Akhmet Baitursynov

Abstract

In 1932 in the Soviet journal, Bol’shevik Kazakhstana, G. Togzhanov published an article entitled ‘O Baitursynove i Baitursynovshchine’ [About Baitursynov and Baitursynovism], which sought to destroy the ‘myths and legends’ surrounding Akhmet Baitursynov, the former editor of the pre-revolutionary Kazak newspaper Kazak, an educator, scholar, and leader of the Kazak party and government Alash Orda.¹ While Togzhanov condemned Baitursynov for his political associations and activities, he also unwittingly managed to demonstrate Baitursynov’s standing among his fellow Kazaks. Citing several sources from the 1920s, Togzhanov effectively illustrated the esteem with which most Kazaks held Baitursynov. Several referred to him as ‘the father of Kazak literature’, or the ‘father of the Kazak press’.² Indeed, in 1929 the Soviet literary encyclopedia, Literaturnaia entsiklopediia, identified Baitursynov as a ‘prominent Kazak poet, journalist, and educator…[who]…reformed Kazak orthography’.³ According to Togzhanov, the truth of Baitursynov was not the invaluable contributions he made to literature or the press, but the harm he produced as a leader of Alash, the counter-revolutionary party and government. Alash was, Togzhanov argued, reactionary and repressive, a defender of tsarism, and anti-Lenin.