Mythologization of History and the Invention of Tradition in Kazakhstan (original) (raw)
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Mythologized History and Politics in Post-Soviet Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan *
The purpose of this work is to show the role of mythologized history in the management of modern political processes in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. The article analyses the causes of appearance of mythologized histories in the two republics of Central Asia, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. The article evaluates the function and instrumental character of this phenomenon. Authors have demonstrated in a lot of examples that mythologized history is one of the tools by which an attempt is made to control the political process. Mythologized history plays an important role in both countries. It cannot be argued that this phenomenon is understood and interpreted in full. In any case, this phenomenon requires further study. Rezumat: Istorie mitologizată și politică în Kazahstan și Kârgâzstan (în perioada post-sovietică). Scopul acestei lucrări este de a arăta rolul istoriei mitologizate în gestionarea proceselor politice moderne din Kazahstan și Kârgâzstan. Articolul abordează cauzele apariției ist...
Although much attention has been paid to national construction in Soviet and post-Soviet Central Asia, the field of literary and cultural analysis of the origins of current national symbols and texts in this region is yet not fully acknowledged and discovered. This article tries to shed light onto the literary construction of an ethnic identity and its historical background in Soviet Kazakhstan and its influence on the post-Soviet ideology in this multicultural country. In doing so it investigates the ways and the time when most of the important historical epics were “re-written,” brought back by the Kazakh writers and intellectuals in the mid-twentieth century. The importance of investigating this period and this phenomenon is twofold. First, it provides further contribution to the Soviet creation of binary approaches to the formation of ethnic identities and the continuous attack on local nationalisms. Following the arguments of some scholars in the field (e.g. [Adams, Laura. 1999. “Invention, Institutionalization and Renewal in Uzbekistan's National Culture.” European Journal of Cultural Studies 2; Dave, Bhavna. 2007. Kazakhstan: Ethnicity and Power. London: Routledge]) this asserts that the local cultural elites found ways of bargaining and re-structuring such identity contributing to its “localization” through the usage of pre-Soviet and pre-Russian historical symbols. In a way, they were able to construct their own “imagined community” and resistance to the past and existing (according to them) colonialism within the given framework of Kazakh-Soviet literature. Secondly, the historicity that became a leitmotif of most important literary works and later on a main focus of national ideology in post-Soviet Kazakhstan must be viewed not just as an instrument of legitimation in this post-colonial state but also as a strong continuity of cultural and ethnic identity lines. The very fact that a detailed and continued genealogy of Kazakh medieval tribes and rulers was the main focus of major works by such famous Kazakh writers as Mukhtar Auezov or Ilyas Yessenberlin demonstrates the importance of the “continuity” and kinship and family lines for Kazakhs. The paper raises the questions of how national and elitist these movements were before the independence and how the further post-independent projects of using and re-establishing these links and continuity formed more questions than answers for the nation-builders in independent Kazakhstan.
Typological Features of the Kazakh Ethnic Picture of the World
International journal of environmental and science education, 2016
This research investigates the problems of self-identification of the Kazakh ethnic group in the posttotalitarian period, which are based on the values of traditional nomadic life of Kazakhs. The research shows the mechanisms of evolution of the ethnic group’s worldview paradigms and their typology. The purpose of the research is to investigate the national image of Kazakhs’ world through the structure of their artistic thinking, based on the assumption that art plays a significant role in the formation of an ethnic group’s worldview. The research found that the significant factors in the structure of the ethnic worldview are traditional art, mythopoethic notions, language, and peculiarities of the national psychology and ethics. The features of mythopoethic reflection of reality in the artistic and spiritual practice of the nation, which are recorded in monuments of national art, were studied in detail. The research analyzed the typical features of the worldview of Ancient Turks as...
Historia i Polityka, 2019
The article aims to explain the relationships between the official historical narrative (politics of memory) and the image of the state on the international area (nation branding). The analysis was based mainly on the Kazakh cinematography and the Kazakh TV station programs. I argue that the official historical narrative may contribute to the change of Kazakhstan perception on the international area. Politics of memory aims at highlighting the selected historical periods and concealing others. Kazakhstan elites are trying to emphasize the recent history, modernization and economic successes of the state after 1991. The pre-Soviet history is also strongly accentuated, and the historical continuity of the Kazakh nation (or even its statehood) from the end of the 15th century is highlighted. The politics of memory also aims at retraditionalization, i.e., the traditional lifestyle of nomads is widely publicized. On the other hand, the period of Russian and Soviet rule, painful events in the history of the twentieth century, are omitted or even concealed. Such a manner of conducting politics of memory may change the image of Kazakhstan, from the post–Soviet state to a modern one, modernized but at the same time nomadic, with a rich tradition.
