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Abstract
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.
Acknowledgements
I want to thank my supervisor Dr. David Lane for his support and advice that led to the outcome of this work. Also I want to thank Dr. Sally N. Cummings, Professor Ayse-Azade Rorlich and two anonymous reviewers for their useful comments and suggestions. Drafts of this paper were presented at ESCAS biennale conference in Cambridge (2011) and at the UCLA “Language and identity in Central Asia” workshop in Los Angeles (2012).
Notes
Interview with a former resistance leader, politician, dissertation fieldwork, 10 April 2011, Almaty.
Interview with a cultural elite member, dissertation fieldwork, 7 April 2011, Almaty.
As Adams (Citation1999, 362) argues, Soviets provided the mechanisms for the national formation or the “romantic, nationalist method for understanding the difference between traditional, ethnic and universal” in neighboring Uzbekistan, but the same was also provided to other cultural elites in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and other Union republics.
Interview 11, with Gerold Belger, writer, dissertation fieldwork, April 2011, Almaty. For more explanations see further in the text.
All interviews were collected, transcribed and translated from Russian and Kazakh into English by the author of the present paper. Some of the respondents who wished to remain unidentified are presented here anonymously. Others who consent for their open identification are present with their real names and occupations. I owe much gratitude to all of my respondents and people who helped me in arranging interviews with them.
Methodologically this work is grounded on John Thompson's notion of depth-hermeneutic analysis that considers historic, semiotic and re-interpretational analysis; please refer to Thompson (Citation1990).
As Akiner (Citation1995, 37) argues “by 1940, there were 762 book titles published in Kazakhstan (382 in Kazakh), and 13 periodicals and 438 newspapers in Kazakh, with a joint annual print run of almost 77 million copies.” Moreover, this was only the mere example of the Soviet cultural “modernization” that aimed to educate and “civilize” the backward populations on their way to the accomplishment of Communism. Other developments included introductions of the first “European-styled” Universities, theatres and operas in Kazakhstan in late 1930s as well as the creation of the Writers' Union in 1937.
In the cases of Kenesary Kasymov or December 1986 protests that both were important national symbols circulated in literary works.
Sarsembayev (Citation1999, 322) identifies them as “a nationalist movement before Soviet rule symbolized by “bourgeois nationalists” as labeled by Soviet historians. It was the urban Kazak renaissance of a new middle-class intelligentsia – the young doctors, teachers, engineers, writers and poets of the early twentieth century”.
The best example is the ban of the pre-Soviet “Alash” movement enlighteners whose names were “rehabilitated” only in late Perestroika years.
I have to thank Professor Ayse-Azade Rorlich for the elaboration of this point.
As it will be seen from the interview's quotes, intellectuals saw Russian colonizers and the image of Moscow-centered elites as oppressors. This was a part of the “Us-Them” identity formation process within the elite's field because the Russian wider public in Kazakhstan was not portrayed or linked to the “oppressors.”
Interview with literary expert from Kazakh Literature Institute, 5 April 2011, Almaty.
Interview with philosopher Murat Auezov, 15 April 2011, Almaty.
During the Stalinist purges of 1930s when along with the “ethnic blossoming” of official ethnic culture in the Union republics, the members of local intelligentsia and “nationalist bourgeoisie” were exterminated along with various “extreme” (unofficial) cultural representations (among them, various national heroes who fought against Russian colonial rule, like Kenesary Kasymov, for example).
Interview with Gerold Belger, writer, 7 April 2011, Almaty.
The term used by one of my respondents to identify the opposition to the Soviet ideology in their expression of support to the prohibited nationalisms.
Interview with a second literary expert also from Kazakh Literature Institute, 5 April 2011, Almaty.
In her own explanation of this concept it is a cultural saying relating to the steppe that was burnt and was able to harvest only in five years but gave a newer and better generation of crops.
Ilyas Yessenberlin interview to Sultan Orazalinov at the Republican television in 1980 in Yessenberlin (2001).
From the interview with writer and translator Gerold Belger in 7 April 2011, Almaty
In rural areas of Kazakhstan back then and still, sheep are an important and expensive product. In this sense, the respondents stressed the importance and popularity of the book that was traded for an expensive price of a sheep.
In Kazakhstan's historical discourse it is referred as a nation, or some kind of polity; however, I am using less arguable and ideologically colored terms in this case.
