Administrative Culture of Suspicion: A Denunciation Campaign against the Newspaper “Kazakh”
Административная культура подозрения: кампания доносов против газеты «Казакъ»
Ibrayev Y.Ye. Nurusheva G.K. Legkiy D.M. Yeralina A.Ye.
1 March 2026Cherkas Global University Press
Bylye Gody
2026#21Issue 1497 - 511 pp.
This article, based on archival materials from the Orenburg Region State Archives, analyzes a little-known episode: the 1914 “denunciation campaign” against the editorial board of the Kazakh newspaper “Kazak” and its leaders, A. Baitursunov and M. Dulatov. Using source analysis and discourse analysis of administrative documents, the authors demonstrate that denunciation in late imperial Russia was not only a form of private political persecution but also part of an institutionalized mechanism of colonial surveillance. Letters from “trusted Kyrgyz from the Turgai and Ural regions” sent to the Ministry of Internal Affairs and governors offices demonstrate a strategy by which some of the local elite positioned themselves as loyal intermediaries between the “authorities” and the “ignorant masses”. The bureaucratic trajectory of these appeals – from local officials to the police department – is traced, revealing the depth of the inclusion of peripheral regions in the imperial surveillance system. A comparison of the texts of denunciations and official responses allows us to reconstruct the logic of imperial administrative culture, in which suspicion and denunciation became the primary instruments of control over the national outskirts.
Akhmet Baitursynov , bureaucratic control , colonial policy , denunciation , Myrzhakyp Dulatov , newspaper “Kazakh” , political investigation , Russian Empire
Text of the article Перейти на текст статьи
Kostanay Regional University named after Akhmet Baitusynuly, Kostanay, Kazakhstan
Kostanay Regional University named after Akhmet Baitusynuly
10 лет помогаем публиковать статьи Международный издатель
Книга Публикация научной статьи Волощук 2026 Book Publication of a scientific article 2026