the Soviet Union from Czechoslovakia was a group of peasants around a man called Josef Blažej from Hořice u Hradce Králové in the beginning of April 1923. The first commune that was actually resettled from Czechoslovakia was Pragomašina, a cooperative of locksmiths and repairmen [machinists? technicians?]. Already in 1923, they were resettled to Tbilsi (Georgia) and collaborated with the local cooperative Gruziya in the building of a factory for the production and repair of agricultural machinery. However, due to lack of support, the activities of the cooperative lasted for only three years. See Pollak, Pavel, “Die Auswanderung in Die Sowjetunion in Den Zwanziger Jahren,” Bohemia 10 (1969): 298–300Google Scholar, and Robert Gale Wesson, Soviet Communes, 113. For other historical case studies, see Bernstein and Cherny, “Searching for the Soviet Dream,” Lam, “Forging a Socialist Homeland From Multiple Worlds,” Lewis H. Siegelbaum, Cars for Comrades: The Life of the Soviet Automobile, and Robert Gale Wesson, Soviet Communes.

24. The resolution was published in Kommunisticheskiy internatsional v dokumentakh. Resheniya, tezisy, vozzvaniya kongressov Kominterna i Plenumov IKKI, 1919-1932 (Moscow, 1933), 327–28.

25. Translated from Russian by the author. Kommunisticheskiy internatsional v dokumentakh, 327.

26. Ibid.

27. Ibid, 328.

28. Translated from Russian by the author. D. M. Budyanskiy and N. A. Velichko, U istokov druzhby. Istoriya promyslovogo kooperativa Intergelpo. Sbornik dokumentov i materialov, A.K. Kanimetova, ed. (Frunze, 1982), 7.

29. Translated from Russian by the author. I.I. Samuel, Intergel'po, 9. Quoted from the foreword by Rudolf Pavlovič Mareček.

30. Ibid, 8.

31. Kokaisl and Usmanov, Istoriya Kyrgyzstana glazami ochevidtsev, 166.

32. Ibid.

33. Miroslav Nedomu “Kooperativu Intergel'po – 50 let,” translated by D. Mareček, Sel'mashevets, April 23, 1975.

34. Budyanskiy and Velichko, U istokov druzhby, 6–7.

35. Pollak, Internacionálna Pomoc Československého Proletariátu Národom SSSR, appendix.

36. Schneider, “Die tschechoslowakische Auswanderung in die Sowjetunion in der Zwischenkriegszeit (1921-1939),” 81–114.

37. Ibid, 91–7.

38. Ibid, 92, 123.

39. “Dotazník J. Skalický.” Central National State Archive of the Republic of Kyrgyzstan, F. 1914–3387, 1914 No3 / 216 / 33).

40. Ibid.

41. Holá and Vicherek, Interhelpo, 37–8.

42. Some participants were allowed to join the cooperative without meeting the monetary requirement in exchange for agreeing to not leave the cooperative for three years after their deployment to Central Asia.

43. Kokaisl and Usmanov describe this moment as a symbolic act of “separation from [their] original identity” (otryv ot pervonachal'noy identichnosti). Kokaisl and Usmanov, Istoriya Kyrgyzstana glazami ochevidtsev, 180.

44. Translated from Czech by the author. Holá and Vicherek, Interhelpo, 37, on his biographical background see also 33–4.

45. Pollák, “Die Auswanderung in die Sowjetunion in den zwanziger Jahren,” 302.

46. Pollak, Internacionálna Pomoc Československého Proletariátu Národom SSSR, 78. Note that the Hungarian-Slovak researcher Számuel Szabó speaks of over four hundred members in his work Számuel-Szabó, V Znameni Proletarskeho Internacionalizmu ('Interhelpo').

