THE SOVIET HISTORIOGRAPHY AND THE QUESTION OF KAZAKHSTAN’S HISTORY

THE QUESTION OF KAZAKHSTAN’S HISTORY 11
ERMUKHAN BEKMAKHANOV AND IDEOLOGICAL REPRESSIONS
AND LIMITATIONS IN THE RESEARCH OF KAZAKH HISTORY
IN THE SOVIET PERIOD
Prof. Dr. Abdulvahap Kara *
Historians in the Soviet Union had to work within the confines of
Marxism-Leninism ideology. As scholars paid attention to the confines
and served the Soviet ideology to receive awards and honors, others
that behaved on the contrary were blocked from being promoted and
even sentenced to various penalties that had severe consequences
such as death and deportation to labor camps in Siberia. However,
sometimes, sudden changes in the ideological fields to which historians
were subjected occurred, especially during the Stalin era. This
caused historions to remain in difficult situations and to be sentenced
to heavy punishment. One of the most concrete examples of these
historical episodes was Ermukhan Bekmakhanov, a Kazakh historian.
During World War II Bekmakhanov started to conduct and write
research about Kenesary Kasymuly, who led a powerful rebel movement
against the Tsarist Russia hegemony, which pitted him against
the Soviet government, the last Kazakh Khan. It was the demands
of the regime at that time. Stalin wanted that all pre-1917 Ocotber
Revolution national heros be praised in order to give courage and
spirit to the troops. But, Bekmakhanov’s completed doctoral thesis
coincided with the aftermath of the war. In this period, Stalin instead
determined to restrict national heroes that he promoted before the
war and to put forward and praise the Russian people and their role
in the victory. Therefore, Bekmakhanov’s research conflicted with the
Soviet government’s ideology in 1947 when he finished the doctoral
thesis, which he began writing in 1941 and coincided well with the
objectives indicated by the Soviet elites. For this reason, it can be
said that his writing did not run contrary to the ideology, but it was
unable to match the rate of change within Soviet ideology and his
historical perspective and methodology. His resistence to the pressure
to change what he wrote that fit with the pre-war ideology
culminated in a 25-year exile to Siberia. He was eventually pardoned
and returned home in 1953 after Stalin died and Khrushchev, with his
anti-Stalinist policy, took power.
Historiography has not always been consistent in terms of ideological
methods and goals in the Soviet Union. It changed from time
to time as shown in the case of Bekmakhanov. This essay will try to
* Mimar Sinan Güzel Sanatlar Üniversitesi Fen-Edebiyat Fakültesi Tarih Bölümü