National Histor(iograph)y: An Ideological Identitarian Frontline? Gulag Commemoration, Self-definition and Statehood in Kazakhstan
Ventsel A. De Cordier B. Zhumasev R.M.
2024Verlag Ferdinand Schoningh
Central Asian Affairs
2024#11Issue 3-4244 - 278 pp.
This article examines how present-day Kazakhstan tries to accommodate the existence and function of the Karlag branches of the Soviet Gulag system in the Kazakh Soviet republic and the societal legacies that this episode left, into its state-nation building and its commemoration policies. It thereby discusses the coming into being and the content setup of the Gulag commemoration sites at Malinovka (Aqmol), Dolinka and Spassk as well as para-governmental public awareness initiatives on the issue. The article highlights how the main stake in commemoration policies is to define the role and position of the countrys titular Kazakh majority population in a tragic historical episode that occurred on Kazakh ancestral land, largely affected non-Kazakh populations yet also had a deep impact on the societal and demographic texture of Kazakhstan.
Gulag , Karlag , Kazakhstan and Kazakh SSR , nation-building , national narrative , politics of commemoration , Steplag , totalitarian legacies
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Department of Ethnology, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, University of Tartu, Tartu, Estonia
Department of Conflict and Development Studies, Faculty of Political and Social Sciences, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium
Department of Archaeology, Ethnology and National History, Faculty of History, Karaganda State University, Karaganda, Kazakhstan
Department of Ethnology
Department of Conflict and Development Studies
Department of Archaeology
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