47. Samuel, Chekhoslovatskiy Promyslovy Kooperativ v Kirgizii, 12.

48. Pollák, Pavel, “Medzi Slovákmi v Sovietskej Kirgízii,” Kultúrny Život 45 (1957)Google Scholar.

49. Ibid, 297.

50. Pollák, Internacionálná pomoc československého proletariátu národom SSSR, 34.

51. Holá and Vicherek, Interhelpo, 22.

52. Budyanskiy and Velichko, U istokov druzhby, 7.

53. For a more detailed discussion, see Pollák, Internacionálná pomoc československého proletariátu národom SSSR, 52–5.

54. Translated from Russian by the author. I.I. Samuel, Intergel'po, 12. Quoted from the foreword by Rudolf Pavlovič Mareček.

55. Ibid.

56. Budyanskiy and Velichko, U istokov druzhby, 7.

57. Translated from Slovak by the author. Pollák, Internacionálná pomoc československého proletariátu národom SSSR, 79.

58. Translated from Czech by the author. Holá and Vicherek, Interhelpo, 25.

59. On grid plans and colonialization in comparative perspective, see Brown, Kate, “Gridded Lives: Why Kazakhstan and Montana are Nearly the Same Place,” The American Historical Review 106: 1 (2001): 17–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

60. Ramm, Henning Hraban and Viertelhaus, Benedikt, eds., Architekturführer Bischkek (Berlin, 2016), 9Google Scholar.

61. Yevgeniy Pisarskoy and Valentin Kurbatov, Arkhitektura Sovyetskoy Kirgizii (Moscow, 1986), 67.

62. Schneider, “Die tschechoslowakische Auswanderung in die Sowjetunion in der Zwischenkriegszeit (1921-1939),” 93.

63. Budyanskiy and Velichko, U istokov druzhby, 13.

64. Translated from Czech by the author. Holá and Vicherek, Interhelpo, 27.

65. Pollak, Internacionálna Pomoc Československého Proletariátu Národom SSSR, 83.

66. Ibid., 99.

67. Translated from Slovak by the author. Pollák, Internacionálná pomoc československého proletariátu národom SSSR, 87.

68. “Taymlayn Razvitiya Energosektora Kyrgyzskoy Respubliki,” Natsional'nyy Energokholding, accessed July 2, 2019, http://www.energo.gov.kg/infograph/graph3.

69. Ibid, 50–52. See also the documentary film (in Czech) Interhelpo. Historie jedné iluze [Interhelpo: The History of an Illusion]. Documentary film (Česká televize, 2008), https://www.ceskatelevize.cz/ivysilani/10123387223-interhelpo-historie-jedne-iluze/30729535042. Kokaisl and Usmanov, Istoriya Kyrgyzstana glazami ochevidtsev, 172.

70. Budyanskiy and Velichko, U istokov druzhby, 13–4.

71. Translated from Czech by the author. Holá and Vicherek, Interhelpo, 42.

72. During the Soviet period, the titular republic of Kirghizia was officially referred to as both Kirghiz SSR (in Russian) and Kyrgyz SSR (in Kyrgyz). For consistency and in light of the Turkic origin of the word, I continuously use the Kyrgyz equivalent.

73. Ramm and Viertelhaus, eds., Architekturführer Bischkek, 20.

74. Translated from Slovak by the author. Jilemnický, Peter, O Interhelpe a krajanoch, ktorí museli stratit domov, lebo hladali štastie v práci (Bratislava, 1960), 267Google Scholar.

75. Ibid.

76. Translated from Czech by the author. Holá and Vicherek, Interhelpo, 53.

77. Ibid., 54.

78. Pollák, Internacionálná pomoc československého proletariátu národom SSSR, 206–8.

79. Penati, Beatrice, “The Hunt for Red Orient A Soviet Industrial trest [?] Between Moscow and Bukhara (1922-1929),” The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies 2406 (2016):74Google Scholar.

80. Samuel, Chekhoslovatskiy Promyslovy Kooperativ v Kirgizii, 23.

81. For different biographical reports on the role of auxiliary languages and multilingual communication at Interhelpo, see Holá and Vicherek, Interhelpo.

