What Happened to the Second World? Earthquakes and Postsocialism in Kazakhstan

There is an assumption that with the disintegration of the USSR the Second World ceased to exist. Yet the demise of the Communist bloc as a geopolitical reality did not mean that it ceased to exert a defining influence over how people think and behave. This article examines how the postsocialist state in Kazakhstan deals with potential crises such as earthquakes and the extent to which the Soviet legacy still shapes intellectual debates, state structures and civil society organisations in in that country. Drawing on fieldwork and interviews, this paper re‐examines the Second World not only in its historical context but re‐establishes it as a conceptual framework for considering DRR in the former Soviet Bloc