Host: Janine Funke
Guests: Abigail Scripka, David Jishkariani,
Production: Tim Schleinitz

In this episode, the podcast turns to Central Asia and the South Caucasus to explore how the intertwined histories of empire, resistance, and identity continue to shape the region’s present. In conversation with Abigail Scripka, doctoral candidate at the Central European University and the Leibniz-Centre for Contemporary History in Potsdam, we focus on Kazakhstan - often seen as a Soviet periphery, yet whose protests tell a more complex story. From the student uprising in Almaty in 1986 to Bloody January in 2022, these demonstrations reveal both enduring resistance to authoritarian rule and a struggle over memory in a state negotiating its Soviet legacy and fraught relationship with Russia.

The discussion then turns to the South Caucasus, where Soviet nationality policies left deep and lasting marks. Moscow’s 1920s policy of “indigenisation” soon gave way to repression and centralisation, paving the way for competing national narratives in Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia. David Jishkariani, historian and archivist, reflects on how these narratives have evolved and how they remain contested today. Together, these stories from Kazakhstan and the Caucasus reveal how the legacies of Soviet rule continue to shape struggles over identity, sovereignty, and the power to narrate the past.  

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In the EUROPAST Podcast, we explore Europe's most pressing challenges of public history. We investigate the complex and contested spaces of public memory, memory activism and best practices for engaging the public in a dialogue about the past. The podcast series is part of a project that has received funding from the European Union under the WIDERA programme (EUROPAST project, Grant Agreement No. 101079466).
More: www.europast.vu.lt