The Qazaq Intelligentsia

Dr. Meiramgul Kussainova: Lecture on the Qazaq Intelligentsia

● one of the main slogans of the Qazaq elite: “Knowledge is the key to the survival of the
nation.”
● The political elite consists of a broad spectrum of representatives: aksuyek (white bone),
karasuyek(black bone), asylsuyek (noble bone).
● White Bones are the ruling class Chinggisids, including khans and sultans.
Non-Chinggisid tribal leaders, elders, batyrs, and biis belong to the Black Bone group.
The Noble Bone is just another name for those who are called khojas, people who trace
their ancestry back to prophet Muhammed. However, when we further speak of the
Qazaq political elite, the term predominantly refers to Chinggisid sultans.
● The Qazaq Steppe was first described as a part of the Russian Empire in 1731, when
Abulkhair khan and two dozen sultans gave an oath of allegiance to the Russian
Empress.
● The ukazy of 1822 and 1824 introduced a new administrative system with new units
such as district, uezd, bolys, governor-generalship.
● a new class of bureaucrats (chenovniki) or officials emerged, who contributed to the
rapid expansion of Russian rule into the Steppe.
● Here are some of those criteria: heritage, mastery of the Russian and/or Tatar
languages, the relationship with Russians in the border regions, sense of responsibility
and perseverance in work, prestige and respect within one’s own tribe, family (and other
informal) connections, and most importantly loyalty to the Russian authorities. Qazaqs
who met these criteria were incorporated into the Russian administrative system.
● Those Qazaqs who were admitted into the Russian colonial system underwent special
training. Only Qazaqs who have been trained were assigned to the Russian
administrative offices.Here are some of the ways in which it was done. First, only trained
personnel were admitted into regional colonial administrations. Second, preparatory
schools for translators and interpreters were opened. Third and fourth, everyone working
for the administration had to learn the Russian language. Fifth, Russian-Qazaq schools
were opened for Qazaq children. Sixth, Qazaq children were allowed to study in the
military cadet corps. Seventh, Qazaqs were permitted to study at Russian universities.
Thus, only those who underwent this extensive training were admitted to the colonial
administrative system.
● To promote the successful implementation of its policy, the Russian government
developed a system of awarding the political elite – those who were loyal and devoted to
the government. For example, Qazaqs received the following awards and gifts: valuable
prizes from the king’s court, such as gold or silver weapons, cash prizes, awarding of the
famous Russian medals, military service, exemption from taxation, and the king's
gratitude.
● Zhangir(Jahangir) khan - Bokei horde, 1823, Astrakhan, European style education,
Russian, Tatar, French, Arabic, Persian languages, major-general, Kazan university,
 1841 first school - religion, Russian language, arithmetic, physics, history, geography,
first museum
● Musa Shormanov - Bayan aul district, Pavlodar uezd, Siberian Cadet Corps, Omsk,
colonel, Russian, Arabic, Tatar, French, Honorary citizen of Russia, Qazaq folklore
writing

●
● Ahmet Zhanturin - Orenburg Cadet Corps, Orenburg garrison, Orenburg Border
Commission, senior sultan of Orenburg krai, colonel, Russian, Arabic, Tatar, French,
financial support for Qazaqs in Orenburg Cadet Corps, promotion and publication of
scientific works
● The support of the local aristocracy was important in educating as many Qazaq children
as possible.
● Qazaq elite supported and promoted Russian education on the Kazakh Steppe, built
schools with own means, provided financial support to schools, opened hospitals and
schools for teachers, sent Qazaq youth to Russian universities for further study with full
financial support, established funds with the help of local aristocracy, introduced the
educated youth to the local power structure by employing them.
● Systematic scientific study of the Steppe allowed the Russian Empire to colonize it faster
than it otherwise would have been able to. The Russification policy unfolded more
rapidly. Finally, a great number of people were converted to Christianity.

Valikhanov: On Islam in the Steppe

● Muhammad Hanafia “Chokan” Valikhanov, 1835-1865
● Abylai → Wali → Shyngys(Senior Sultan of Aman-Karagaisk Okrug) → Chokan
● 1847, Omsk cadet corps - Russian language, mathematics, engineering and drafting
● Graduation - adjutant to the G. Kh. Gasford, the governor-general of Western Siberia
● 1855 - Semirech’e, Kokand, Ili Valley, Kulja and Kashgar - ethnographic material and
reports for imperial army
● 1864 - General Mikhail Chernia’ev’s campaign against the Kokand Khanate - use of
force against peaceful populations in Aulie-ata and Pishpek
● Local bureaucracy
● Western Siberia, Emperor Nikolai I
● Encounter ethnic Russian writers and intellectuals exiled from western region
● Twin careers in imperial service and ethnography
● His Kirgiz ethnicity, his knowledge of steppe languages and customs, and his Russian
education- expert and interpreter of steppe culture for his fellow officers and superiors
● To achieve this task for the sake of humanity, at first it follows that one must simply tear
away the mask from the mullahs and the ideas of Islam and open Russian schools in the
okrugs in place of Tatar ones.
● Only true knowledge gives salvation from doubt, and only such knowledge teaches one
to value life and material well-being.
● There is no doubt that the reason for the alienation of the Tatars from the Russians and
the reason for this lamentable phenomenon was Islamic Puritanism. There can be no
other reason.
● Our Kirgiz are now more alienated from Russian enlightenment and Russian
brotherhood than they were before.
● Taking such an important measure in the interest of Christianity, the oblast’
administrators should have put into place, together with it, a repressive measure toward
Islam, as without that, it will not be possible for Christianity to find success.
● Likewise, we do not suggest that the government should persecute Islam. Those
methods always lead to resistance. Persecution increases the energy and popularity of a
religion, as has been seen more than once.
● Most likely, the reason that caused the government to leave matters of marriage and
divorce to the mullahs was the Kirgiz’s crude custom of giving their daughters in
marriage at too early an age and, most often, without the girls’ consent
● 1. Divide the Kirgiz Steppe from the jurisdiction of the Orenburg muftiate, as a people,
distinguished from the Tatars by their confessed faith, and appoint a special oblast’
akhund, who would be, essentially, an adviser from among the Kirgiz, to the general
oblast administration. 2. Confer the title of mullah only to native Kirgiz or to Kirgiz khojas,
if there will be a prior request for that from the people. 3. Do not appoint more than one
mullah to a single okrug, and abolish the position of licensed mullah in the volosts. 4. Do
not permit ishans and khojas, who have come from Central Asia to the Tatar
seminarians, to live with the nomadic Kirgiz without a specific occupation and keep them
under close watch. Do not let them create among the Kirgiz dervish and mystical
societies like those that now exist in Bayan-Aul and Qarqaralinsk okrugs.
● Besides the mullahs, we have many other harmful charlatans. We speak of the Tatars
and Central Asians, who occupy themselves with the practice of medicine. If they treated
the gullible Kirgiz with harmless herbs, like the Russian folk healers, we would not speak
of them. But the fact the matter is that these gentlemen cure people to death.
● Finally, among our people themselves lurk many dark prejudices and harmful customs.
The removal of the fetus, the forcing out of the fetus in the last period of pregnancy, and
the killing of infants after they are born, by general opinion, are not considered crimes
among us.
● It is clear that, in the face of such savage understanding and, finally, in the total absence
of obstetricians and midwives, many pregnant women die giving birth or of beating.
● Kirgiz look upon a doctor as a bureaucrat, and don’t expect him to be of any use to
them.
Bailey: A Biography in Motion
● Scholar-traveler that was supported by the Russian Geographical Society in research
expeditions to Central Eurasia during the second half of the nineteenth century
● He was educated in a "Russian" or even Western ''vay, had contacts with prominent
individuals in the intellectual elite, and presented the results of his research expeditions
in a fashion similar to that expected of individuals associated closely either with the
state, the military, or scientific societies like the Russian Geographical Society.
● He displayed a degree of sensitivity to the lives of Central Eurasian peoples throughout
his career and ultimately made the decision, when he was very ill, to leave the world of
establishment Russian scholars and studies, as the sources indicate a withdrawal from
the career trajectory he was on and, instead, embraced a life of a more "traditional"
Central Eurasian or Kazakh person, albeit one from the relatively privileged position of a
Chinggisid Kazakh.
● In approaching a study of his biography, it is hard to overstate the complexity
of"understanding" Chokan Valikhanov and it seems appropriate to portray him as an
individual who was an amalgamation of multiple political dimensions: including that of tho
colonizing Russians who wished in part to advance Russian "civilization" in Kazakh
territories; that of the colonized Central Eurasians whom Valikhanov hoped would
advance in some way from their involvement with Russia; and that of the Chinggisid
nobility, who operated in a kind of intermediate position of power between the two other
groups.
● He could be seen by some as a colonial worker, but also as an individual who took
advantage of the opportunities to be had by pursuing the path of a "Russian"
scholar-traveler, which was made possible for him in part by virtue of his birthright.
● He carried out activities in a way that advanced his career and personal interests,
including travel, ethnography, and scholarship. Valikhanov was a person often on the
move, who navigated through and adapted to multiple cultural worlds in a time of
tremendous change.
● The Vali Khans, or Va]jkbanovs as they became known to the Russians, were able to
assert authority over the space by virtue of their claim to be "white bone" or Chinggisid
Kazakhs, rather than "black bone" or non-Chinggisid Kazakhs.
● Throughout his life, Valildianov's interactions with and among Russians, Kazakhs,
Kyrgyz, and other Central Eurasian peoples was impacted by his Chinggisid heritage
● Aiganym pushed her young grandson to be educated in a Western/Russian fashion, but
she also encouraged him to be grounded in a more traditional upbringing by providing
him with a steady dose of Kazakh history and culture
● Her influence steered Valikhanov toward a lifelong interest in Kazakh and Kyrgyz
folklore, which he would develop more fully following his expeditions in his writing of
many historical and cultural essays on these peoples
● Young Chokan also developed an interest in drawing, a hobby that he advanced in part
through his acquaintances with the many Russian scientists, scholars, and military types
who paid frequent visits to the Valikhanov home during their trips to the steppe.
● So, while he had tremendous opportunities in his education at Omsk, not all doors were
opened to him. Although he was from white-bone lineage, and was "privileged" in many
ways, this status did not allow for his unlimited advancement(military)
● his account was written mostly for the use of the Russian empire and military, which
comes through in the tone and substance of the report - how the movement of military
troops could be most efficiently carried out through these little-known lands
● conversations are discussed from the vantage point of a colonial official more than that
of a fellow Central Eurasian
● Valikhanov also exhibits a sensitivity to and interest in the local culture, landmarks, and
people he encounters, beyond just listing them as curiosities or points for future
conquest
● The peoples whom he describes in this account are not mere background pieces, but he
also does not view them as equals
● Chokan Valikhanov was involved in imperial projects of documentation and scientific
description, but was also more perceptive about the cultures of the peoples of the
territory than many Russian or European scholar-travelers had been
● Valikhanov often demonstrated an aversion to what he saw as a more fanatical brand of
lslam and worried about its possible impact on Kazakhs(Qing/Kulja)
● St. Petersburg in 1857 to present his travel findings to the Russian Geographical Society
● Given the rising tide of political opposition, the Russians saw the region around Kashgar
as a potential site of contestation or even colonization, particularly given their recent
successes in areas just to the west of the border between Russian and Qing areas of
influence(western China)
● A most immediate reason for Valikhanov's journey to Kashgar was to investigate the
disappearance and death in the area of the Gorman explorer and traveler Adolph
Schlagintveit
● While in Kashgar one of the aksakals offered a bride for Chokan Valikhanov. She was a
local noblewoman who proved to be a valuable source of information about the area.
However, when Valikhanov left Kashgar at the end of winter he left without her. He only
remarried at the end of his life - a Kazakh woman from the Greater Horde.
● Equal to the scholarly value of his drawings, Valikhanov's humanity also comes through
in his sketches, and this is an important pa1i of his biography. Although he was engaged
in some important work and reportage, he also exhibited a humanity and interest in
many people, and did not see them strictly as detached subjects
● Valikhanov's work on Kashgar provided the Russian authorities with valuable information
on trade routes and the political conditions of the area, as well as ethnographic
information. He was promoted to the rank of captain in the military, awarded a medal,
and given a 500 ruble award
● But beyond these sketches that reflected his participation in the process of gaining
colonial control over territory, Valikhanov's sketches also offer a window onto his
personal perceptions and interests. A great number of sketches were made of people in
everyday life scenes
● "in the heart of Valikhanov love for his own peoples combined with Russian patriotism”
Potanin
Valikhanov: Notes on Levshin
● The two Kirghiz-Kaisaks, whom A.I. Levshin asked, “What is your vera (belief/religion)?”
probably did not give thought to the meaning of the question and were confused by the
novelty of the question, and did not have an answer except for the simple “I do not
know.” Every Kaisak knows that he is a follower of Muhammad and that he is a Muslim;
maybe he does not understand the meaning of the word but it is still a part of his pride
before those of other faiths. From their childhood one hears all the time that he is a
Muslim, and “those who are not Muslims are kafirs, who are condemned by God for
eternal punishment in the next world.” After this, is it possible to assume that Kaisaks do
not know their faith?
● Levshin exaggerates the ignorance of the people he describes, saying that witchcraft,
deceit and divination are a part of Kaisaks’ religion. They are not a part of the essence of
the religion, but rather a superstition that is present in every nation with different faiths.
Kaisaks believe in witchcraft and divination only in the case that something good and
kind is predicted. That is the reason why he always predicts the good. The fulfillment of
at least one good prediction out of thousands is the only thing that supports the
significance of witches.
● Kaisaks have sympathy and compassion towards others, and those qualities deserve
attention and praise. It can be said that it is the only good virtue that can be found in
Kaisaks. The mutual reciprocity that Kaisaks provide each other in that case is worthy of
adoption by enlightened Europeans.

