THE SOVIET HISTORIOGRAPHY AND THE QUESTION OF KAZAKHSTAN’S HISTORY

THE QUESTION OF KAZAKHSTAN’S HISTORY 65
in the 1940s and 1950s was to write Kazakhstan’s Communist Party
History and examine the Soviet period history of Kazakhstan, it was
supposed to be written through ‘The development period of Kazakh
peoples’ economy and culture, as though the Soviet era history were
the golden pages of Kazakh history.’ 86
Social science became incompetent that crossed the boundaries
in the political realm and discharged the responsibilities associated
with researching, examining, and making predictions about the future.
In the years following the Second World War, the consequences of
Stalin’s strong, singular administrative party policy, ideology, and the
press increased in the fields of social science.
The past and the present of Kazakhstan’s history was supposed
to interpet history only under the rigid class party methodology. At
that time, history studies were written and issued based upon party
views and sensibilities. Documents were issued, as well. However,
the opportunity to exceed party ideological boundaries and to note
possible misinterpretations of historical documents or adapting them
to party ideology became eliminated ideas against party ideology
and failed to reveal proper investigation. The barriers to research a
country’s history according to objective historical sources, the politic
and ideologic press in science, the prosecution of the people who
wrote true things, and the prohibition to print excluded scholarship,
increased the empty pages in Kazakh history. As a consequence of
the political and ideological pressure under the Soviet totalitarian
regime, the realities of Kazakh history were not written; science of
history was adapted according to strict party ideology. Only after
Kazakhstan’s independence, Kazakh intellectuals and scientists were
freed from political interference and accusations. The empty pages in
the history were slowly filled, one by one. An opportunity was created
for the people to refresh their memory. Scientific studies about
Ermukhan Bekmakhanov in Kazakhstan and elsewhere are proofs of
this intellectual freedom.
86 Omarov, İ., “O Zadaçah İstoriçeskoy Nauki v Kazakhstane”, Bolşevik Kazahstana, 1950,
No1 , p. 34.