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The Political Tradition of the Steppe*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Agyn Khairullovich Kazymzhanov  and
Keith Owen Tribble
Agyn Khairullovich Kazymzhanov
Affiliation:
Al-Farabi Kazak State National University, Kazakstan
Keith Owen Tribble
Affiliation:
Oklahoma State University, U.S.A.
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Extract

In their rapidity and chaotic character, the changes Kazakstan is experiencing create a kind of kaleidoscope. The very act of creating a state was both dramatic and unexpected. In the course of five years, referendums and changes of constitution and parliament have occurred. This calls for an attempt to etch the general line of development: whence, how and whither is the society of Kazakstan going. Such a broad approach proceeds necessarily from the premise that the modern world consists of a dense network of interrelations, into which all societies and peoples on the planet are drawn. This article examines the problem of the modern geopolitical self-determination of Kazakstan from the point of view of the Steppe and of its contribution to political traditions of the world.

Type
Articles
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 26 , Issue 3 , September 1998 , pp. 453 - 472
Copyright
Copyright © 1998 Association for the Study of Nationalities 

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References

Notes

* Some aspects of this article were previously treated by one its authors: Kasymzhanov, A. K., Kazak (Almaty: Bilim, 1994); Portrety (Almaty: Universitet Kainar, 1996).Google Scholar

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3. A broad bibliography of literature dealing with the history of the Steppe and Central Asia can be found in Paksoy, H. B., “Nationality or Religion? Views of Central Asian Islam,” AACAR (Association for the Advancement of Central Asian Research) Bulletin, Vol. 8, No. 2, 1995.Google Scholar

4. A significant part of the Steppe from the Caspian Sea to the Altai Mountains was called “Kipchak”—Desht-i-Kipchak. Correspondingly the name of the tribe “Kipchak” was extended to the whole population dwelling within these parameters. The “Kipchak problem” was raised by historians in connection with the movement of the Kipchak tribe and its offshoots over a considerable area of the Old World. There is some information about the Kipchaks in Henry H. Howorth, History of the Mongols from the 9th to the 19th Century, Vol. 1 (London: Longmans, Green, 1876), pp. 16–18.Google Scholar

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14. The document called Yasa is the moral and legal code established in the name of Chingiz-Khan to regulate the life of the ruling military group in the empire (i.e., Mongols and recruits adhering to them from their vassal states). It provides specific political and administrative forms for the government of territory under Mongol power, which later served as the basis for ethnic and political consolidation. The Yasa, begun in 1206 and completed around 1225, was written in the Mongolian language using the Uighur alphabet, zealously preserved and consulted by Chingiz-Khanís descendants, and is cited in the histories of Rashid ad-Din Tabit, Ahmad ibn Ali Maqrizi, and Vincent de Beauvais. See Howorth, Henry H., op. cit., Vol. 1, pp. 49–115; Constantin Mouradgea d'Ohsson, L'Histoire des Mongols depuis Tchinguiz-khan jusqu'à Timour bey ou Tamerlan Vol. 1 (La Haye: Van Cleef, 1834), pp. 414–415.Google Scholar

15. On Makhmud Yalavach, see Barthol'd, , Sochineniia, Vol. 2, No. 1, 1963, pp. 147–149, 261–262.Google Scholar

16. The ascendency of Khorezm, whose ruler was Muhammed Khorezm-Shah, occurred at the beginning of the thirteenth century in the region of Mawarannahr, Semirechie (in the South of Kazakstan) and in eastern Turkestan.Google Scholar

17. Bartol'd, , Sochineniia, Vol. 2, No. 1, 1963, pp. 140–142.Google Scholar

18. Bartol'd, , Ibid., pp. 61–62.Google Scholar

19. Fierman, William, ed., Soviet Central Asia: The Failed Transformation (Boulder: Westview, 1991), p. 296.Google Scholar