Resettlement and the 1916 Revolt

K. K. Pahlen: Mission to Turkestan

● Semirechye - rich but people are inefficient, good for fruit growing,
● Raids of Kazakhs under Cossacks
● Kazakhs learned haymaking, beekeeping from Russians
● Governor of the province of Semirechye Kolpakovskiy built agricultural colleges,
● Emigration from European Russia
● Traveling through Siberia when he was still heir to the throne, Emperor Nicholas II was
profoundly shocked by the empty stretches of land which met his eye and expressed a
wish to see them settled as soon as possible.
● The new emigration officers arrived at their respective posts already prejudiced against
resident local authorities and rapidly made themselves unpopular by boasting about their
influential connexions in the capital. By recklessly and often stupidly spending state
money they aroused the jealousy of the resident officials, who had been vainly trying,
often for years, to obtain the necessary credits for schemes and projects of real
importance.
● 1905 - the call went out from St.Petersburg: 'Produce land for the settler.'
● According to officials a single Russian village was a source of more trouble than a few
hundred native settlements. On the other hand, the type of emigrant they brought over
 was of little or no concern to the emigration authorities; for aught they cared, they might
be thieves, robbers, tramps or just idlers. It was numbers that counted, and provided that
satisfactory reports could be sent off to St. Petersburg all was well.
● The Minister, the very able Mr. Krivoshein, had only one aim in view: to get emigration to
the rich regions of Turkestan put on a workable and efficient footing; personalities and
intrigues were to be of no consideration. he had sent an Under Secretary to Turkestan
two years previously, but that after a lifetime of office in the Ministry in the capital, this
worthy official failed to obtain a proper appreciation of the situation and could only report
that: 'Everything appeared to be in order’(“Everything was, of course, done to pull the
wool over his eyes”)
● Prior to the Russian occupation all the land was owned by the Mohammedan rulers, the
Khans and Emirs. This ownership was based on the tenets of the Shariat, which
distinguished sharply between the right to possession and of actual use. According to
the Shariat only he who brought the land to life ('made it live'), that is irrigated it, was
entitled to be regarded as a hereditary user, who was obliged to pay the owner a tithe of
his income.
● The Colonization Department now entered upon the scene as a new element of
authority, absolutely independent of the Governor-General, the Provincial and District
Officers, and staffed by personnel holding principles diametrically opposed to those on
which the historical development of the rights of ownership were based.
● In practice, it was intended to deprive the Kirgiz of all the arable land they had irrigated
and were now farming and compel them to search for other land in the mountains to
which they withdrew with their herds every summer.
● All in all, the activities of the Colonization Authorities in Turkestan lasted for fifteen years.
Their effect upon the local population was so disturbing that the friendly relations that
had hitherto existed between the Russians and natives were brought to an end.
● A serious difficulty arose when the demand for more and more water, both for the
settlers and the natives, became really acute, the latter striving to cancel the free supply
of water and retaining it all for themselves.
A. N. Kuropatkin: Pishpek
● The population was threatened with the hanging of anyone who thought of stealing, be
he Kirgiz or Russian, by a military court in accordance with martial law.
● I have come to the conclusion that it is necessary, where possible, to separate these
peoples.
● The Kirgiz must also be given possibilities. For the last 40 years we have silently agreed
to wipe from the face of the earth this beautiful, good-natured, naïve, and yet, by our
own fault, wild tribe. We disregarded them. We decided that their role was finished. We
decided that progress for them meant settlement. It is not so. Kirgiz is by nature a
herdsman and a nomad. In this we must see his strength. An enormous portion of the
land in Central Asia is suitable only for nomadic herding. Kirgiz is a naturally born
horseman. This must be put to use.
● The Kirgiz are excellent, indefatigable horsemen. They are uncommonly observant, and
can orient themselves anywhere. With time, they should form a vital, if not the leading
position in our cavalry.
A. N. Kuropatkin: On the Turkestan Uprising
● During the 1916 Uprising, Kuropatkin kept a diary in which he recorded his travels
through the region and the various military actions, but also commented on his
interactions with Russian officials and locals in the region. Kuropatkin’s interpreter was
the engineer Mukhammadjan Tynyshpayev. The excerpts included below provide insight
into the conditions Kuropatkin encountered once he had arrived in Central Asia, but also
offer Kuropatkin’s assessment of the uprising’s causes.
● I do not like how we drove off a large quantity of livestock -- 300 cattle, 10,000 sheep,
2,000 horses – absolutely without a fight. It is possible that we took them from peaceful
Kirgizes.
● The main reason for the readiness with which the Kirgizes rebelled goes deep and is
hidden within our land policy toward the Kirgizes. For many years, “free land” has been
created by taking grazing land from the Kirgizes and, particularly, their winter pastures.
When allotting land to Kirgizes during their transition to settled life, the law permitted
them to retain only their arable land, while the land for pasturing livestock and growing
hay was taken from them. In general, the drafting of the workers provided the spark, but
the dissatisfaction of the Kirgizes with the Russian regime began to grow long ago.
● The unexpected demand for the muster of men between 19 and 43 years of age was
announced in such a hasty and poorly thought-out form that it caused great confusion in
the minds of the population. Those who carried out the order, instead of calming the
population and explaining what was demanded of them, turned the mobilization into a
source of profit. It is difficult to imagine how many bribes were collected in Ferghana and
Samarkand oblasts alone, especially by rank-bearing members of the native
administration. The total sum of them is impossible to measure, save that it is in the
millions of rubles. Complaints came in from all sides. It was necessary to remove from
office two military governors (Galkin and Gippius), several uezd administrators, and the
pristavs and police chiefs of Tashkent and Samarkand.
● Today, the engineer Syromyatnikov, having lived through the Semirech’e and barely
escaping unharmed, told me that the main reason for the disorder is the actions of the
Ministry of Agriculture, who offended the Kirgizes by taking away their land through
articles on rental and state land and to give to settlers.
● I asked: is it not possible, having irrigated land, to give it as an additional allotment to the
Cossacks, and to leave the Kirgizes on their own land, having registered those who wish
it in the Cossack regiment with a reduced allotment? Is it not possible that it is necessary
to take away land from the Kirgizes in those regions where Russian blood was spilled, to
build new stanitsas on that land and to move part of the Cossacks out of the Vernyi
region?
● I expressed the opinion that with regards to that water, we ourselves found it, and with
regards to that land, we ourselves had irrigated it, and we should settle Russians and
increase the Russian element [in the region], but to take land from the natives to give to
the settler Russians sows discord between the two groups and lays the foundation for
bloody reprisals. The Vernyi Kirgizes have conducted themselves peacefully, but now we
want to take away their land
 ● Engineer Tynyshpaev, a Kirgiz who is traveling with me as an interpreter, gave me a list
of the reasons for the Kirgiz disorder in Auli Ata Uezd. According to information gathered
by him (the Kirgizes reports, one-sided) the disorder began because of the
administration and the Russian population. The administration did not explain to the
population the essence of the order, and the Russian population encouraged the
Kirgizes not to send workers. They frightened the Kirgizes with the idea that they would
be taken into the army. And they said among themselves: “Let them [the Kirgizes] rebel,
and then they will take the land from them and give it to the Russians.” When the
disorder began, the Russians robbed and killed the peaceful Kirgiz population.
● In actuality, the Kirgizes committed the first atrocities. They attacked unarmed people
exempted from military service, who had been called into the army, and they killed up to
thirty people. They threw the bodies down a well. Poltoratskii dealt harshly with the
innocent as well as the guilty.
The Karkaraly Petition
● In the village of Kuiandy on the road between Karkaraly and Petropavlovsk, thousands
of Qazaq nomads traded their products with Russian and Tatar merchants. The fair had
been held the first time in 1848 and since the 1880s it was open every year in June for
one month.
● Significantly, the petition was addressed not to the Tsar, who had lost legitimacy after the
bloody suppression of a peaceful demonstration in St. Petersburg in January 1905, but
to the Chairman of the Committee of Ministers. This was a largely powerless position but
at the time it was occupied by the foremost statesman of the late Tsarist Empire, Sergei
Witte, who was reemerging from his political sidelining and who would soon lead the
peace talks with Japan. The petition was written when the Empire had been shaken by
months of demonstrations, mass strikes, and peasant insurrections. The day before the
Karkaraly petition was written, the Tsarist army had crushed a major workers’ uprising in
the Polish city of Łódź. The day after, on June 27th, the crew of the Russian battleship
Potëmkin mutinied in the Black Sea. In February, in a failed attempt to defuse the
revolution, the Tsar had already promised the creation of a parliament, the future powers
of which were still unclear. Hence the reference, in the petition, to the need for Qazaq
representatives to be included in the future legislative assembly.
● The petition was most likely written by Akhmet Baitursynov (1873-1937), the writer,
educator, and linguist who would become one of the Alash Party founders and leaders in
1917. When he wrote the petition, Baitursynov was the director of the primary school of
Karkaraly. The other future leaders of the Alash Party, the Middle Zhuz Chinggisid and
scholar Älikhan Bökeikhan (1866-1937), who was born in the Karkaraly district and who
as a boy had studied in the local madrassa, and writer Mirzhakip Dulatov (1885-1935),
also signed the petition. The prominence of requests concerning Islam is noteworthy.
Bökeikhan later wrote that religious issues were more widely felt by common Qazaqs
than issues about political representations.
● In October 1905, Bökeikhan took part in the congress of the foundation of the Russian
ConstitutionalDemocratic Party, the most influential liberal party in the Empire. In late
1905 and early 1906, Bökeikhan and Baitursynov were among the organizers of
congresses of Qazaq members of the party in Uralsk and Semey that brought to the
 attention of the party’s leadership the issue of settler colonization and its negative
consequences for the Qazaqs.
● When the first State Duma was convened in 1906, four Qazaqs were among the elected
deputies (Bökeikhan was one of them). In the second Duma, dissolved in 1907, five
Qazaqs served. These were the only Qazaq representatives who sat in the imperial
parliament until the end of the Tsarist regime
● Due to the policy of Russification, the Qazaqs are lately so constrained in their
religious-spiritual affairs that they can scarcely take a step without the permission of the
administration.
● This administration has completely lost sight of the fact that the Qazaq steppe was never
conquered, but voluntarily accepted Russian subjecthood. The Qazaqs accepted
subjecthood in the interest of external defense, without anticipating any sort of
interference in their internal affairs.
● Just as the policy of Russification is harmful for the cultural development of the Qazaq
region, so is the current dispossession of Qazaq land detrimental to its prosperity.
● In short, the promulgation of the Steppe statute, created by the bureaucracy without the
slightest concern for the actual needs of the population; disrespect for the law on the
part of the administration, placing its own discretion above the law; complete disregard
for individual rights and human dignity; administrative violence, intruding into every
corner of life and interfering with both spiritual and economic interests; artificially
maintained ignorance of the popular masses – all of this has driven the population to
poverty and cultural stagnation
● Meanwhile, not only is permission withheld for the opening of new schools and mosques,
but the administration has also closed existing schools and mosques in Semipalatinsk
and Kokshetau.
● In light of the preceding, it is necessary to establish: freedom of conscience; freedom of
confession; the organization of an elected spiritual administration for the Qazaqs of the
steppe that is independent of the administration; the establishment of a secure
procedure for the construction of schools and mosques; the lifting of censorship of
religious books in Qazaq, Tatar, and Arabic; the transfer of parish records to the organs
of spiritual administration; and the establishment of a legal procedure for the distribution
of foreign passports.
● This refusal of the request for teachers of Qazaq grammar and the introduction of
Russian letters into Qazaq writing have led Qazaq people to believe that these aul
schools are not focused on the goal of enlightenment, but on something unknown
● The students of the agricultural schools, as well as the students of the former boarding
schools, comprised the foundation of educated Qazaq society, the need for which cannot
be denied. Nor can one deny the need for professional education.
● With the closure of the gymnasium boarding school, Qazaq children lost the opportunity
to study in the gymnasium and, consequently, to earn a higher education. The local
administration in charge of Qazaq educational stipends, does not distribute these
stipends to Qazaq children, but to children of other estates. Meanwhile, the demand for
education among the Qazaq population is enormous. This is demonstrated by the
 masses of Qazaq children who study in city schools at their own expense, despite the
burden of this expense for the Qazaq cattle herding economy.
● This requires: the introduction of Qazaq grammar into the aul schools; instruction in the
children’s own language as well as mandatory instruction in the language of the state;
restoration of the boarding schools that have been closed, including the boarding school
in the Omsk gymnasium, and the opening of a new boarding school for Qazaq children
in the Semipalatinsk gymnasium; and an increase in the number of stipends available for
enrollment in professional schools and in institutions of higher education
● In order to discuss the current needs of the Qazaq people, it is imperative to publish a
newspaper in the Qazaq language. This necessitates the establishment of a regular
procedure for newspaper publication free of censorship, and for the opening of a
publishing house.
● It is thus imperative that the land occupied by Qazaqs be recognized as their property.
● It is, thus, important that the Qazaqs not be expelled during the delimitation of land, and
that a borderline be established, the breadth of which should be established with the
participation of the Qazaqs
● It is thus imperative to change the Steppe statute with the participation of Qazaq
representatives, without whom it will not be viable.
● In the interests of the Qazaqs, it is necessary: to introduce management in the volost
chancelleries and people’s courts that can operate in the Qazaq language; to appoint of
people in the position of translators with knowledge of Qazaq language and grammar; to
restore the violated rights of the Qazaqs to present petitions in their own language.
● It is thus essential that judges know the Qazaq language, and that trial by jury be
introduced in the Qazaq steppe
● It is thus necessary to abolish the institutes of peasant administrators and rural police.
● According to article 17 of the Steppe statute, the Steppe Governor-General has the right
to administratively exile Qazaqs. As masses of innocent people have suffered as a result
of this law, in the interest of rights and legality it is necessary to abolish this article and
replace it with legal accountability for crimes before a court.
● It is necessary for the interests and rights of the Qazaq people that their deputies
participate in this legislative assembly.

