Alikhan Bokeikhanov

Abstract

Among the outstanding Kazak social and political activists of the early twentieth century, Alikhan Bokeikhanov stands alone in many respects. In Soviet historiography, however, he was virtually ignored. When rare references were made to him, it was generally as the leader of the ‘bourgeois–nationalist’ party Alash Orda. Typically, his scientific, historical, and ethnographic scholarship was omitted in favor of disparaging his political views and activity. Both a scientist and a politician, he was, certainly at that time, unusually successful at each. He served on several scientific expeditions to the Kazak steppe, was an elected deputy to the First Russian State Duma and the Congress of the Muslim People of Russia, a member of the Muslim faction of the Fourth Russian State Duma, a Freemason, a member of the Executive Committee of the Constitutional-Democrats (Kadets), a founder and first chairman of Alash Orda, and the first president of an independent Kazak state in 1918. In addition, he was a trained forestry specialist, an amateur historian, translator, and author. By focusing on his political career, however, as Soviet historians have done, only a shallow and incomplete portrait of the man and his influence on Kazak history can be developed. This chapter examines his socio-political views and activities, as well as his scientific work, particularly as the two coincided to influence the nationalist thought and activities of the Kazak intelligentsia during the last decade of tsarism.