Yurt Jurt

Latest Episodes:

Across Sakha and Beyond: Indigenous Voices Against Empire with Viliuia Choinova Apr 02, 2026

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In this episode of Yurt Jurt, host Diana Kudaibergen speaks with environmental engineer and Indigenous rights activist Viliuia Choinova about decolonisation, extractivism, and the realities of living within and resisting the Russian state. Viliuia speaks about land not as an abstract concept, but as a material and political space—one shaped by resource extraction, environmental destruction, and unequal power relations.

The conversation confronts difficult questions: What does it mean to call Russia a federation when many of its regions lack real autonomy? How are Indigenous communities disproportionately affected by extractivism and militarisation? Viliuia also reflects on the increasing pressures faced by activists, the targeting of Indigenous populations in mobilization efforts, and the challenges of bringing these issues to international platforms, including UN spaces. At the same time, she offers a powerful vision of decolonisation as both resistance and possibility, a chance to reclaim language, culture, and political futures beyond imperial structures.

This episode is a bold and urgent conversation about empire, identity, and the struggle for self-determination in the 21st century.

Migration, Race, and the Postcolonial Shadow with Nodira Kholmatova Mar 19, 2026

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In this episode of Yurt Jurt, host Diana T. Kudaibergen speaks with political sociologist Nodira Kholmatova about how migration, power, and inequality shape the lived realities of Central Asians across borders. Working at the intersection of comparative political economy and migration studies, Nodira unpacks how migration governance produces social hierarchies and how migrants and their families navigate, resist, and rework these systems. Drawing on research spanning Central Asia, Russia, Serbia, and beyond, the conversation explores the racialization of Central Asian migrants, deportation regimes, and the enduring legacies of empire in contemporary mobility.

Together, Diana and Nodira reflect on what concepts like race, ethnicity, and decolonisation mean in and for Central Asia today. What does it mean to think from the region, rather than about it? How do postcolonial dynamics shape migration, belonging, and exclusion? And what responsibilities do scholars have toward the communities they study?

Deep Freeze: Art, Memory, and Decolonial Resistance with Seseg Jigjitova Mar 05, 2026

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In this episode of the Yurt Jurt Podcast, host Diana Kudaibergen speaks with Seseg Jigjitova, a Buryat activist, illustrator, and writer based in Berlin, about decolonial thought, memory, and the power of storytelling.

Seseg reflects on how her personal journey into decolonial activism began within her own family. Growing up in Kazakhstan, her father made a deliberate effort to preserve the Buryat language and traditions at home, a quiet form of resistance that later shaped her political and artistic work. Through illustration and visual storytelling, Seseg documents experiences of racism faced by Indigenous peoples and ethnic minorities from North Asia and Russia.

The conversation also explores her book Deep Freeze. This visual and autobiographical project traces three interconnected layers: unanswered questions from the 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the personal and political awakening. The title reflects how historical trauma, colonial violence, and suppressed questions remained “frozen” for decades before surfacing.

Diana and Seseg discuss broader themes, including Soviet nostalgia, the romanticization of the USSR in Western intellectual circles, generational colonial trauma, and the challenges Indigenous communities face in building solidarity. They also reflect on the psychological impact of colonialism, the need for culturally aware therapy, and how art can become a powerful tool for documenting lived experience and reclaiming history.

Tune in for a thoughtful conversation on decolonization, memory, identity, and the role of art in telling stories that were long kept silent.

When Anti-Imperialism Becomes Selective with Tereza Hendl Feb 19, 2026

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In this episode of Yurt Jurt, Diana Kudaibergen is joined by philosopher Tereza Hendl, whose work focuses on global health justice and decolonial thought, for a timely and unflinching conversation about the political moment we are living through. Together, they unpack the global rise of the far-right and examine how contemporary systems of capitalism, white supremacy, and Western-centrism continue to shape whose suffering is recognized, and whose is erased. They interrogate the dangerous narrative that formerly colonized peoples should feel “grateful” for modernization, a claim that glosses over histories of trauma, extraction, cultural erasure, and violence.

The discussion turns inward as well: the left is not immune from critique. Tereza and Diana explore how certain strands of progressive politics fall into inconsistency and exceptionalism, arguing that principles applied to Western imperialism somehow cannot be applied elsewhere. They reflect on how parts of the left slip into authoritarian reasoning, or romanticize state power, including the persistent whitewashing of the USSR.

They examine the myth of the “friendship of nations” in the Soviet Union, and how the narrative that “Russia was less severe than the West” distorts accountability and risks normalizing or relativizing violence. This is a conversation about refusing propaganda, rejecting exceptionalism, and building a politics that does not reproduce the very harms it claims to oppose.

Praising Native Languages in a Post-Imperial World with Dinara Rasuleva Feb 05, 2026

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In this episode of Yurt Jurt, host Diana Kudaibergen speaks with Dinara Rasuleva - a Tatar poetess, writer, artist, and musician whose work sits at the crossroads of decolonial writing, experimental performance art, and multilingual expression.

Until 2022, Dinara wrote exclusively in Russian. That shift became a turning point: she began to work consciously across languages, questioning the imperial connotations embedded in dominant literary forms and searching for new ways to write that feel ethically and politically grounded. Her recent Lostlingual project Travmagochi marks this transition - a work shaped by rupture, memory, and linguistic choice.