The Qazaqs and the 1917 Revolution

Selections from Early-Twentieth Century Qazaq Newspapers

● Russians say Qazaqs should abandon the biy system and submit to the Russian court.
Our mullahs say (Qazaqs) should submit to the Sharia court. We cannot support any of
these (proposals). The reason (for that) is the following: Currently there are
approximately one hundred houses per each awil. And there is one biy assigned per one
hundred houses. If a biy is honest, his judgments are fair, he is approachable; if we
create a legislation for a biy and let him follow this legislation, create certain conditions
for him so he wouldn’t fear anybody, then the whole awil can benefit from the proximity of
a biy, it will be useful for all people. ...I wrote above that we wouldn’t be able to find a
 Russian judge when we need one. And our mullahs don't even know the way of Sharia.
Life changes every day. People’s (national) traditions (also) gradually change with time.
● Alikhan Bukeykhanov endorsed Qazaq ‘adat (traditions) and proposed to exclude the
affairs of Turks from the Sharia system. Why? Because (in his opinion) the Qazaqs are
not Muslims, at most only half (of them) are Muslims. The Qazaqs will benefit if they
keep ‘adat; if (they will not) keep (‘adat) – it will harm them. Sharia is very harmful for the
Qazaqs – he said.
● Mirza Bakhytzhan Qarataev: The Qazaq nation is truly Muslim. Following ‘adat' made
people miserable. ‘Adat became a fairy tale. There was no fairness and truthfulness (in
‘adat). It is unethical to doubt the Muslimness of the Qazaqs. It was the Russians who
claimed that the Qazaqs were not Muslims and it was the government that made
(Qazaq) affairs to be managed according to ‘adat. If we support ‘adat and keep friendly
relations with the government, it will leave the Qazaqs in misery and deprive
them of the religion – he said. Mirza Sabirali, Dosan mullah Amanshin, Jihansha
Seidallin, Sabwaqas aqsaqal Shormanov, Salimgerey mirza Janturin and all endorsed
Qarataev’s words.
● Sultan Bakhytzhan Qarataev, J. Seydallin, S. Lapin, Dosan amanshin, A. Narinbaev:
Second, the whole Qazaq nation for a long time has suffered from the narodni
(people’s aka biy aka ‘adat) court. There are currently no rigid rules in this court
system. ‘Adat became a source of violence and some powerful people have these
courts taken decisions in their favor. Third, for the Qazaq nation to escape from this
stagnant situation there is a need to follow the way of Sharia, and the pace of life itself
requires this way. If you ask why, (it is because) the Qazaq nation is governed according
to the General civil law, which people do not understand, and they do not like the
court system based on this law. Third, those Qazaqs who live on the lands that are to be
taken for settlers need to immediately take lands according to resettlement (settled)
norms. If you ask why, (it is because) the government will not stop resettlement and
there is no end to the process of taking favorable lands from the Qazaqs. For this
reason, there is a danger for the Qazaq nation to lose all the lands suitable for
agriculture. … The opinion of Alikhan Bukeykhanov and the ‘Qazaq’ newspaper about
preference of the nomadic norms over settled ones causes harm (to the Qazaqs).
If you ask why, (it is because) while there is a nomadic norm, whenever Tsarism
wants to take Qazaq lands, it will keep doing that. The nomadic norm gives lands
only for temporary usage. It doesn’t give a way for a peaceful possession (of the
land). ... It almost seems that they protect the interests of settlers. For this reason
there is a danger for Qazaqs to disperse (disappear) quite soon. If they will
follow the words of Bukeykhanov and the ‘Qazaq’ and stay nomadic, what will
happen to them in the end?
Collection of Documents on the Qazaqs in the Revolutionary Period
● Telegram to Karkaraly “To the Kyrgyz, the Free Citizens of Renewed Russia”: The sun
of freedom, equality and brotherhood has risen for all the peoples of Russia.It is
necessary for the Kyrgyz to organize themselves in order to support the new order and
the new government. It is necessary to work in conjunction with all the nationalities that
 support the new order. The Kyrgyz people need to prepare for the Constituent Assembly
and to appoint honorable candidates. We urge you to cease the Kyrgyz disputes and
domestic squabbles. The peoples’ slogan is “unity and justice”! Discuss urgently the land
issue. Our slogan is “a democratic republic” and the land for the one who derives income
from cattle-breeding and farming.
● The Decree of the All-Kyrgyz Congress in Orenburg, 21-28 June 1917: There should be
democratic federal parliamentary republic in Russia. Kyrgyz regions should obtain
regional autonomy based on national differences and living conditions. Kyrgyz plots of
land should not be occupied by anyone before the complete resettlement of Kyrgyz on
their land. In view of the lack of suitable land in the Kyrgyz Steppe, all the following land
that was taken from Kyrgyz should be immediately returned to the latter. Halt the entry
[of new settlers] into unoccupied areas. Plots of land that are occupied by settlers but are
free from their usage should be immediately returned to Kyrgyz. The winter pastures of
Kyrgyz, if the owner did not leave, should be returned, and resettled peasants should be
given other land plots. All the Kyrgyz property that is kept in the indicated places should
be returned to their owners. In addition, the right to graze the cattle in these forests
should be granted to them. Kyrgyz should develop their own regulations regarding the
land. The regular military is to be replaced by people’s militia. Universal compulsory
literacy education is particularly necessary. The first two years of studies should be
conducted in one’s mother tongue. School books and other required materials should be
written in Kyrgyz. The current Kyrgyz people’s court is to be abolished. A new court is to
be created instead of the former one, taking into account Kyrgyz
people’s living conditions. The political right of women should be equal to men. The right
to marry belongs to women themselves. Kalym is to be abolished. The matchmaking of
girls under 16 years old is prohibited. It is prohibited for mullahs to conduct a wedding
ceremony for girls under 16 and boys under 18. When conducting a marriage ceremony,
the mullah must obtain the consent of both sides, the groom and the bride. A widow
should marry according to her own will and not by kinship (amenger). Bigamy is allowed
with the permission of the first wife. If she does not agree and wants to leave, her
husband should provide for her until she is married again to another person. Kyrgyz that
do not exceed seven degrees of familial relationship are not allowed to get married. Thus
the Congress declares that all Kyrgyz, irrespective of gender, those who have a right to
vote should participate in the elections. The congress sent telegrams to the military
minister of internal affairs, asking him to provide peace to the people by disarming
soldiers and peasants that are returning from the front and who shoot and rob the
Kyrgyz population in Semerechie. It also notes that Kyrgyz people do not agree on
giving the land to Russians. The congress asks the Sons of Alash to provide help to
Semirechie Kyrgyz dying of starvation.
● Platform of the Alash Party, 21 November 1917: Russia should become a democratic
federative parliamentary republic. All are granted the right to vote right regardless of
their origin, religion and sex. Deputies are elected through direct, equal and secret ballot.
The party aims at creating prosperity and culture for the people. The party recognizes
the poor and considers them comrades, and those who destroy peace as foes. Equal
rights, personal inviolability, freedom of speech, press and unions exist in the
 Russian federation. Servants can absent themselves without their master’s permission.
The court cannot arrest and sentence people without charges and questioning. Religion
should be separate from government. All should be free and equal. The court of every
people should be according to their tradition and judges must know the local language.
In the areas with mixed populations, the court’s trial and questioning should be
performed in the language that is spoken by the majority in the area. All the nations are
equal before the court. Considering that judges and assessors are the most powerful
after God, their decisions should be obeyed by all with no exceptions. Taxes should be
collected according to one’s wealth and property: the rich pay more and the poor pay
less. Labor legislation should be in favor of workers. Considering that in Kirgizia there
are few plants and factories, Alash Party supports the agenda of the Social Democrat
Menshiviks. Public education should be accessible for all. Education in all schools is
free. Elementary schools should be taught in one’s mother tongue. Kyrgyz should have
their own secondary and higher education institutions, including universities. Schools
should be autonomous and the state cannot interfere into the school’s internal affairs. All
teachers and professors are elected. The teaching of literacy should take place in village
reading rooms. The bestowment of land to natives should be at the heart of the law on
land that is to be developed by the Constituent Assembly. The allotment of land to the
resettled peasants should not start before the allotment to natives is fully completed. All
the land that was previously taken from Kyrgyz should be returned. Kyrgyz should
receive land with more fertile land through local committees. Individual plots of land
should belong only to zemstvo. With the growth of the population, the land to be
reassigned to newcomers is to be allotted from these lands. In Turkestan, apart from
land allotment water allotment should take place. Use of the land in regions and auls
should be on the basis of kinship communities, rather than specific families. The sale of
land is prohibited. All of the land resources, including large forests and rivers, belong to
the state and are managed by zemstvo.
● Pamphlet by A. Bukeikhanov with an appeal to not trust the Bolsheviks 1 December
1917: Uliyanov-Lenin, Chairman of the People’s Commissars, rules autocratically like
Tsar Nikolai. “Bourgeois prejudice” - people’s control over rulers decisions, the power of
people, the freedom of speech and meetings, Constituent Assembly, the freedom of the
citizens
● Minutes of the All-Kyrgyz Congress in Orenburg, 5-13 December 1917: The Autonomy of
the Kazakh-Kyrgyz regions should be given the name Alash. The territory of the
autonomous regions of Alash, with all the resources of the land, water, its wealth, and
the bowels of the earth, are property of Alash. The constitution of the Alash Autonomy is
approved by the All-Russian Constituent Assembly. In the case of the Turkestan
Kazakh-Kyrgyz not joining the Alash Autonomy in a month and not declaring Alash Orda
as an autonomy, the population of each region can act on its own behalf.

