THE SOVIET HISTORIOGRAPHY AND THE QUESTION OF KAZAKHSTAN’S HISTORY

THE QUESTION OF KAZAKHSTAN’S HISTORY 211
family members of an arrested and exiled intellectuals shared the
same fate with them. For example, when the prominent Kazakh poet
Mağcan Cumabayev was arrested on 30 December 1937, his two elder
brothers, along with his younger brother, were arrested as well. While
his elder brothers were killed along with himself, his younger brother
returned home only after working in labour camps for ten years under
extremely harsh conditions. The exact date of their execution by
shooting and the locations of their graves are unknown even today.
Even though Mağcan was acquitted after his wife’s appeal in 1960, his
works began to be printed only after 1989. That is, even a subsequent
exoneration was not sufficient for your works’ publication. All facilities
and resources were utilized in order to erase someone from society
and historical memory. Therefore, even though it has been 25 years
since the collapse of the USSR, the number of the works about Turkish
World intellectuals killed under Stalin’s rule remains very small.
One other common peculiarity of intellectuals murdered under
Stalin rule was that most of them were arrested previously, before
1937, and spent time in either labour camps or prisons. Returnees from
labour camps and prisons had to endure tough days because the state
labelled as “people’s enemy” and “anti-Soviet”. An intellectual so
identified, lost his acquaintances. His relatives, friends, and neighbours
stopped greeting him and distanced themselves from him. He lost his
work and was forced to labour in most demoralizing and demeaning
jobs. Life became unendurable and suicide frequently appeared as a
way of liberation. Even his children were filled with hatred against
him. The children of arrested or murdered people were admitted to
the public foundling hospitals and subjected to intense propaganda
there. The children being thus raised as young communists had no
chance to approach with passion toward parents who were exposed
as the “people’s enemy” and “anti-Soviet.” 400
Arrested intellectuals’ homes experienced detailed and meticulous
legal searches on the day of arrest or shortly thereafter and all written
documents, books, and pictures were seized. These items were not
returned, even if the arrest ended. In this way, their personal archive
and most of their library perished along with their works. There is
no information about returning the seized works of the scholars who
focused on the intellectuals, statesmen, and laymen who were either
400 Journalist and teacher Rukiye Devletkildi who had been arrested at the end of the
World War II in Manchuria’s Mukden city on 20 September 1945 along with her spouse by
KGB and sentenced to ten-year work in labour camps tells the story of her daughter who was
born in the camp and was raised with hatred against her in her memoirs. Rokıya Devletkildi:
Bir Tatar Hatınının Açı Yazmışı (edited by İsmail Türkoğlu), Kazan 2005.