The Memory Politics Behind the Official Discourses on Two Major Events in Recent History of Kyrgyzstan: 2005 and 2010 “Revolutions”.

Abstract

This Master thesis presents an analysis of the official discourses on the 2005 and 2010 “revolutions” in Kyrgyzstan. The main purpose of this paper is to understand whether the Kyrgyz government constructs the memory politics through the official discourses on these events and whether the authorities are able to transmit these discourses through history manuals to young citizens. The study of the official discourses on these two events was conducted through the discourse analysis of presidential speeches, history manuals and semi-structed interviews with the history teachers. The memory politics concept was used as a conceptual framework for this research. The results of the study suggest that Kyrgyz authorities attempt to use official discourses on the events in their memory politics for power legitimizing purposes, however, with the limited success.