Forming a Qazaq and Soviet identity

Two Views on the Adoption of the Latin Alphabet

● Abdrahman Baidilʾdin (December 10, 1926): At the present time, we are observing an
unquenchable thirst among the Kazakh laboring masses for learning, knowledge and
culture. Such an enormous growth in the cultural consumption of the masses have made
a series of socio-political and cultural questions (the soviet-ization of the aul,
construction of culture, a system of popular education, the development of school
primers, press, literature, technical terms, and so forth) the order of the day, and demand
from us a clear understanding and correct authorization. The supporters of the new
alphabet turned out to be elements of young Soviet society. Opponents have also
appeared, mainly those who turned out to be conservative leaders of the Alash Orda
intelligentsia. The first time that the question of exchanging the Arabic alphabet for the
Latin alphabet was raised was almost sixty or sixty-five years ago by Azerbaijani scholar
and playwright Mirza-Fataki Akhundov. Together with Azerbaijan, the Yakuts, the
Kalmyks, the Turko-Bolgars and other peoples have accepted the Latin alphabet. In
Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Karakirgiziia and Bashkiriia, it has been decided in principle
to switch over to the new alphabet. In Moscow in the Central Publishing for the Peoples
of the U.S.S.R., there is also an association of supporters of the Latin alphabet. The idea
to go over to a new alphabet has met with great sympathy among students of China,
Korea, Mongolia, Afghanistan, and so forth, who are now located in the central cities of
the U.S.S.R. In Turkey, the stronghold of pan-Islamism, the question of a new alphabet is
already moving from theory to practice. It is because these peoples, the Kazakhs among
them, search avidly for the shortest path to acquiring European culture. Meanwhile, our
present alphabet, which is based on Arabic, does not meet the requirements of a tool for
cultural development. Although Citizen Baitursynov’s reforms made some improvements
in terms of adapting the Arabic alphabet to the phonetics of the Kazakh language and
orthography, in relation to pedagogy, graphics, hygiene, and publishing, it was
impossible to change the essence of the Arabic alphabet, and all of its shortcomings
remain. The Latin script is now not only the source of the symbols used in technology
and science, but is the script this used in general writing by almost all cultured peoples.
When you think about so much involuntary labor and time are wasted by young people
on the study of Arabic and general Muslim subjects simply to acquire the techniques of
reading, you begin to understand one of the main reasons for the cultural backwardness
of those peoples. The Turkish professor Choban-zade compares the Arabic alphabet
with a broken camera, which captures a poor image of the subject. Our opponents do
not want to see this. They, harboring minimal interest for enlightenment and Kazakh
culture, set up a whole series of baseless arguments. They say that the transition to the
Latin alphabet will destroy Kazakh culture. This is also baseless. We do not have a great
culture; our culture is insignificant. Changing the alphabet will not cause a break with
Kazakh culture. Why are they silent about the daily waste that goes into Baitursynov’s
endless reforms? For the enactment of a new alphabet, even a tenth of the money
wasted [on Baitursynov’s reform] would be sufficient. The Latin alphabet, as an
almost-international alphabet, will enable us to be
brought closer not only to those Eastern peoples who have accepted or will accept that
alphabet, but will facilitate our acquisition of the science and culture of the advanced
 countries. We need to move forward, to turn our faces to international culture, and to
look less to the East in relation to all that relates to the questions of progress and culture.
We need to begin to take practical steps toward the enactment of a new Latin alphabet.
● Ahmed Baitursynov (December 10, 1926): We have a script that in all areas, serves us
much better than the scripts of some other people. We, the Kazakhs, long ago
determined the basic elements of our speech and designated them with the
corresponding letters. We write well, we read well, and we acquire literacy much
faster and more easily than the Russians, the Germans, the French, the English and
others. Ninety percent of the Turkic people have long used and continue to use the
Arabic script and have a written culture based on that system of writing. For peoples who
have a written culture, exchanging one script for another is no easy matter. An
incremental shift from one system to the other demands a lot of time and plenty of
resources and strength, in the first place, for the creation among the population of
parallel skills of reading and writing in two scripts; in the second place, it will require
parallel printing houses for printing one and same language in two different scripts.
Payne: The Forge of the Kazakh Proletariat
● The attack at Sergiopol' was just one of a number of pogroms, beatings, and acts of
"hooliganism '' that dominated the construction of the Turksib. This ethnic hostility was a
reaction to a second construction project by the Soviet government, the construction of a
Kazakh working class. The animus of rank-and-file European workers toward the
Kazakhs at Sergiopol' and elsewhere indicates that this project faced considerable
resistance from the very proletariat the Kazakhs were supposed to join. Assimilating
Kazakhs into the Soviet working class also engendered major resistance from the
managers of the construction and from many Kazakhs themselves.
● One of the leaders of the Sergiopol' riot was shot for his crimes, and numerous other
workers, employees, and even highly placed Turksib managers were reprimanded, fired,
or indicted for anti-Kazakh acts. This strong state action to protect the rights of a
previously oppressed minority gives an obviously beneficent appearance to the regime's
nationalities policy. And yet, this same state promoted a different group of policies that
had a nearly genocidal effect on Kazakhs: forced settlement and collectivization. The
brutal effects of these policies decimated the same pool of people the Soviet government
took such pains to recruit, promote, and train as industrial workers on the Turksib.
● Nativization was the core policy of an ambitious, complex, and prolonged effort by the
Soviet state to build ethnically based nations within the context of a politically and
economically unitary state.
● One of the great construction projects of the First Five-Year Plan (1928-1932), the
Turksib embodied the Bolshevik ideal of "building socialism"—creating a modern,
industrial society free of class, gender, or ethnic animosities. From December 1926 to
January 1931, the railroad's 1,440 kilometers of roadbed were built by upward of thirty
thousand workers. Perhaps more important, the railroad became an icon of the regime's
commitment to end national oppression and ethnic "backwardness" through economic
development and political mobilization.
● When construction of the Turksib commenced, Kazakhs already possessed a well
developed ethnic identity closely tied to their nomadic pastoral economy. This Kazakh
 identity, tied as it was to nomadism, respect for traditional authorities, and clan divisions,
was deeply troubling to both the regime and modernizing Kazakh intellectuals.
Communists rejected this identity, in part, because it seemed to reinforce the power of
"exploiters" within Kazakh society.
● Many of these supporters were Kazakh intellectuals, often so-called National
Communists, who had been co-opted by Moscow and who embraced the revolution's
call for ending economic backwardness. Moscow's cooptation, unlike its
practice in Russian areas of the Union, created a considerable overlap in Kazakhstan
between the pre revolutionary Kazakh intelligentsia and postrevolutionary national party
cadres.
● Typical of such "National Communists" was T. R. Ryskulov, a leading Kazakh
Communist, who played an important role in building the Turksib. Ryskulov dreamed of
the Kazakhs leaping into modernity: "Leninism affirms the view that under the leadership
of the laboring proletariat backward nations may be led to socialism without having to
endure a long process of capitalist development." Most leading Kazakhs agreed with
Ryskulov. Kazakh party cadres consistently supported capital investment and industrial
transformation of their societies to overcome "colonial exploitation." The aul (the
migratory encampment), rather than being a romantic embodiment of the people's
culture, was a sort of embarrassing relic, or at least a stage of development to be quickly
bypassed.
● Consequently, local leaders greeted the government's announcement of the Turksib's
construction with enthusiasm as a method for transmitting socialist modernity to the
"backward" steppe. As Ryskulov put it, "The railroad will undoubtedly bring culture and
Soviet power into those areas where it is very dubious to talk of Soviet power."
● 35% of Kazakh population lived in Turksib - Both Moscow and the Kazakh government
wanted to use the railroad's construction to "capture" this population for socialist
production. To do so, they hoped to hire thousands of Kazakhs for the construction and
to accustom them to industrial labor. If the Turksib's builders and operators were drawn
primarily from the local population, a solid core of Kazakhs could be both settled and
proletarianized, thereby offering a model for their nomadizing kin.
● Vladimir Shatov, the man in charge of the construction, viewed the Turksib as an
embodiment of socialism's promise. The Turksib would become, in an oft-used phrase of
the time, "the forge of the new proletarian cadre of the Kazakh Republic."
● Despite its rhetoric, Narkomput was far more interested in cost than in social engineering
and thus resisted hiring untrained Kazakh tribesmen for construction. Initially, the
Commissariat proposed importing 75 percent of its workers from European Russia and
hiring only 25 percent of its workforce from the "local" (not native) population.
● Narkomput' conceded only when it was convinced that Kazakh workers would be
cheaper and more resistant to the region's ferocious weather and endemic diseases
Even then, Narkompu' would not commit to a hard quota until ordered to do so by the
Russian Republic's Sovnarkom.
● In early 1928, Narkomput and the Turksib's management signed an agreement with the
