Colonial Mediation in the Biographical Discourse of Kazakh Steppe Elites (mid-19th to early 20th Century)

Research Article

Abstract

The subject of the author's research is the representation in the discourse of biographies of Kazakh titled nobles of the Russian intelligentsia's ideas about the integration of the indigenous population of Central Asia into the system of social communication on the outskirts of the empire. The imperial power delegated to its experts – public figures, officials, scientists – the right of paternalistic tutelage over the new subjects to form a community of colonial mediators and to fulfil the tasks of empire-building in the situation of ethno-cultural diversity characteristic of the peripheral regions. The aim of the study is to reveal the content of the discourse of personal biographies of representatives of the Kazakh steppe aristocracy, constructed in the memoirs of imperial experts and recording the inclusion of these figures in the process of colonial mediation in the Central Asian regions in the second half of the 19th – early 20th centuries. A discourse on the biographies of Ch. Valikhanov, I.A. Altynsarin, and G.B. Valikhanov as presented in the memoirs of the Russian Federation. Valikhanov in the memoirs of Russian intellectuals, mastered by the methods of metacriticism and deconstruction of texts, made it possible to shift the research ‘optics’ from the trivial perception of the actors of the Kazakh social movement as foreigners in the service of the Russian Empire to the reception of their complex, often dual identity, which manifested itself on the one hand in the adoption of behavioural conventions of the Russian society, on the other – in the preservation and subsequent strengthening of ethno-cultural features of their own people. In the course of the study of the discourse of biographies, it was established that the phenomenon of colonial mediation was determined by the specifics of the integration of the titled nobility into the administrative, educational and social structures of Russia in the Central Asian region. This process was carried out in accordance with the Eurocentric ideas of the educated circles of the Russian Empire, which were moulded into an understanding of the Asian periphery as ‘Russia's own East’ and the indigenous population as ‘its own foreigners’ in relation to whom a model of intellectual and moral guardianship should be implemented. Cultural regeneration by means of Russian education and upbringing had an external effect and created a situation of quasi-comfort for the prominent leaders of the steppe aristocracy. As biographers themselves had to admit in their memoirs, within the line of personal and socio-political biography of prominent Kazakhs, there was a clear tendency to strengthen the national-cultural component of identity, which was expressed in the revision of attitudes and life values formed as a result of Russian influence.