20. Barthol'd, , ibid., p. 157.Google Scholar

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23. The tribes comprising the Kazak people earlier belonged to other political confederations. Similar reconfigurations were part of the politics of the Steppe, in which the hierarchical dominant (tribe or dynasty) gave its name to a new political confederation. Valuable information about the hierarchical power and social structure can be found in: Y_suf Kh_ss H_jib [Balasaguni], Wisdom of Royal Glory (Kutadgu Bilig): A Turko-Islamic Mirror for Princes, translated by Robert Dankoff (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), Chapters 18, 28–34, 38 (hierarchy of government), 47–61 (structure of society). The original text was published by Vámbéry, Hermann, Uigurische Sprachmonumente und das Kudatku Bilik (Innsbruck: Wagnerscher Universitäts-Buchdruckerei, 1870).Google Scholar

24. The term türe means “aristocrats” and denotes the Chengisids as aristocrats of the land. The Chengisids are considered the sole inheritors of power in the Central Asian territory and in this sense to be aristocrats. The folk appelation ak süök (or “white bone”) refers to the Chengisids in contradistinction to all the rest of the population designated by the folk appellation kara süök (or “black bone”).Google Scholar

25. Howorth, , Vol. 1, op. cit., pp. 640–642.Google Scholar

26. Howorth, , op. cit., Vol. 2, pp. 646–650.Google Scholar

27. Bartol'd, , ibid., p. 101.Google Scholar

28. Bartol'd's personal opinion in this regard was tied to his feeling that there was no other alternative; it was not related to chauvinistic tsarist politics.Google Scholar

29. He remained next to Ablai in the folk consciousness and was celebrated as almost even greater than him. P. P. Semenov-Tian'-Shanskii called him the “Mithridates of the Steppe.” See Valikhanov, Chokan, Sobranie sochinenii v piati tomax, Vol. 5 (Alma-Ata: Akademiia nauk Kazakhskoi SSR, 1985), p. 241.Google Scholar

30. Natsional'no-osvoboditel'naia bor'ba kazakhskogo naroda pod predvoditel'stvom Kenesary Kasymova (Sbornik dokumentov) (Almaty: Gylym, 1996), p. 35: “We ought to follow the path of our grandfather.”Google Scholar

31. The concept of “cultural autonomy” stems from the ideas of I. Gasirinskii about Russian–Muslim solidarity. See I. Gasirinskii, “Russko-vostochnoe soglashenie” and “Russkoe musul'manstvo,” in Kurkchii, , “Arabeski” istorii, pp. 370, 374–375, 393, 405.Google Scholar

32. Tchokaieff, Moustapha [Mustafa Chokaev], Chez les Soviétiques en Asie Centrale (Paris: 1928); A. Zeki Velidi Togan, Bugünkü Türkili (Türkistan) ve yakin Tarihi). I. Bati ve kuzey Türkistan, Vol. 1 (Istanbul: Arkados, Ibrahim Horoz ve Guven Basimevleri, 1942–1947), pp. iii–vii, 1–31. The notion of the commonality of the whole Central Asian region, comprising part of the Soviet Union, derives from these two leaders. This idea was adopted and further developed by Baymirza Hayit in a whole series of works, beginning with his first monumental work Turkestan im XX Jahrhundert (Darmstadt: C. W. Leske, 1956). See “The Way of Soviet Russian Imperialism in Turkestan,” in Baymirza Hayit, Islam and Turkestan under Russian Rule (Istanbul: Can Matbaa, 1987), pp. 291–320.Google Scholar