Kazakh labor commissariat to hire 50 percent of its workers from the native population.
 As early as December 1927, 5,078 of the 9,653 men registered for work on the Turksib
were Kazakh.
● The use of the Turksib as an instrument of nativization faced resistance from three major
sources: the society to be transformed into workers, the managers of the Turksib who
were to conduct the transformation, and the majority of European workers who were to
acquiesce in this transformation. Of the three forms, the most diffuse and largely
ineffectual resistance came from traditional Kazakh society. Surprisingly, the most
sustained and intractable resistance generally came from the putative supporters of the
Soviet regime, its proletarians.
● Even so, Kazakh society offered no unified response to construction. Reactions toward
the Turksib ran the gamut from open revolt to active collusion. At one end of the
spectrum were thousands of Kazakh construction workers, guides, teamsters, and camel
drovers without whom the Turksib could not have been built. Most Kazakhs, however,
were not so helpful. They covered up wells, stole surveyors' stakes, withheld carting
services and supplies, and spread wild rumors against the construction. Incidents such
as stealing stakes and spreading malicious gossip were so pervasive that they must
have represented the hostility of most auly to the railroad. Some auly actually fled when
the Turksib's builders approached them.
● A few Kazakhs did not limit themselves to such desultory forms of resistance and fought
the railroad openly. These were the basmachis, Muslim partisans committed to the
overthrow of the Communist system. No basmachi attack ever caused the suspension of
construction.
● In fact, most Turksib construction managers(European, trained prior to revolution),
especially its engineers and technical personnel, showed an unalloyed contempt for
Kazakhs and the goals of nativization. These managers often carried strong prejudices
against native workers. Most of this prejudice was masked in a rhetoric of
efficiency—Turksib managers would often claim that Kazakhs simply did not know how
to work. Ryskulov complained early in 1928 that Turksib managers simply would not hire
Kazakh workers. The Turksib's managers enumerated a long list of Kazakh production
sins—they did not know how to use the tools, took too many tea breaks, and quit work
suddenly. Ryskulov pointed out that, when Kazakhs were given the same tools as
Europeans and time to learn the proper techniques, both groups had comparable output.
A Communist engineer agreed; most of his Kazakh workers quickly mastered the norms
once trained. Some Kazakh work gangs, in fact, achieved higher productivity than their
European counterparts. "The first to be fired are Kazakhs. The Russians remain even if
they have the same skill level." Kazakh workers suffered discrimination in work
assignments and pay. Many European managers heaped all sorts of personal indignities
on their Kazakh workers. Kazakh living conditions were invariably inferior to the
Europeans' poor accommodations. The Turksib's trade union and party organs initially
did little to impede this sort of open discrimination. Kazakhs made up only a small
minority of either institution's membership.
● If managerial discrimination was humiliating and oppressive to the Turksib's native
workers, the rage of their European coworkers could be terrifying. The Soviet
affirmative-action program created a backlash among previously privileged workers of
 the dominant ethnicity. This backlash had its roots in the two identities the European
workers brought with them to the Turksib. First, rank-and-file European workers resented
nativization as a betrayal of the "ruling class." Second, European workers brought a
chauvinism to the Turksib just as virulent as that of their bosses. Mockery, violence, and
race riots cannot be explained only by a desire to defend closed-shop policies. Many of
the Turksib's European workers were racists.
● That the government's decision to support a hiring quota for Kazakhs caused
dissatisfaction among Europeans is hardly surprising, given the urban unemployment
and rural underemployment that characterized the labor market in the mid-1920.
Throughout the early period of the Turksib's construction (until the beginning of 1930),
the Soviet working class suffered very high unemployment rates. Unemployment was
enormous in Kazakhstan, as well. At the beginning of the First Five-Year Plan, in 1927,
the labor exchanges in the Turksib's hinterland had thirty thousand registered
unemployed, mostly Europeans cadre workers who had just lost their hiring preference
to a bunch of thoroughly unproletarian nomads. Even a huge project like the Turksib
could not hope to provide jobs for all these men.
● By early 1928, more than thirteen thousand unemployed European workers were milling
around in Semipalatinsk, only too aware that "their" jobs had been taken by people they
considered savages (the workforce was about 40 percent Kazakh at this time). They
responded with a campaign of intimidation and harassment against Kazakh job seekers.
Kazakhs attempting to sign up for work on the Turksib routinely faced beatings by
Europeans. In such an atmosphere, little was needed to transform individual beatings
into a more general outburst of violence. This occurred in spring 1928, when an
"unemployment riot" broke out in Semipalatinsk. A mob of unemployed went on a
rampage and conducted a pogrom against the town's Kazakhs.
● To avoid such disturbances, the Turksib sacrificed its Kazakh quota for 1928. Even if a
Kazakh got a job on the Turksib, however, the perils of ethnic hatred still awaited him.
The club, the store line, the dining hall, all the places which European workers
considered their domain, often acted as settings for racial slurs, mockery, and
hooliganism. Fist fights and the individual beating of Kazakhs occurred commonly at the
worksite.
● Kazakhs were staying away or, worse, leaving after only a short stay. Far more important
in driving Kazakhs from the worksite was the pervasive atmosphere of discrimination,
prejudice, and ethnic violence on the Turksib.
● For its part, the Turksib's management belatedly recognized how dangerous ethnic
hostility could be to its fulfillment of the production plan. Soon, dozens of workers were
fired for "counter revolutionary" sentiments. Shatov did not limit this supervision to
workers. Henceforth, he warned, "all abnormalities, coarseness, red tape, and
negligence towards Kazakhs" would be considered a dereliction of duty. Furthermore, he
"would not allow the derision or maltreatment of [Kazakhs], ignoring their requests and
needs, or speculation concerning their strangeness or cultural backwardness spoken in
Russian." The Central Construction Administration promised that any employee guilty of
such acts would be dismissed and that "any display of intolerance, chauvinism, or
national antagonism will be prosecuted without mercy." Now, managers would be held
 personally responsible for the ethnic hostility manifested in their production units. The
Turksib's trade union asked for, and received, authority to single out and punish
individual managers "perverting the government's policy on ethnic issues."
● In addition to disciplining discriminatory managers, the Turksib made a concerted effort
to recruit and integrate Kazakh workers at the construction site. Simultaneously, a small
but important group of European workers took it upon themselves to integrate Kazakhs
into the worksite. Many of the memoirs of Kazakh workers who rose to prominence
during and after the construction of the Turksib mentioned being taken under the wing of
a "conscious" worker who taught them Russian, a trade, and how to comport oneself as
a proletarian.
● In such a way, Kazakh workers were induced to overcome their hesitancy to operate
machinery. As a preindustrial people with little exposure to modern technology, the
Kazakh approached machinery with a combination of fear and fascination.
● These various recruitment techniques and the solicitude of the conscious workers
achieved considerable success, especially in attracting young, impoverished Kazakh
males to the Turksib. These younger Kazakhs often became the con-
struction site's best propagandists when they returned to their auly in the winter.
● Despite this growth, many supporters of Kazakh affirmative action were disappointed.
The Turksib rarely met even its lowered 30 percent quota for hiring Kazakhs.
● The Turksib not only produced a Kazakh working class, but also opened up for Kazakhs
the road to middle-class respectability and the industrial elite. This stories could be
repeated for literally dozens of Kazakhs who would rise to the level of skilled worker,
white-collar manager, and party cadre worker. In a sense, the construction turned out to
be not simply the "forge of the Kazakh proletariat" but also the forge of Kazakhstan's
nomenklatura.
● The Turksib caused a cultural revolution among die Kazakh nomads it recruited. The
very fact that it presented an alternative to traditional nomadism had a subversive effect
on local Kazakh society.
● The quickness of the transformation of Kazakhs from nomads to proletarians was
accomplished not just through positive inducements but through a very violent
dispossession. Millions starved or emigrated, millions more forever abandoned the
nomadic lifestyle that had defined Kazakshilik—the quality of being Kazakh. Class and
ethnic identity may perhaps be conceived as an "imagined community," but this identity
is, of course, limited by what is imaginable. After the famine, the nomadic way of life
sank into the realm of the unimaginable.
● The Kazakhs certainly did forge a new identity in the industrial establishments of the
1930, but not one that the Russians handed to them "by fraternal aid." As one trade
union representative on the Turksib observed about his Kazakh membership, "they
earned their place in the proletariat." Kazakhs also really did seem to replace their clan
and tribal affiliations with a new class identity.
● In the final analysis, the experience of the Turksib indicates that Soviet nationalities
policy acted as both a destroyer of nations and a creator of a new Kazakh nation.
Moreover, the Turksib project shows that the formation of social identities, class or
ethnic, is the product of a complex and nuanced interaction among the state, social
 formations, and the individual—that the communities are not only imagined but what is
imaginable.

