Kunduz Niiazova

Kunduz Niiazova is originally from Kyrgyzstan. She completed BA and MA studies in Germany with focus on Social Sciences, East European Studies and Jewish Culture. She is now PhD Candidate at Tel Aviv University studying “Empire, Nationality, and Modernity in Soviet Kyrgyzstan: Nexus of Kyrgyz-Jewish Intellectuals and Formation of Kyrgyz Cultural Identity 1930-1970”.

Empire, Nationality, and Modernity in Soviet Kyrgyzstan: Nexus of Kyrgyz-Jewish Intellectuals and Formation of Kyrgyz Cultural Identity 1930-1970

Kunduz Niiazova argues that Jewish intellectuals were willingly and unwillingly part of the Kyrgyz nation building/formation of modern Kyrgyz intellectual elite and modernization process under the Stalinist and even post-Stalinist periods. Both ethnic groups were very well exposed to the cosmopolitan elements of the knowledge system. In the Jewish case it was more in diasporic tradition whereas in the Indigenous Kyrgyz case it was more nomadic.