The Museum is open 11:00 – 19:00
Cinema is closed now
The Museum is open 11:00 – 19:00
Cinema is closed now
Lecture
Russia’s Imperial Innocence. Lecture by Botakoz Kassymbekova
Event accompanying the exhibition Near East, Far West - Kyiv Biennial 2025
LOCATION
Auditorium
LANGUAGE
English
ADMISSION
Free thanks to a partnership with Audi Polska
Saule Suleimenova, Sky above Almaty. Qandy Qańtar. Bloody January, photo by Robert Głowacki
In her talk, Botakoz Kassymbekova will dedicate to the concept and practice of Imperial Innocence, a framework that allows the Russian state and society to overlook its colonial and imperial violence. The talk encompasses the 20th and 21st centuries.
Botakoz Kassymbekova argues that one of the reasons for the invisibility of Russo-Soviet coloniality —in Russia, the West, and the Global South—is the Soviet metropole’s ability to couple imperialism with the concept of innocence. It explains that the Friendship of Peoples, for example, was not an ideology of equality, nor was it a tale to disguise ethnic hierarchies. Instead, it was a settler colonial framing of multiculturalism, which became central for Soviet policies of elimination, assimilation, and repression through their depoliticization, folklorization, and Russification.