Collectivization and Famine on the Qazaq Steppe

Collection of Documents on Collectivization and the Famine

● Musanova Kumisai: We used to wait for our mother with impatience all day long.
She would arrive late at night from the fields, where she harvested grain. She
gleaned it, hid in her clothes and shoes, and brought home. During the night,
hiding from others, we would eat that wheat, sometimes even without roasting. That
was all the food we had. How ignorant we were! We could have at least grown
potatoes. In the neighboring village of Lugovoy, the present-day Terisakkan, Russians
cultivated potatoes and were able to feed themselves. Nowthat I think of it, what fools
we were.
Nurtazina: The Great of Famine of 1931-33 in Kazakhstan
● The famine was caused by Stalin’s collectivization of agriculture along with a cruel and
frankly cynical campaign for the collection of meat, proceeding by way of an absolute
exemption of livestock from Kazakh cattlemen by the state. Having lost their only source
of food, the population of the auls4 (90 percent of Kazakhs were mainly rural at that
time) was doomed to death.
● The Soviet power and the activity of the State Political Directorate (GPU) provoked a
class struggle (that is, acts of violence that the poor committed against the rich, former
illiterate farm laborers being at- tracted to the side of the revolutionary government and
to being armed); there were cases of persecution and execution.
● But the Kazakhs experienced the real power of the Bolsheviks’ bloody government when
they were deprived of their whole livestock. This was the time of the Great Famine
(Asharshïlïq) in Kazakh- stan, which took the lives of millions of Kazakhs. According to
my parents, no- body knew for what purposes our livestock was taken away�� it may
have been sent to big centers, cities, or workers. They were told that it was on the
authori- ties’ order. There was no information about kolkhozy (or collective farms); only
afterwards did the people find out what it meant. The only thing the Kazakhs could do
was to shed tears over the livestock of which they were deprived�� “My God, shall I
ever see at least my sheep’s droppings?” (“Qŭdayïm-au, �oidïng �ŭmalaghïn k�retin
kün�m�z bolar ma eken?”).
● Cursed be that system and those people who invented and brought it to bear
● It wasn’t safe to speak about the famine openly; the Party and the authorities
disapproved of it. Newspapers, books, schools, and institutes never touched upon this
problem. That’s why the younger generation, even the children of those who had
experienced the famine, didn’t have any clear idea about it, and they didn’t take their
parents’ and grandparents’ recollections seriously.
 ● In my opinion, any sensible and honest person would admit that the Soviet power
caused much more harm than good. What is more precious than human life? Millions of
human lives were ruined!
Marianne Kamp and Niccolò Pianciola: COLLECTIVISATION, SEDENTARISATION AND
FAMINE IN CENTRAL ASIA
● Collectivisation, as a policy, made possible the integration of a predominantly rural
region into the first completely state-controlled economy in modern history, as well as the
use of Central Asian economic resources for the benefit of the Kremlin’s economic
priorities. This led to a major famine in Kazakhstan in 1931–1933, as nomadic
pastoralists had lost their herds to state meat and livestock requisitions between 1930
and 1932, when the Communist Party proclaimed their sedentarisation.
● In November 1929, Stalin decided to push the country towards total collectivisation of
agriculture, with the aim of achieving three outcomes: to push the country closer to
communism by eradicating private property and trade in the countryside; to consolidate
the 24.5 million Soviet peasant households into a much smaller number of collective and
state farms so as to create economies of scale, mechanize production and increase
productivity; and to simplify the state’s compulsory extraction of peasant produce by
subordinating peasants into collective units that had no choice other than to respond to
government demands.The third, extractive, function was the most important, even
though Bolshevik propaganda focused on the first two.
● The Stalinist ‘Great Turn’ in the Central Asian countryside aimed to transform three main
sectors of the region’s economy. The third sector was livestock breeding: here, Moscow
aimed to increase state control over livestock breeding and meat production.
Kazakhstan, as the main livestock breeding area of Central Asia, was central to this
purpose. The construction of a number of meat canning factories in the Soviet republic,
with the largest in Semipalatinsk, linked livestock breeding to the nascent Soviet food
industry
● Moscow considered Kazakhstan a net food producer for grain and meat, while plans for
the cotton-oriented economic zone, made up of Uzbekistan,Turkmenistan,Tajikistan and
Kyrgyzstan, assumed that this region would be a net grain consumer. Grain and meat
procurements were therefore extremely harsh in Kazakhstan, and much less so in
Uzbekistan and the other Central Asian Soviet republics, where the demands for cotton,
a technical crop, became extreme. Construction of new railroads served to increase
economic interdependence and specialization by facilitating the transport of produce
between regions.
● When the Commissariat for Agriculture divided the USSR into three zones that were to
undergo collectivisation at different paces, Kazakhstan, as a net grain producer, was
included in ‘Zone II,’ in which 40–50 per cent of rural households were to be collectivized
by the end of summer 193. Kazakh nomadic pastoralists were assigned both meat and
grain procurement quotas.
● The settler colonial character of the region had two main consequences. First, the
steppe economy became agro-pastoral, although the relationship was not entirely
 symbiotic: herdsmen depended on grain for their subsistence more than the peasants
depended on livestock-breeding products.
● Towards the end of the 1920s, the Kazakh and Kyrgyz pastoral economy had not yet
entirely recovered from the crisis that had spanned the period of World War I, the 1916
anti-colonial uprising and its repression, and the Civil War. The limited character of the
recovery made both Kazakhs and Kyrgyz vulnerable to a new crisis in the pastoral
economy.
● First settler colonization then the economic disruptions brought by wars and revolutions
led to a shortening of animal transhumance among the Kazakhs, who practiced
‘horizontal nomadism’ on long distances on the steppe.
● Although these policies led to generalized hunger,the massive famine at this time only
engulfed the Kazakh pastoralists, leading to the deaths of one-third of the Kazakh
population between 1931 and 1933.The specificity of Kazakhstan was twofold. Firstly,
Kazakhstan was the only economic area of Central Asia that was considered a net
producer of grain. In 1928, the Kremlin imposed high grain procurement quotas on the
republic and did not relax these quotas during the famine years. Secondly, and most
importantly, in July 1930 the Politburo in Moscow decided that Kazakh livestock should
compensate for the widespread demise of livestock in Russia due to collectivisation:
everywhere in the Soviet Union, peasants had slaughtered their animals instead of
handing them over to the collective farms. Between autumn 1930 and summer 1931,
meat procurements were set at around one-third of Kazakhstan’s livestock. During those
12 months, more than half of Kazakhstan’s livestock disappeared due to procurements,
mismanagement and epizooties. Between the summer of 1930 and the summer of 1932,
extreme procurement quotas for meat and livestock in Kazakhstan resulted in the
requisition, export and waste by death of 90 percent of the horses, cattle, sheep and
camels owned by the Kazakhs. In summer 1932 the policy was discontinued in
recognition that the ‘reserve’ of meat and livestock in Kazakhstan had been
exhausted.The meat that was funneled out of Kazakhstan was mostly used to feed
Moscow, Leningrad, other Russian industrial centers and the Red Army (Pianciola
2018).Animals that were exported alive outside of the republic and did not end up in
slaughterhouses were distributed among collective farms to be used for traction.
● The Stalinist leadership’s decision to turn Kazakhstan into an emergency reserve of
meat and livestock to be used outside of the republic turned the already ongoing
regional famine caused by collectivisation and procurements into a massive occurrence.
The Party leadership in Moscow assumed that reported livestock numbers in
Kazakhstan underestimated their real extent, and the decision was not overturned even
when its tragic consequences became clear to the Kremlin.
● This is particularly true for the Kazakhs, who lost one-third of their population, killed by a
famine directly caused by the policies of livestock and grain procurements, which were
inseparably linked to the logic of collectivisation.
Destalinization and the Virgin Lands Campaign