82. Holá and Vicherek, Interhelpo, 129.

83. P. Nikishov, “Podvig Proletarskoy Solidarnosti,” Vecherniy Frunze, April 24, 1975. A similar impression evokes another article, published January 16, 1967 in the newspaper Pravda: the former cooperative member Karel Šulc awaits the correspondent of the newspaper, V. Zhuravskiy, in Prague at his desk packed with books written in Czech, Slovak, Russian and Hungarian. V. Zhuravskiy, “Pervyy Eshelon,” Pravda, January 16, 1967.

84. Ulrich Lins, Dangerous Language: Esperanto under Hitler and Stalin (London, 2016), 210.

85. Translated from Czech by the author. Holá and Vicherek, Interhelpo, 144.

86. “Korenizatsii sistemy KIRPROMSOYUZA na 1923 god.” Central National State Archive of the Republic of Kyrgyzstan, F. 1914–3387, 1914 / I / 1398 / 79.

87. Ibid., 132, and Schneider, “Die tschechoslowakische Auswanderung in die Sowjetunion in der Zwischenkriegszeit (1921-1939),” 95.

88. Pollák, Internacionálná pomoc československého proletariátu národom SSSR, 206.

89. Budyanskiy and Velichko, U istokov druzhby, 17.

90. Yevgeniy Pisarskoy, “Arkhitektura Sovetskoy Kirgizii,” (Frunze, 1986), 96.

91. Pollák, Internacionálná pomoc československého proletariátu národom SSSR, 148.

92. Ibid, 212–3.

93. Budyanskiy and Velichko, U istokov druzhby, 17.

94. Pollák, Internacionálná pomoc československého proletariátu národom SSSR, 149.

95. Alexander Dubček and Jiří Hochman, Naděje umírá poslední: vlastní životopis Alexandra Dubčeka, Vyd. 1 (Prague, 1993). V. G. Petrov, Frunze Sovyetskii, 1926–1991 (Bishkek, 2008), 10.

96. On the abolition of the antithesis between town and country, see Engels, Friedrich, Zur Wohnungsfrage (Leipzig, 1887), 279Google Scholar.

97. Valentin Kurbatov and Yegeniy Pisarskoy, Arkhitektura Goroda Frunze (Frunze, 1987), 15–6 and Ramm and Viertelhaus, eds., Architekturführer Bischkek, 20.

98. Ibid, 34.

99. For a critical take on Soviet modernization and the construction of irrigation systems in in Central Asia, see, e.g., Julia Obertreis, Imperial Desert Dreams: Cotton Growing and Irrigation in Central Asia, 1860–1991 (Göttingen, 2017) and Obertreis, Julia, “Infrastrukturen im Sozialismus. Das Beispiel der Bewässserungssysteme im sowjetischen Zentralasien,” Saeculum 58/I (2007): 151–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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101. Samuel, Chekhoslovatskiy Promyslovy Kooperativ v Kirgizii, 68.

102. Translated from Slovak by the author. Pollák, Internacionálná pomoc československého proletariátu národom SSSR, 185.

103. Ibid.

104. Translated from Slovak by the author. Ibid.

105. From the foreword of the German translation. Julius Fučík, Eine Welt, in der das Morgen schon Geschichte ist (Berlin, 1950), I.

106. David R. Shearer, “Stalinism 1928-1940,” The Cambridge History of Russia. Volume III, Ronald G. Suny, ed. (Cambridge, 2006), 194, and Bernstein and Cherny, “Searching for the Soviet Dream,” 25.

107. Protocol of the Supreme Economic Council of the USSR “On measures necessary for the adjustment concerning foreign co-operatives and the Interhelpo Commune.” Quoted from the Slovak translation in Pollák, Internacionálná pomoc československého proletariátu národom SSSR, 126.

