Russophone Literature of the Ecosystem: Čingiz Ajtmatov, Andrej Volos, Hamid Ismailov

This dissertation investigates the evolution of Russophone literature from Central Asia in the late Soviet and post-Soviet periods, focusing on the works of Čingiz Ajtmatov, Hamid Ismailov, and Andrej Volos. It explores how ethnicity, nationality, language, memory, and landscape intersect in a shared literary sphere, producing complex representations of belonging and displacement. By understanding Russophonia as both a linguistic condition and a transnational literary field, the study highlights how these authors navigate cultural hybridity, multilingualism, and the legacies of Soviet multinationalism while engaging with the uncertainties of the post-Soviet world. The research brings together a range of theoretical approaches, drawing from postcolonial studies, anthropology, Soviet cultural history, and ecocriticism. It interrogates the limitations of binary frameworks—such as colonizer/colonized or self/other—when applied to the Soviet experience, and instead foregrounds the coexistence of similarities and differences, and the hybrid realities that shaped Central Asian intellectual life. Ajtmatov, Ismailov, and Volos are presented as “stateless Russophone” writers whose multilingual and multicultural backgrounds allow them to rethink belonging beyond rigid national or ethnic categories. A central contribution of the dissertation is its ecological perspective, which recognizes that landscapes, infrastructures, and non-human beings play a crucial role in shaping cultural memory. Rivers, mountains, steppe environments, railways, and ruined or sealed-off sites emerge as active participants in the narratives, bearing the marks of Soviet modernity and post-Soviet ecological disruption. Through these environments, the texts register trauma, transformation, and interspecies vulnerability in ways that challenge anthropocentric views of history. The study argues that Russophone literature from Central Asia functions as a form of ecological memory, capable of preserving voices—human and non-human—that risk being silenced amid social, political, and environmental upheaval. In rethinking the relationship between language, place, and identity, this dissertation presents Russophone Central Asian literature as an evolving ecosystem that both reflects and reshapes the cultural landscapes from which it emerges. Ultimately, it invites the reader to consider: how might literature help us imagine forms of belonging that persist even when borders shift, languages change, and landscapes themselves begin to disappear?