THE SOVIET HISTORIOGRAPHY AND THE QUESTION OF KAZAKHSTAN’S HISTORY

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THE SOVIET HISTORIOGRAPHY AND
In June 1841, Kenesary wrote to the chairman of the Orenburg Frontier
Commission to explain the reasons for his continued hostility to Russian
expansion in the steppe. He claimed that in 1825 Ivan Karnachev,
with a force of 300 Russians and 100 sympathetic Kazakhs, attacked
his brother Sarzhan’s aul. They “sacked the aul…[and] plundered an
untold quantity of livestock and property, and slaughtered 64 people;
the remainder saved themselves by flight.” 155 He cited a number of different
atrocities purportedly committed by Russians or Cossacks that
demanded defensive, retaliatory acts by Kazakhs. Kenesary described
the Russians as “leeches sucking the blood of the Kazakhs.” 156
Most observers at the time, as well as subsequent scholarly accounts,
fault Kenesary for the continued internecine struggle in the
Kazakh steppe. Kenesary, according to these interpretations, made a
political miscalculation that he could force clans hostile to his resistance
to Russian colonization to join him and proclaim their allegiance
to him. By 1845, Russia was fully committed to defeating Kenesary
and restoring order to the steppe. The constant warfare resulted in
lost warriors, lost livestock, and increased hostility among Kazakhs
who refused to submit to Kenesary’s rule. Kenesary fled south, a tactic
Kazakhs often used to escape Russian retaliation, eventually finding
temporary sanctuary among the Kirghiz in Semirechie. The problem was,
however, that Kokand was fighting Bukhara and attempting to assert
control over Semirechie, where Kenesary was camped. The Kirghiz were
fighting against Great Horde Kazakhs for the province and Kenesary,
weakened by the flight south, attempted to get the Great Horde Kazakhs
to join his cause to resist Russia and to oust the Kirghiz nomads from
the lush Semirechie pastures. Kenesary started negotiating with the
Kirghiz, to end the fight against the Kazakhs and Kokand, but at some
point in the negotiations, the Kirghiz decided Kenesary was a liability
and took him prisoner. Sometime in April 1847, the Kirghiz executed him,
bringing to an ignoble close the last major Kazakh military resistance
to Russian expansion into the Kazakh steppe. 157
Bekmakhanov’s analysis of the Kenesary Kasymov rebellion was
a turning point in the study of the revolt, but it also introduced the
idea of the Kazakh “nation” as something more than an artificial So-
155 TsGA RK, f. 4, op. 1, d. 1996, ll. 3-6. The original was written in the Arabic script commonly
used by Kazakhp. It was reprinted in Cyrillic Kazakh in V. Z. Galiev and B. T. Zhanaev, eds.,
Natsional’no-osvoboditel’naia bor’ba Kazakhskogo naroda pod predvoditel’stvom Kenesary
Kasymova (Almaty, 1996), 35-37.
156 TsGA RK, f. 4, op. 1, d. 2622, 1845g., l. 1059.
157 Bekmakhanov, Ermukhan, Kazakhstan v 20-40 gody XIX veka (Almaty: Kazakh Universiteti,
1992 [1947]), 313-340.