MYTHOLOGISATION OF THE HISTORY OF THE TURKIC PEOPLES AT THE BEGINNING OF THE THIRD MILLENNIUM
For a long while practically all the Turkic people lived in one state, first the Russian Empire and later the USSR. Historiography as a discipline followed the Marxist-Leninist ideology. Anything else was declared heresy. The Soviet state replaced history with a myth of its own creation intended to lay the foundations for the task of building communism. The beginning of the perestroika became the starting point of general changes in all spheres of social sciences, including social consciousness. Such objective and subjective phenomena as language, religion, the legacy of ancestors, elements of material and spiritual culture, the mythologised conception of uniform genetic origin, notions of a "golden age" and original homeland, etc. became indicators, symbols or markers of the awakening of ethnicity, the banners of ethnic mobilisation and the foundation of ethnic identity. The myth is used for particular political purposes. These processes were analysed by the author in Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, in Northern Caucasus, the Ural-Volga region, among the Uighurs.
Medieval Kazakh History in Arab and Persian Sources
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The relevance of this topic lies in the analysis of the study of medieval Kazakh history. After gaining independence, the processes of the revival of national identity, reinstatement of primitive spiritual and moral values and human mentality, which were sharply suppressed during the period of the Soviet totalitarian system, became widespread. Therewith, the widely discussed national-historical structure of the population, the knowledge of ethnic roots, the restoration of traditions and customs, which served as a connecting link, as well as the specificity and originality of the approach are of particular importance. Currently, the problem of objective reading, coverage, and popularisation of the ancient and medieval Kazakh history and culture is acute. By rejecting one-sided interpretations of historical events, established clichés require impartial, academic analysis based on evidence drawn from a wide range of sources. The purpose of this study is to identify the problems of the ...
Myth in the structure of a narrative text (Modern Kazakhstani prose as a case study)
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The article is devoted to the study of classical/ancient myths. It functions in modern literary works in the form of «fragments» (images and motives). These images and motives are inserted in the narrative text, these elements of poetics are most productive to analyze. To trace the forms of existence, evolution and transformation of myth in the literature of the modern period. Classical myth as a prospectively directed source of inter-textuality is interspersed in a modern work, as a way of artistic organization of the material, and gives a special worldview. The study of the reflection of the myth is also in demand in the internal cultural policy of the Republic of Kazakhstan in connection with the actualized processes of national self-identification, cultural and mental specifics of the Kazakh ethnic group and other peoples of our multinational country. Modern man does not deal with archaic myths as creations of collective fantasy, but with their literary treatments placed in a different space-time continuum. When actualized in a literary text, the myth as a precedent text loses its independence, acquiring a new contextual meaning. One of the main features of the new mythological prose is the introduction of peculiar layers of national identity into the plot. Thanks to the most significant constants of existence, mythological elements are spilt into the individual author's vision.
Studies of Tsarist Russia on Folklore in Kazakhstan
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During the second half of the 18th century and during the 20th century, great changes in the cultural life of Kazakhstan during the occupation of Russia have come to the fore. Russian scholars have begun to deal with the Kazakh steppes. Among these studies, researches on popular science have guided the region in ruthlessness. The first research mission of the Russians was in the western region of Kazakhstan. It was held under the presidency of A.B. Cherkasskiy. The delegation made researches of folklore, genealogy and folklore together with the customs of the people of the region. Later, the mapper S.U. Remezov took it and published his work entitled "The Definition of Siberia and the People Living Along It". After the western part of Kazakhstan, Irtish and Zaysan, the Tarbagatay and Alatau sides, were presided over by Russian scholars I.T. Buhgolts, S. Liharyov, I. Unhovsky delegations gathered folklore sources and published a number of works including methods of Russification of the region. In the formation of the Soviet occupation of Russia, A. Begovich-Cherkassky played a major role in the study of the people around the Aral lake. In 1759, G. Miller's "Introduction of the Kingdom of Siberia" and İ. Falk, P. Pallas and I.G. Georgi Kazak studies of folk art have a separate place in the investigation of the Tsarist Rusian Russification activities. Russian colonial politics reached its ultimate goal with the establishment of the general governor of Turkistan in 1867. In this period Orenburg, Omsk (West-Siberia) and Tashkent Imperial Russian Geography Society is being established. People's studies of the society's tsarism raises Russia's politics of Russification to the ideological summit of military-political progress. Kazakh folk art studies P.