108. Samuel, Chekhoslovatskiy Promyslovy Kooperativ v Kirgizii, 30–31.

109. Pollák, Internacionálná pomoc československého proletariátu národom SSSR, 126.

110. Schneider, “Die tschechoslowakische Auswanderung in die Sowjetunion in der Zwischenkriegszeit (1921-1939),” 96.

111. Translated from Czech by the author. Holá and Vicherek, Interhelpo, 43.

112. Moshe Lewin, “The Social Background of Stalinism,” in Stalinism: Essays in Historical Interpretation (London, 1977), 126.

113. Lins, Dangerous Language, 210.

114. Ibid, 205–36.

115. For a more differentiated argument on Russificiation, see, e.g., Peter A. Blitstein, “Nation-Building or Russification? Obligatory Russian Instruction in the Soviet Non-Russian School, 1938-1953,” in A State of Nations. Empire and Nation-Making in the Age of Lenin and Stalin, edited by Ronald G. Suny and Terry Martin (New York, 2001), 254–74. “Central educational authorities held that it was the responsibility of local authorities to include Russian in the curriculum if there was demand for it. There was, however, no union-wide requirement to teach Russian in non-Russian schools.”

116. Translated from Czech by the author. Alexander Dubček and Jiří Hochman, Naděje umírá poslední: vlastní životopis Alexandra Dubčeka, (Prague, 1993), 28. Note that according to Pavel Pollák, Interhelpo's teacher, Peter Jilemnický, himself urges the cooperative to switch the language of education from Czech and Slovak to Russian in order to improve their children's prospects for a career in higher education. See Pollák, Internacionálná pomoc československého proletariátu národom SSSR, 188.

117. “Kulturní dům Peklo.” Last accessed on June 27, 2020, https://plzensky-kraj.webnode.cz/kulturni-dum-peklo/.

118. Samuel, Chekhoslovatskiy Promyslovy Kooperativ v Kirgizii, 70.

119. Ibid, 14.

120. Pollák, “Die Auswanderung in die Sowjetunion in den zwanziger Jahren,” 310–11.

121. “Životopis J. Skalický.” Central National Archive of the Republic of Kyrgyzstan, F. 1914–3387, 1914 No3 / 216 / 33).

122. Pollák, Internacionálná pomoc československého proletariátu národom SSSR, 183. Similiar letters were also received by other returnees such as J. Hakenberger, J. Urbánek and J. Šámal. The later wrote in 1935: “I am totally dependent on the financial support of my brothers who are still working. I would want to go back to Interhelpo, but I have no money to travel.” (ibid.)

123. Marek, “Interhelpo,” 82.

124. Ibid.

125. Alexander Kiral, “K voprosu issledovaniya neizvestnykh stranits istorii kooperativa «Intergelpo»,” in Conference Proceedings: Traditsii internatsionalizma v Kyrgyzstane: istoricheskiye korni i sovremennyye perspektivy (Bishkek, 2010), 36–42.

126. Ibid., 39.

127. Pollák, Internacionálná pomoc československého proletariátu národom SSSR, 214.

128. Ibid., 214–5.

129. Ibid., 216.

130. Mamedov and Shatalova,“Proletarskiy Internatsionalizm. Kooperativ Intergel'po,” 58.

131. Ibid., 216.

132. Kiral, “K voprosu issledovaniya neizvestnykh stranits istorii kooperativa «Intergelpo»,” 40.

133. Interview with female local informant, July 9, 2018. Another local resident suggested in this context that the railroads that cut across the city along its latitude form a geographical barrier between the site of Interhelpo and other residential areas to the south, such as Rabochiy Gorodok.

134. Mariusz Czepczynski, Cultural Landscapes of Post-Socialist Cities: Representation of Powers and Needs (London, 2016).