Pohl: Planet of One Hundred Languages

● The Virgin Lands opening (its “mass phase” took place 1954–6) was the last large-scale
Soviet-era migration project that contributed to the centrifugal movement of people from
the centers to the borderlands of the Soviet empire. Nikita Khrushchev’s project was
initiated and implemented with the needs of Moscow and the Soviet nation in mind,
rather than those of people in Central Asia, but despite that, it brought a lasting
transformation of society and nature to Kazakhstan.
● Kazakh demographers have estimated that between one and two million Slavic settlers
came to Kazakhstan as a result of the Virgin Lands opening, and throughout the
1990s, Kazakh and Western scholars and observers agreed that this was a “heavy
price” to pay for the “mixed successes” of the Virgin Lands episode.
● Viewed from the Virgin Lands – at the peripheries of both Russia and Kazakhstan – and
despite economic and ecological setbacks, the Virgin Lands project, or rather what it was
transformed into, turned out to be one of Khrushchev’s most successful and lasting
social reforms. It was a process that initiated the destalinization and rehabilitation of a
region that had served as a dumping ground for punished nations and for labor camps.
Ultimately the Virgin Lands opening gave hundreds of thousands of the most varied
people opportunities to build new lives and to reinvent themselves. Notions of moving to
an “empty” space led to conflicts, but they also served to rehabilitate the region and to
make way for a new identity for both settlers and local people.
● In the Stalin era, the Akmolinsk region became a site for agricultural labor camps and a
place of exile for the nations deported by Stalin. The two largest groups of exiles in
Akmolinsk were Germans and Caucasians, primarily Chechens and Ingush. By 1946,
136,625 “special settlers” (spetsposelentsy) lived in the Akmolinsk region, the total
population of the region being about 508,000. Counting “kulaks” and prisoners, “special”
populations in Akmolinsk made up about one-third of the total population. It is important
to know for what follows, that after the initial shock wore off, the “special settlers”
adapted to the local conditions very differently, depending on the national group and on
their place of origin. A great variety of sources show that Chechen and Ingush resisted
accommodation, while the Germans were obedient and worked as hard as they could to
survive. Akmolinsk party bosses perceived Chechens and Ingush as working
“significantly worse than the Germans,” and they arrested far more Caucasians than
Germans for crimes and misdemeanors.
● The political atmosphere in Akmolinsk was intensely oppressive from the beginning of
collectivization until well into the 1950s.
● In opening the new lands, Khrushchev had the intention of reducing the burden on the
Soviet Union’s collective farmers. Opening so-called virgin and fallow lands in Siberia
and Kazakhstan (the initial proposal called for 13–15 million hectares) would allow the
state to reduce its demands on the central regions and would make it possible to buy
more grain instead of extracting it. Khrushchev was less alert to the needs of
Kazakhstan and of the people who would work in the new lands.
● His formula for opening the new lands can be summed up as “technology plus people.” It
was to be accomplished by pouring all new tractors and agricultural machines produced
in 1954 into the new regions and by recruiting a permanent workforce (100,000
volunteers) by means of a large-scale publicity campaign. The recruiting commissions
tried to fill the total required of them, and sent anybody who would sign up, including
many 15–16-year-old teenagers (youth of draft age), who would have to leave again the
next year. Over 20,000 volunteers arrived in Kazakhstan before any farm directors had
been appointed. A significant number of people released under the amnesties of 1953–4
were sent to the Virgin Lands with Komsomol putevki (vouchers) during the first year, but
it is difficult to say how many exactly. People from all over Kazakhstan complained about
amnestied criminals who committed thefts and engaged in rude confrontations witt
locals.
● Suspicious of the mobilization results, some Western writers have placed the word
“volunteers” in quotation marks when speaking of the Virgin Lands, or they have argued
that “semi-compulsory methods” were used,16 but the truth is that the project received a
tremendously positive public response in 1954 and 1955. The Virgin Lands held out
prospects to nearly everyone. Students and some of the urban youth hoped they would
“travel” and “live under the open sky,” while demobilizing soldiers were more realistic in
their expectations: “We are not afraid of difficulties. We are prepared to meet them. We
have seen many hardships.”Many girls and young women wanted to get married in
Kazakhstan, while others had heard that Kazakhstan was a “rich country,” that it was
“great” there, and that the wages were good.
● The main reason for out-migration was that the years of the “mass opening” (1954–6)
were terribly difficult and many of the volunteers suffered severe deprivations upon
arrival. Local authorities were completely unprepared for the influx of people and
materiel.
● One unique feature of the Virgin Lands farms was that work and public areas were
designed to be separate. All of the settlements received electricity and telephone
services by the mid-1950s. Living in such a settlement and becoming a paid worker was
very attractive to kolkhozniki from the depressed villages of the western regions of the
Soviet Union, and many of them stuck it out from the first, turbulent years – returning to
Belarus and Ukraine only in the mid-1970s, when they were pensioned. A
disproportionate number of my most enthusiastic Virgin Lands informants of all
nationalities grew up in orphanages, and in the years after 1956 large cohorts of
released prisoners from the camps quietly made the tselina their home. Workers and
youth from the large cities, however, found little at first to make up for deprivations, and
they came and left in droves. State and Party essentially viewed and treated these
settlers as an endlessly renewable source. What started as a plan to permanently
resettle 100,000 people turned into a yearly mobilization of that many workers.
● When the Virgin Lands settlers started pouring into Akmolinsk, local people received few
or no explanations of what was happening, and the settlers came expecting “empty”
steppe lands. The entire presentation of the Virgin Lands in propaganda and in the
media prepared them to expect a Kazakhstan that was empty of culture or people,
except for a few “native herders.” They were astonished and dismayed to find thousands
 of people whom they had been taught to think of as “traitors” already living there,
scattered in all the villages and small district towns. It was easy to blame the deported
people for problems, or to see them as “enemies” and “parasites.” As soon as the new
settlers began to arrive in Kazakhstan, dozens of incidents of unrest, violent
confrontations, beatings, mass fights, and riots were reported by the militia and the
special settler police force in each of the Virgin Lands regions. In almost all district towns
and villages the arriving Virgin Lands settlers created a hostile atmosphere and many of
the “special settlers” were soon afraid to go to rural stores and lunchrooms and to public
events like dances and movie showings. In addition, I found that while deprivations and
poor conditions clearly increased the level of stress and competition for resources, the
number and the intensity of confrontations increased when people had money, especially
to buy vodka; that is, when the settlers first arrived, after the harvest, and during major
holidays. Local police officers were very concerned about these incidents at first. But
after about a year they stopped recording smaller incidents and concentrated on
breaking up large groups of “hooligans.” The regional party organizations passed a few
resolutions “On Group Fights,” which exhorted local officials to “carry out explanatory
work” among the affected populations, but except for firing farm directors and Party
secretaries after major fights had occurred, they took no systematic action.
● In a group discussion with Ingush and Chechen men, participants argued that the new
arrivals “did not recognize” or “acknowledge” Kazakhs or Ingush as part of this collective.
under.
● The most important impulse for bringing the “special settlers” back into the orbit of the
