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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Kazakstan
Index
Before the Russian conquest, the Kazaks had a well-articulated culture
based on their nomadic pastoral economy. Although Islam was introduced to
most of the Kazaks in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the
religion was not fully assimilated until much later. As a result, it
coexisted with earlier elements of shamanistic and animistic beliefs.
Traditional Kazak belief held that separate spirits inhabited and animated
the earth, sky, water, and fire, as well as domestic animals. To this day,
particularly honored guests in rural settings are treated to a feast of
freshly killed lamb. Such guests are sometimes asked to bless the lamb and
to ask its spirit for permission to partake of its flesh. Besides lamb,
many other traditional foods retain symbolic value in Kazak culture.
Because animal husbandry was central to the Kazaks' traditional
lifestyle, most of their nomadic practices and customs relate in some way
to livestock. Traditional curses and blessings invoked disease or
fecundity among animals, and good manners required that a person ask first
about the health of a man's livestock when greeting him and only afterward
inquire about the human aspects of his life.
The traditional Kazak dwelling is the yurt, a tent consisting of a
flexible framework of willow wood covered with varying thicknesses of
felt. The open top permits smoke from the central hearth to escape;
temperature and draft can be controlled by a flap that increases or
decreases the size of the opening. A properly constructed yurt can be
cooled in summer and warmed in winter, and it can be disassembled or set
up in less than an hour. The interior of the yurt has ritual significance;
the right side generally is reserved for men and the left for women.
Although yurts are less used for their original purpose than they once
were, they remain a potent symbol of "Kazakness." During
demonstrations against Nazarbayev in the spring of 1992, demonstrators and
hunger strikers erected yurts in front of the government building in
Almaty. Yurts are also frequently used as a decorative motif in
restaurants and other public buildings.
Because of the Kazaks' nomadic lifestyle and their lack of a written
language until the mid-nineteenth century, their literary tradition relies
upon oral histories. These histories were memorized and recited by the
akyn , the elder responsible for remembering the legends and
histories, and by jyrau , lyric poets who traveled with the
high-placed khans. Most of the legends concern the activities of a batir
, or hero-warrior. Among the tales that have survived are Koblandy-batir
(fifteenth or sixteenth century), Er Sain (sixteenth century),
and Er Targyn (sixteenth century), all of which concern the
struggle against the Kalmyks; Kozy Korpesh and Bain sulu
, both epics; and the love lyric Kiz-Jibek . Usually these tales
were recited in a song-like chant, frequently to the accompaniment of such
traditional instruments as drums and the dombra , a
mandolin-like string instrument. President Nazarbayev has appeared on
television broadcasts in the republic, playing the dombra and
singing.
The Russian conquest wreaked havoc on Kazak traditional culture by
making impossible the nomadic pastoralism upon which the culture was
based. However, many individual elements survived the loss of the
lifestyle as a whole. Many practices that lost their original meanings are
assuming value as symbols of post-Soviet national identity.
For the most part, preindependence cultural life in Kazakstan was
indistinguishable from that elsewhere in the Soviet Union. It featured the
same plays, films, music, books, paintings, museums, and other cultural
appurtenances common in every other corner of the Soviet empire. That
Russified cultural establishment nevertheless produced many of the most
important figures of the early stages of Kazak nationalist self-assertion,
including novelist Anuar Alimzhanov, who became president of the last
Soviet Congress of People's Deputies, and poets Mukhtar Shakhanov and
Olzhas Suleymenov, who were copresidents of the political party Popular
Congress of Kazakstan (see Structure of Government; Political
Organizations, this ch.). Shakhanov also chaired the commission that
investigated the events surrounding the riots of December 1986.
An even more powerful figure than Shakhanov, Suleymenov in 1975 became
a pan-Central Asian hero by publishing a book, Az i Ia ,
examining the Lay of Igor's Campaign , a medieval tale vital to
the Russian national culture, from the perspective of the Turkic Pechenegs
whom Igor defeated. Soviet authorities subjected the book to a blistering
attack. Later Suleymenov used his prestige to give authority to the
Nevada-Semipalatinsk antinuclear movement, which performed the very real
service of ending nuclear testing in Kazakstan. He and Shakhanov
originally organized their People's Congress Party as a pro-Nazarbayev
movement, but Suleymenov eventually steered the party into an opposition
role. In the short-lived parliament of 1994-95, Suleymenov was leader of
the Respublika opposition coalition, and he was frequently mentioned as a
possible presidential candidate.
The collapse of the Soviet system with which so many of the Kazak
cultural figures were identified left most of them in awkward positions.
Even more damaging has been the total collapse of public interest in most
forms of higher culture. Most of the books that Kazakstanis buy are about
business, astrology, or sex; the movies they see are nearly all American,
Chinese, or Turkish adventure and action films; most concerts feature rock
music, not infrequently accompanied by erotic dancing; and television
provides a diet of old Soviet films and dubbed Mexican soap operas.
Kazakstan's cultural elite is suffering the same decline affecting the
elites of all the former Soviet republics. Thus, cultural norms are
determined predominantly by Kazakstan's increasing access to global mass
culture.
Data as of March 1996
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