In his memories about Yessenberlin, Bekezhan Tlegenov – Kazakh writer and Soviet ideological worker in the Writers' Union, recalls the time when Koshpendiler trilogy was published. It was linked not only with his high popularity among people, but also with censorship, intrigues and opposition to Yessenberlin from higher “powers”. So, he hypothesized that was the reason why Yessenberlin called his second book of the trilogy Despair in Yessenberlin (2001, 158).
“Sliyanie (merging) is a much stronger concept; it involves the creation of a common international unity and the replacement of previous national and ethnic consciousness” for a united vision of Soviet people (Lane Citation1992, 189).
For example, Anuar Alimzhanov's Makhambet's arrow is depiction of another struggle – poet Makhambet against khan Dzhangir.
Interview with literary critic, 5 April 2011, Almaty.
It seems like for Yessenberlin it was very important to save this concept of “nomadic democracy” because every major khan in his books is essentially accompanied by an opponent from the public – zhyrau, who struggles for the rights of the folk (narod).
Interview with Aigul Ismakova, 5 April 2011, Almaty.
Ilyas Yessenberlin interview to Sultan Orazalinov at the Republican television in 1980 in Yessenberlin (2001).
Although he avoids such direct classification due to Soviet censorship for nationalism.
Interview with literary expert, 5 April 2011, Almaty.
Interview with member of the cultural elite (artist), 2 April 2011, Almaty.
Interview with philosopher and activist Murat Auezov, 15 April 2011, Almaty.
Interview with editor of literary newspaper Kazakh adebieti [Kazakh literature], 1 April 2011, Almaty.
For example, Works of Mukhtar Magauin Kobyz Saryny (Kobyz and Spear), Anuar Alimzhanov's Strela Makhambeta (Makhambet's Arrow), Abdizhamal Nurpeisov's Kan men ter (Blood and Sweat), Abish Kekilbayev's Pleyadi – sozvezdie nadezhdi (Pleiades – the constellation of hope), Olzhas Suleimenov's Az I YA.
Interview with a former resistance leader, politician, dissertation fieldwork, 10 April 2011, Almaty.
Kazakhstan was the only Soviet Republic where the titular ethnicity of Kazakhs was a minority and represented only 6.5 million people out of 16.2 million population (census 1989 – Kazakhstan Agency of Statistics).
Most of the cultural elites I interviewed expressed such views openly.
Many members of Kazakh-Soviet cultural elites nevertheless were able to obtain political positions and power, notably, writer and senator Abish Kekilbayev or Olzhas Suleimenov.
Numerous works of the local intelligentsia (historians, philosophers, political analysts) and on-going criticism expressed by more nationalist cultural elite members in the late 1990s and 2000s are a clear indication for such outcome despite the President's attempts to create a unifying “Eurasianist” ideological perspective.
From an interview with a member of the cultural elite, artist, 5 April 2011, Almaty.
The “birth of the Kazakh nation” is also quite an ambiguous point for many members of cultural elites as some of them identify the period of Genghis khan's rule or the late nineteenth century as the initial stage of the Kazakh “nation.” However, as local historians urge, there is a difference between the state and statehood for the Kazakh nomads and if the state was a latter introduction, then the statehood existed since the mid-1400s (see for example, Abenov, Arynov, and Tasmagambetov Citation1996, 24–28 for an explicit argumentation of this point).
Interview with Timur Suleimenov, Head of the Designer's Union of Kazakhstan, member of Zhas Tulpar movement in 1960s–1970s, 5 April 2011, Almaty.
Although I use this terminology here due to the absence of other definitions closely applicable to this case, I do so with the differentiation with other postcolonial cases, from which Kazakhstan differs on various levels.
In some designs yellow is replaced by gold.
The round roof top of a yurt – the traditional house of nomads.
Symbolically this is a reason why the sky is blue and a golden eagle is flying freely on the flag.
The gender of the mummy is still not identified.
On 16 December 1996 the copy of the Golden Man standing on snow bars was set as a Monument of Independence in Almaty's Central Square.
Interview with known historian, 7 April 2011, Almaty.
Interview, 6 April 2011, Almaty.
Interview, 8 April 2011, Almaty.
For an interesting discussion of historical misinterpretations see Masanov, Abylhozhin, and Dorofeeva (Citation2007).