Soviet collective was provided by a series of reforms of the exile system, which began
two years before Khrushchev’s “Secret Speech” and coincided with the influx of Virgin
Landers. It was made easier to travel and to change one’s residence within the republic
of exile. The most immediate result of these new provisions was that Ingush and
Chechens began to leave the Virgin Lands areas and to move to the south of
Kazakhstan. By February 1955 about 19,000 persons had left the northern regions. The
most important motivation was the harsh climate and unfamiliar nature of northern
Kazakhstan, but a brigade from Moscow, sent to study the dislocation of special settlers
and the violent clashes, found that the violence also played a role.
● “Special” and Virgin Lands settlers remember the 1950s quite differently. When I asked
about entertainments or festivities, many former special settlers waved the question off,
exclaiming there had never been any “good times,” while Virgin Landers lit up with
enthusiasm, remembered songs and chastushki (folk verses) from their home regions,
and nostalgically described dances and holidays. The Virgin Landers, as patriots and
Soviet citizens, felt the whole country to be theirs, and they felt free to go anywhere. At
the same time in Akmolinsk existed “second-class” people who were not even allowed to
go to the next village without permission.
● Hard work and the sharing of dangers, disappointments, and successes gradually
engendered mutual respect. My interviewees frequently and spontaneously expressed
their appreciation of the Kazakh traits of kindness and compassion for people, and they
recounted instances in which Kazakhs helped newly arrived people when nobody else
would.
 ● Many people of the older generation in Kazakhstan, as in the testimony by Kartauzov,
cited above, see no contradiction between the tradition of remembering the Virgin Lands
as an example of ethnic harmony and the evidence of the violence that took place. The
“others,” those who left, especially Chechens and Ingush, never became part of the
Virgin Lands collective, and thus simply were not part of the story. Another interesting
illustration of how this local consensus grew is provided by the way in which Virgin
Landers who stayed (most of them former kolkhozniki), local Kazakhs, special settlers,
and local officials alike came to view new waves of urban youth, especially Muscovites,
who rotated in and out each year, as “outsiders.”
● Most importantly, high wages and the growth of prosperity engendered a local sense of
community.
● In 1960 Khrushchev decided to carry out an administrative reorganization to get this
problem under control, based on the same thinking that led him to institute sovnarkhozy
in 1957. The new unit was the so-called Virgin Lands Region or Tselinnyi krai, consisting
of the five northern Virgin Lands regions of Kazakhstan. The most important functional
result of the krai was the creation of a new krai party organization (Kraikom KPSS)
directly subordinate to Moscow rather than Alma-Ata. Akmolinsk oblast was dissolved as
a separate administrative entity. Tselinograd “became cultured” and grew into the largest
center of higher education in the north of Kazakhstan, as several major educational
institutes were founded in the city. These institutes and the new krai administrations
provided work for many people released from the labor camps and for the special settler
intelligentsia. Tselinograd became a German cultural center with a lively religious life,
several official churches, and a German newspaper.
● Most importantly, the krai years were a period of growing prosperity and of unceasing
construction for the entire region. A common thing for people to say (whether asked
about it or not) was “there was nothing here before” and that the settlers built
“everything” or that “everything was built during the tselina.”
● Between 1954 and 1958, 30.7 billion rubles had been invested in the Virgin Lands,
according to the Central Statistics Office and the Ministry of Finances. During the same
time period, the state had procured 48.8 billion rubles’ worth of grain, thus receiving a
“net income” (chistyi dokhod) of 18.2 billion rubles, 9.3 billion from the Russian Virgin
Lands regions, and 8.9 billion from Kazakhstan.
● The Virgin Lands opening did not solve all of the problems of Soviet agriculture, and it
was never designed to do so. Instead, precisely those investments that Sovietologists
chalked up as a waste transformed the lives of millions of people in the Virgin Lands
regions, far from Moscow, from Alma-Ata, and from debates in scientific journals.
Khrushchev’s successors abolished the krai, but continued to invest in the Virgin Lands,
and they continued to receive grain from the region.

Qazaqstan in the Late Soviet Period

Stefan GUTH: USSR INCORPORATED VERSUS AFFIRMATIVE ACTION EMPIRE?

● Kazakhs enjoyed lower wages and worse living conditions than Caucasian, Russian and
Ukrainian - oil workers
● Industrialization continued to take precedence over indigenization in the post-Stalinist
Soviet Union both in importance and temporal order.
● More often than not, USSR Incorporated resorted to importing the required labor from
the Slavic and Caucasian regions of the country rather than training local labor, even
though over time, titular nationals also started to gain a foothold in the new industries of
the region. However, their sluggish inclusion in the industrial workforce was outpaced by
a rapidly growing sense of entitlement. The resulting frustrations prepared the soil for
interethnic animosities that erupted in 1989, when a tidal wave of nationalism swept
across the USSR.
● Mangyshlak - uranium, oil, gas - 1950s forceful industrial development
● Soviet propaganda - Mangyshlak - a hot spot of both Soviet people’s friendship and
titular national emancipation through development - proof of the USSR’s commitment to
developing its non-Russian, formerly “colonial” periphery.
● The dramatic decimation of Mangyshlak’s nomadic population was the result of a
sedentarization and collectivization campaign conducted by the Stalinist regime in
1929/30. Implemented with utmost brutality, it provoked a local uprising in Mangyshlak
and subsequently killed, starved, or put to flight all but 26,000 out of an original 350,000
seasonal inhabitants in the region.
● Within a few years, tens of thousands of qualified workers and engineers from Russia,
Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Dagestan, and Chechnya were transferred to Mangyshlak or moved
there on their own initiative, attracted by the promise of significant wage bonuses and
other benefits.
● Most of the region’s Kazakhs had a rural background with limited access to education
and professional training. Accordingly, Kazakhs trailed Russians and the peoples from
the Caucasus significantly when it came to levels of urbanization. In the oil production
city of Novyi Uzen, they contributed a more substantial demographic group from the
beginning, alongside large Russian and Caucasian groups, and advanced to the status
first of a relative and then an absolute majority in the 1970s and 1980s, but many of
them lived in the city without official registration and were therefore excluded from most
social benefits.
● Kazakh SSR authorities did not have the real power under this situation/did not want to
change anything/were proponents of industrialization
● Central authorities in Moscow clearly favored interrepublican migration to Mangyshlak
and attempted to foster it by all means
● Сближение>коренизация
● Russian language was superior
● Rather than playing their assigned role as elder brethren to the Kazakhs, soldiers of
Soviet army military construction battalions were repeatedly found guilty of abusive
behavior toward the local population.68 Brawls between Kazakhs and migrant workers
from the Caucasus were another common problem.
● Underrepresentation of Kazakhs at high positions; more members at low positions
● Not only did Caucasian nationals occupy better jobs, earn higher wages, and enjoy
better access to all kinds of provisions and services – they also took advantage of their
 less fortunate Kazakh neighbors by dominating the local small trade and extracting
undue profits from it in a time of increasing economic hardship.
● Moscow continued to prioritize industrialization over indigenization. They opted to import
a large labor force from the Slavic and Caucasian republics of the USSR rather than
training an indigenous proletariat. This policy escalated socioeconomic frustrations of the
Kazakh population that eventually erupted in interethnic strife amid the general rise of
nationalism in 1989.