ABSTRACT
The chapter analyzes the practice of renaming toponyms in Kazakhstan. The radical nature of the ongoing memorization in the country indicates the scale of the post-Soviet reframing and the depth of the mutual influence of cultural memory and political will. The critical question about renaming is whether it is always a project of the authorities, proposed unilaterally and centrally. Considered research cases on the toponymy of the regions of Kazakhstan show a wide range of renaming practices from the capital to other settlements, carried out on the initiative of main actors: central and regional authorities, local communities, and individuals. Within the framework of these cases, authors describe the regimes of ideological and emotional consent or disagreement to renaming expressed by actors. A separate case is devoted to the history of the toponym Baikonur. The example of the historical context of the cosmodrome’s name describes the difference between political and cultural frames of people’s memory and analyzes how the former’s domination distorts the latter. The renaming adopted for symbolic exchange reveals a complex interaction between various actors. On the one hand, actors are initially included in the traditional discourse of cultural memory; on the other hand, they strive to revise the existing identity and its territorialization. Therefore, renaming is considered in the chapter as a mode to manage identity by changing cultural memory under the appropriate political situation.