Together, Diana and Dinara reflect on what it means to praise and preserve native languages in contexts shaped by empire and erasure. They discuss the emotional and political weight of returning to a mother tongue, the challenges of passing native languages on to future generations, and the freedom and responsibility of writing in Russian, Tatar, English, and German.

This conversation is about language as inheritance, resistance, and creative experimentation - and about choosing to write in ways that refuse silence, hierarchy, and linguistic loss.

Language, Memory, and Literature with Egana Djabbarova Jan 22, 2026

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In this episode of the Jurt Podcast, host Diana Kudaibergen is joined by writer and poet Egana Djabbarova for an intimate conversation about language, literature, and self-formation. Egana reflects on her books and poetic practice, exploring how language became a foundation for building her subjectivity and a powerful tool for self-reflection and decolonization. She speaks about writing not only as artistic expression, but as a way of reclaiming voice, memory, and agency within and against dominant narratives.

The conversation also turns to the importance of theory for emerging writers. Egana emphasizes why reading theoretical and critical studies matters, and how feminist, postcolonial, and philosophical texts have deeply shaped her own work and thinking. Egana also shares her experience of criticism and resistance after depicting the Russian language and Russian-speaking space through the perspective of a migrant family, shaped by bazaars, communal apartments, precarity, and everyday discrimination. She reflects on why such perspectives are often dismissed, and why it is crucial to continue writing from lived, marginalized positions.

This episode is a reflection on writing as practice, language as power, and literature as a space for re-imagining identity and belonging.

De_colonialanguage and the Politics of Naming with Denis Esakov Jan 08, 2026

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In this episode of Yurt Jurt, host Diana Kudaibergen speaks with Denis Esakov, a linguist and activist from Kyrgyzstan and a member of De_colonialanguage, a Berlin-based initiative working at the intersection of language, power, and decolonial practice.

Denis reflects on how colonial and imperial histories continue to shape everyday speech, naming practices, and ideas of “normative” language in post-imperial contexts. The conversation explores De:coloniaLanguage as both an initiative and a method, one that questions whose voices are legitimized, whose are erased, and how language can be reclaimed as a tool of agency rather than control.

The episode also touches on the Open Space Museum, where language, memory, and public knowledge intersect through open, participatory formats that challenge traditional institutional authority. Together, Diana and Denis discuss how museums, archives, and linguistic practices can become sites of resistance, care, and re-imagining futures beyond colonial frames. This episode invites listeners to think of language not as neutral, but as something we actively choose, contest, and transform.

90s Shame, Kinship & Decolonial Futures with Zarina Mukanova Dec 18, 2025

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In this episode of Yurt Jurt, host Diana Kudaibergen sits down with cultural and social anthropologist Zarina Mukanova for a wide-ranging conversation about identity, memory, and what decolonization really looks like in Central Asia. Together, they unpack why so many Kazakh and Kyrgyz kids of the 1990s grew up feeling ashamed of who they were, had their names changed to Russian versions, internalized the idea that “modern” meant “not us,” and learned early that colonial hierarchies shape belonging. Zarina reflects on decolonization not as a fixed destination but as a continuous, shifting process, one where transformation itself is the only constant. In today’s rapidly changing world, she argues, the nomadic worldview may offer the most accurate metaphor for navigating identity, power, and history.

The conversation touches on kinship systems, the role of women and gender in shaping identities, and how colonialism has altered our relationship to memory and community. How do we reclaim stories that were muted? How do we understand ourselves when the ground beneath us is always moving?

Bashkort Struggles and the Limits of Russian Liberalism with Ilyuza Mukhamediyarova Dec 11, 2025

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In this episode of Yurt Jurt, host Diana Kudaibergen sits down with Ilyuza Mukhamediyarova, a Bashkort activist whose work centers on Indigenous rights, political repression, and cultural survival in today’s Russia. Together, they unpack the Baymak protests in Bashkortostan and what they reveal about the long-standing tensions between Indigenous communities and the Russian state. Ilyuza reflects on the deep disconnect between how Russians use the term “Russian” as a default national identity and how non-Russian ethnic groups within the federation experience it as an erasure. They discuss why so many Indigenous peoples refuse the label “Russian,” and how this linguistic collapse has contributed to decades of misunderstanding, assimilation, and political marginalization.

The conversation also turns to the growing rift between Russian liberal opposition groups and the national republics, exploring why calls for democracy often fail to acknowledge Indigenous autonomy, colonial violence, or the right to self-determination. Finally, Diana and Ilyuza confront a difficult question for all communities facing repression: Do we have to sacrifice one generation to secure freedom for the next?

Memory as Resistance: Kamila Smagulova on the Jeltoksan Uprising Dec 04, 2025

Show notes

⚠️ Content Warning: This episode includes descriptions of violent repression and historical trauma.

In this powerful episode of Yurt Jurt, host Diana Kudaibergen speaks with Kamila Smagulova, researcher, civil society activist, and PhD candidate in history at Leiden University, about the Jeltoksan uprising of December 1986. Kamila draws on her historical research and personal passion to explore how this protest echoes the broader history of suppressed dissent in Kazakhstan, particularly the roles of young people, and young women in particular, and how they were treated.

Throughout the episode, Kamila also performs three songs, bringing her scholarly and artistic voices together in a moving tribute to memory, resistance, and identity.

As a historian, Kamila reflects on how the state’s refusal to fully acknowledge these events has shaped collective memory. She situates Jeltoksan not just as a political protest but as a lasting symbol of the struggle for recognition, civic agency, and historical justice in Kazakhstan.

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