ABSTRACT
This chapter develops an analytical approach to inquire into the ideological frames through which people in the former Soviet periphery make sense of the transformation that they and their countries have undergone since the breakdown of socialism. Drawing on post- and decolonial thought and its specific iterations in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, we develop Yurchak’s concept of the “imaginary West” as a main node linking discourses of modernity, progress, and civilization. Drawing on accounts of interlocutors and societal discourses from Bulgaria and Kyrgyzstan, we illustrate the variety of self-positionings that people assume in relation to Western superiority, including pro-/anti-Western, nationalist, and anticolonial sentiments, but also critical and inclusionary positionalities that can approximate decolonial ways of thinking.
