Document Type
Article
Abstract
This article examines two case studies in Kazakhstan with research into how Soviet institutional legacies underwrite extractive economies that render toxic costs invisible in post-Soviet setting. Through ethnographic work in Stepnogorsk (uranium processing) and the Semipalatinsk Test Site (nuclear weapons testing), we extend Gabrielle Hecht’s residual governance framework to demonstrate how inherited bureaucratic compartmentalization now serves market rather than state interests. We introduce the concept of functional nonreform to describe how distributed actors maintain Soviet-era boundaries that prevent accountability: Agencies monitor but don’t enforce, health authorities lack jurisdiction over contaminated sites, and environmental agencies measure radiation but cannot restrict land use. Mass privatization in the 1990s created structural asymmetry, with mining companies acquiring profit-generating assets while remediation obligations remained orphaned between dissolved Soviet institutions and underresourced agencies. We show that this produces two mechanisms: functional appropriation (legal separation of assets from liabilities) and functional fragmentation (maintenance of Soviet boundaries that fragment authority and prevent comprehensive action). To navigate this, we explore how communities develop what we call toxic habitus: embodied knowledge for navigating contamination that enables survival while paradoxically absolving institutions of responsibility. The analysis reveals how institutional ruins become productive infrastructure for accumulation by dispossession, showing that residual governance in post-Soviet contexts operates through selective maintenance rather than active minimization.
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
Publication Info
Published in Journal of Disaster Studies, Volume 3, Issue 1, 2026, pages 113-142.
Rights
© 2026 Robert Kopack and Magdalena E. Stawkowski This is an open access article distributed under the terms of a Creative Commons license (CC BY NC-ND 4.0).
APA Citation
Kopack, R. A., & Stawkowski, M. E. (2026). Governing by fragments: Soviet ruins and the architecture of unaccountability in Kazakhstan. Journal of Disaster Studies, 3(1), 113–142. https://doi.org/10.1353/jds.2026.a997618