135. Ibid., 109.

136. Ibid.

137. Ibid.

138. Ibid.

139. Forest, Benjamin and Johnson, Juliet, “Unravelling the Threads of History: Soviet-Era Monuments and Post-Soviet National Identity in Moscow,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 92 (2002): 524–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

140. Ibid., 532.

141. For a comparative deconstruction of Kazakh national myths, see, e.g., Suny, Ronald. “Constructing Primordialism: Old Histories for New Nations,” The Journal of Modern History (2001): 862–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

142. Forest and Johnson, “Unravelling the Threads of History,” 530.

143. Like many other green areas across the city, the Boulevard reveals the fingerprint of one of the city's most influential “hidden architects”: the botanist Aleksey Mikhailovich Fetisov. As a botanist and Russian native from Sevastopol, Fetisov had visited what had then been Tsarist Pishpek from the 1870s onwards and engaged in the planting of large green areas drawing from a vast collection of flora and fauna he compiled from the Zanaryn Mountains as well as the mountains of Zaili, Ters and Kungei Alatau. See, Maslova, Obzor russkikh puteshestviy i ekspeditsiy v srednyuyu aziyu (1962), 17.

144. Forest and Johnson, “Unravelling the Threads of History,” 534.

145. Ibid., 525–34.

146. Walter Benjamin, Illuminations, translated by Harry Zohn (New York, 1968), 72.

147. Interview with female local informant. May 5, 2018.

148. Observation and interviews with a group of female local informants aged between thirty and fifty. May 12, 2019.

149. For visual documentation, see the web-based virtual exhibition “relicts of another future”: https://readymag.com/relictsofanotherfuture/1127806/.

150. Interview with male local informant. May 13, 2019.

151. Interview with female local informant. July 8, 2018.

152. Interview with female local informant. May 15, 2019.

153. Ibid.

154. Interview with different local informants. May 13, 2019, May 14, 2019, May 15, 2019.

155. See also Mamedov and Shatalova, “Proletarskiy Internatsionalizm. Kooperativ Intergel'po,” 60.

156. Narod Kyrgyzstana v Sem'ye Yedinoy (Bishkek, 2015), 407.

157. Kalkanbay Ashymbaev, Intergel'po (Frunze, 1982).

158. Anandita Bajpai and Maria Framke. “Revisiting Partition Seventy Years Later: Of Layered Echoes, Voices and Memories,” Südasien-Chronik - South Asia Chronicle 7 (2017): 2.

159. Yegeniya Mart'yanova, “O “Vsaimopomoshchi” Skvoz Veka,” Slovo Kyrgyzstana, February 8, 2019.

160. Sergey Kozhemyakin, “Trudovoy Podvig Predan Zabveniyu,” Pravda, July 5, 2015.

161. Ibid.

162. Zhanybek kyzy, Myrzaym. “İntergelpo. Esperanto tilindegi köçö Bişkekte kantip payda bolgon?” theopenasia.net, July 29, 2017. However, note that the argument is not entirely correct; Interhelpo, although largely marginalized, is mentioned in two occasions in an 11th grade history text book, see (in Kyrgyz) O. Z. Osmonov and A. S. Myrzaktmatova, Kyrgyzstandyn Tarykhy 11 (Bishkek, 2012), 89, 91.

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166. Suny, Ronald Grigor, Red Flag Unfurled: History, Historians, and the Russian Revolution (London and New York, 2017)Google Scholar, I (foreword).

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171. Frederic Jameson, “The Politics of Utopia,” New Left Review, 2004, https://newleftreview.org/issues/II25/articles/fredric-jameson-the-politics-of-utopia.

172. Anna Wood, Review of Felwine Sarr's Afrotopia, 2017. https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/africaatlse/2017/12/22/book-review-afrotopia-by-felwine-sarr/.

173. Bauman, Retrotopia, e-book.

174. Nikro, Norman Saadi and Hegasy, Sonja, The Social Life of Memory. Violence, trauma and testimony in Lebanon and Morocco (London, 2017), 10CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

175. Ibid.

176. Yurchak, Alexei, “Necro-Utopia The Politics of Indistinction and the Aesthetics of the Non-Soviet,” Current Anthropology 49: 2 (2008): 213CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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178. Interview with female local informant. May 15, 2019.