SUMMARY:

The article by Stanislav Ugdyzhekov analyzes the construction of historical genealogies of the Khakass people in contemporary historical writing and compares this with similar processes in the southern Siberian Turkic republics of the Russian Federation. The author observes that historical and ethnological studies in contemporary Khakassia tend to ground Khakass identity in the ancient Kyrgyz Khanate of Siberia, whose history is linked to the ethnogenesis of the Khakass people. Unlike historical writing that traces the lineage of other southern Siberian republics to the empire of Chinggis Khan, Khakass historians continue to juxtapose the history of the Khakass people to the history of the Chinggis realm and portray the Mongol empire as an enemy force that subdued and destroyed the culture and statehood of the ancient Siberian Kyrgyz Khanate. The author engages in a textual analysis of textbooks on Khakass history and finds that they emulate Soviet and Russian history textbooks in their portrayal of the role of the Khakass people as a barrier on the way of the Mongol advance across Eurasia and later in to Europe.