Let's decolonize ourselves - let’s provincialize Russia!

This week, Syinat Sultanalieva looks at how a Russian woman stole Kyrgyz clothes designs - plus cultural appropriation, Dostoevsky, self-provincialization and Russia-aggrandization. All in one!

BY SYINAT SULTANALIEVA

So, the global trade war, huh?😉Chaos is about to chaos real hard and we’re sitting here ready with the popcorn, for the new age of pillage and plunder is upon us! Because “clearly” Kyrgyzstan is too small and insignificant to be caught up in its ramifications. Right? I mean, right?!

As all things rule of law seem to be dissolving at an exponential rate these days, including agreements on respecting intellectual property, it is maybe time to think more deeply on how we react to even the smallest manifestations of such behavior by the big bullies – not just on the global scale, but also on the local – something that Kyrgyzstan and I bet Ukraine are used to in their relations with Russia.

Recently, the whole of the Central Asian blogosphere was all over the case of a Russian woman buying goods from Kyrgyz designers and re-selling them at exorbitant prices as her own inventions (which, fair enough, happens all the time everywhere). What really set people off, though, was her gall to copyright these ethnic designs and put up a warning about that on her website.

Later, when questioned by internet users, she added a clarification explaining that she set up the shop because of her deep-deep love for the country, dedicating her business to the 100^th anniversary of the Kyrgyz Republic. We’re very flattered, but, in fact, we became the Kyrgyz Republic in 1991, thank you – and the 100-year period you refer to harks back to our becoming a Kara-Kyrgyz autonomous region under the Soviet Union, after decades of bloody conflicts with Tsarist Russia during its colonialist expansion into Central Asia.

Her train of thought must’ve been: hey, let’s just go to a country where a lot of these underpaid and constantly abused “черножопые” (Russian for ‘black-assed’) migrants come from, “fall in love” with it (and its really rather impressive handicraft culture), all in two weeks, buy very cool ethno-vintage jackets and bombers and silk scarves from local artisans, and re-sell the stuff in Russia without ever telling anyone where you got it from, only adding that information after you get pressured by citizens of that country angry that not only did you ‘commit’ all of the above-mentioned, but you also had the audacity to copyright the designs based on ancient Kyrgyz ornaments that have actual sacral meaning.

The burn degree of reactions to the scandal and the way it spilled over into discussions in neighboring countries indicates a long-brewing need for collectively addressing that colonial history - but it matters from which point we do it.

The anger based on resentment for her cultural appropriation set against the backdrop of Russia’s history of colonization in the region and continued superiority complex towards people from Central Asia may be righteous. But - reacting in such a visceral way only entrenches us deeper in the pit of coloniality of being, where we are forever the colonized and Russia is forever the colonizer, and as such we ourselves grotesquely put Russia on some pedestal from which its individual members feel emboldened to look down at us, the disgruntled – exactly because that’s how we’ve gotten used to seeing them. A little self-provincialization and Russia-aggrandization, maybe?

But Russia isn’t really this big bad villain it wants to be - it’s a secondary empire that was never allowed in the club of the real baddies (most of Europe, I’m looking at you), even when it really tried hard to emulate them. As the poster child of everything unexplainably ‘Russian’, Fedor Dostoevsky, once said: “In Europe, we were Tatars, yet in Asia even we can be Europeans.”

So, Russia is a clumsy thug that’s been making a name for itself by spiting the basics of the internationally agreed order also exactly because it was snubbed by the bigger bullies as the provincial cousin when deciding on these rules. So, it’s really no wonder some Russian citizens are unable to even perceive the wrongness of their doings.

We Kyrgyz, as descendants of nomadic peoples, we may even sympathize with the stealing and borrowing of ideas – it was never a forbidden thing, on the contrary, it was a viable strategy of survival. And in many ways, this remains true in contemporary Kyrgyzstan, which retains a certain nomadity of being that allows taking what one likes, a process that could even be described as plagiarism or appropriation, a forgetting to attribute because where the ideas came from never really matter, as the borrowed becomes a part of the living and breathing bricolage, a kurak - the traditional Central Asian textile patchwork.

Provinciality is only offensive if one accepts the rules of the game that categorize things as provincial or metropolitan. Being deemed a thieving barbarian is only offensive if you want to be considered equal by the one that calls you barbarian, who by definition then sees themselves as being the opposite of that – civilised, that is.

This desire comes from the pedestalization of that figure. Managing to extricate yourself and your self-worth from dependence on belonging to the preferred side of that binary system is a necessary stepping stone to decolonizing one’s self.

Russia hasn’t been able to extricate itself from this binary, playing catch-up with its own bullies, a clumsy wannabe villain destined to perpetually desire acceptance by the sophisticates, but reduced to trying to destroy what they hold most near and dear in resentful retaliation.

We, on the other hand, have the choice of opting out of that binary. And the first step in this direction is to stop perceiving Russia as our perpetual bully and colonizer. The second step is to laugh at Russia, pointing out the similarities with us – the wild, the irrational, the dark, the oriental – the very things that Russia is so desperately trying to cleanse itself off of. The third and final step is to think well and hard as to - what’s something cool we could steal back from them? Oh wait, we’re already doing that - stealing all their jobs in Russia and making all that sweet, sweet dough as the ever-hated migrant laborers, hahahah!

Syinat Sultanalieva is a human rights activist and researcher from Kyrgyzstan, who writes science fiction on the side when she’s not busy dissecting power structures and dynamics in the region and the world.

With Syinat, we are adding a voice from the other end of what used to be the Russian and later Soviet empire. A voice less old and less grumpy, we trust that you will enjoy her perspective.