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34. During his emigrant years in Paris, in June 1940 Mustafa Chokaev was arrested by the German Nazis. In 1941 the German Nazis organized Chokaev's visit to a prisoner-of-war camp. Among the latter was B. Hayit, who later became famous for his series of studies about Turkestan. See Hayit, Baymirza, Turkestan im XX Jahrhundert (Darmstadt: C. W. Leske, 1956); Islam and Turkestan under Russian Rule (Istanbul: Can Matbaa, 1987). In 1995 when B. Hayit during a visit to Almaty spoke on television about his ideas and impressions, in particular about his brief meeting with M. Chokaev, some television viewers were indignant that air time was being provided to a traitor of the fatherland, who was glorifying Chokaev's pan-Turkism. Thus the virus lives on of the Mankurt from which the political leader (perhaps one of the most distinguished) had wanted to free his clansmen. In the West, Chokaev was famous not only in emigré circles. His book Turkestan pod vlast'iu Sovetov was published in Turkic languages, in Russian, in French and in English. See Tchokaieff, Moustapha [Mustafa Chokaev], Chez les soviétiques en Asie Centrale; Mustafa Chokai-ogly, Turkestan pod vlast'iu Sovetov. K kharakteristike diktatury (Paris: Iash Turkestan, 1935); Chokai-ogly, Mustafa, Turkestan pod vlastiu Sovetov, with introduction in English, Reprint Series, No. 8 (Oxford, Society for Central Asian Studies, 1986). On the literary legacy of Chokaev, see Oktay, A., “Mustafa çokay'in Ariv ve kitaplari,” Türkistan, Vol. 1, No. 6, 1953, pp. 22–24; Lazzerini, Edward J., “The Archive of Mustafa Chokay Bey: An Inventory,” Cahiers du monde russe et soviétique, Vol. 21, No. 2, 1980, pp. 235–239.Google Scholar

35. Togan, Zaki Velidi, Vospominaniia. Bor'ba narodov Turkestana i drugikh vostochnykh musul'man-tiurkov za natsional'noe bytie i sokhranenie kul'tury. Kniga 1 (Ufa: Kitap, 1994), pp. 270.Google Scholar

36. See Togan, Zaki Velidi, Vospominaniia, Gordeev, A. A., Istoriia Kazakov (Paris: n.p., 1986), p. 195. Gorbachev's inability to deal with “particularly national features” led to the success of Yeltsin, who pronounced the slogan: “Take as much independence as you can.”Google Scholar

37. On Wilson's understanding of the right to self-determination of each nation, seen as preservation of a multinational state in which all citizens of the given country would participate in the democratic process of determining political orientation, see Schild, Georg, Between Ideology and Realpolitik: Woodrow Wilson and the Russian Revolution, 1917–1921, Contributions to the Study of World History, No. 51 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1995), pp. 60–61. It was for this reason that he supported Kolchak's slogan about “Unified and Inseparable Russia” and to a significant degree was close to the Lenin's Great Powers policy. According to Schild (p. 2), Wilson's assessment of Bolshevism was ambivalent. But in this regard Wilson's thought stemmed from the American political tradition and laid the basis for the political confrontation between socialism and “the Western world,” which for him stood in opposition as the atheistic–autocratic philosophy of socialism versus the religious–political philosophy of liberal democracy (98–102). Nevertheless, the actual politics of Lenin and Wilson were characterized by ideological rhetoric (pp. 129–131) and there were many and varied contacts between the United States and Soviet Russia in the years 1917–1920. See also David W. McFadden, Alternative Paths: Soviets and Americans, 1917–1920 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993).Google Scholar

38. The word “tartar” derives from the ancient Greek name Tartaros, which was one of the Greeks’ terms for hell.Google Scholar

39. “I would learn Russian for the sole reason that it was the language of Lenin” (Maiakovskii); “As is well known, the land begins at the edge of the Kremlin” (from a popular song).Google Scholar

40. From here the reaction of bystanders identifying the Russian people with the ideology of Lenin and Stalin follows naturally. The forced compromise of Alash Orda and Bashkortostan with the Soviets has been explained by Z. V. Togan as due to the necessity of following those Russians who had decided to learn from the bitter experience of Bolshevism. A. A. Gordeev strove to prove historically and factologically the adherence of the Cossacks to the land, work, military valor, independence and their own way of life: “The Russian people and communism were synonymous for the Cossack masses.” Gordeev, Istoriia Kazakov, Vol. 4, p. 130. “A sudden logical turn of the screw brought down millions of Russian heads in two to three years. From blind admiration for autocracy, from complete indifference to politics our people immediately turned … to communism, at least to a communist government.” This conclusion drawn by V. G. Korolenko in a letter to A. V. Lunacharskii grew out of his series of works as publicist. Korolenko, V. G., Sobranie sochinenii v piati tomakh, Vol. 3 (Leningrad: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1990), p. 455.Google Scholar

41. Aitmatov, Chengiz, I dol'she veka dlitsia den': roman (Frunze: Kyrgyzstan, 1981).Google Scholar