In 1913 an anonymous author who signed his article Turik balasy [Son of the Turks] wrote in the newspaper Qazaq, “history proves the true existence of a people... Our own history is lost, our nation is forgotten, we do not know our borders or perceive our own accomplishments”.^[1] The quote demonstrates the importance of history to the Kazakh intelligentsia in defining the Kazakh nation. History legitimates nations, a nation without a history is not a nation, and therefore it became imperative for the Kazakh intelligentsia to record the history of their nation.
Turik Balasy’s quote points out three major aims of the Kazakh national movement of the early twentieth century. First, the Kazakh people represented a historical nation that had fallen into decline, which is why the Kazakh nation was forgotten. Second, the intellectuals articulating the Kazakh nation posited themselves as the true leaders of the nation because they understood why the nation’s natural historical development had been interrupted, and more importantly the intelligentsia knew how to revive the nation. Finally, because the Kazakh people represented a historical nation, they also possessed a fatherland, the Kazakh ata meken.
The Kazakh nation needed a clearly demarcated territory; the Kazakh nation could only be revived within its own borders. Through writing the history of the Kazakh nation, the intelligentsia hoped to legitimize themselves as one of the world’s rightful nations and preserve their territory from further Russian colonization. As a result of the resettlement of Russian peasants, the territorialization of the Kazakh nation took on great significance. Because the writing of history is an interpretive endeavor, the Kazakh intelligentsia often located their nation’s roots in other cultures as a means of strengthening their claims to territorial rights.
Beginning in the second half of the nineteenth century Kazakh intellectuals began studying the history of their people. The imposition of Russian colonization gave the Kazakhs a powerful “other” from which to evaluate their traditional society. The early Kazakh intelligentsia looked to the past for the answers of their society’s decline. By the twentieth century, the next generation of Kazakh intelligentsia not only found these answers in the past, but they also saw history as a road map that could lead the Kazakhs out of their current predicament. The younger intelligentsia was strongly influenced by other members of the Imperial intelligentsia, including the Russian intelligentsia as well as members of the Ukrainian, Azeri, Tatar, and Central Asia jadid intelligentsia. They readily adapted the Imperial intelligentsia’s philosophy of historical progress and therefore viewed history as a way to explain both the roots of the Kazakh nation and its future development. They viewed progress as a universal phenomenon accessible to all who cultivated knowledge. The idea of progress was predicated upon the growth of a historical conception of time. The Kazakh intelligentsia believed that they could see where their nation was going by examining its own past as well as the past of other nations. They believed that history itself could be viewed scientifically and thus measured in terms of evolutionary progress. This section of the Kazakh educated elite understood that progress would eventually reach Kazakh society, but also that they could speed its arrival. Therefore, the study of history involved more than just examining the past and reporting on it, but also looking for the impediments to the nation’s natural evolution.
In addition, the Kazakh elite believed that they could learn much from studying the history of other societies, especially those more advanced than their own. European intellectual trends came to symbolize the correct path to enlightenment. They could see where Europe stumbled along the way and learn from Europe’s mistakes. Consequently, the Kazakh intelligentsia articulated in their works a position that highlighted the advantages of Kazakh backwardness.^[2] Knowing where they intended to go was a great aid; the intelligentsia could accelerate the historical developmental processes with what they learned from other civilizations while avoiding their mistakes.
Theorists of nationalism often point to the importance of history in forging a national identity. As Anthony D. Smith states: “National unity requires both a sense of cohesion, a ‘fraternity,’ and a compact, secure, recognized territory or ‘homeland’”,^[3] both of which assume a long history. The history of a people defines them as a nation. The national intelligentsia creates or, to use Smith’s vocabulary, “rediscovers” memories of its golden age, a time of great achievement. They believe the nation develops linearly; as a result, “the period of decline is regarded as ‘unnatural,’ a matter of ‘betrayal’ from within, or ‘subjugation’ and decay from without”.^[4] The aim of those intellectuals who are rediscovering their past is to “explain the lot of their community and prescribe remedies for its ills”.^[5] The intelligentsia comes to portray themselves as the new “priesthood of the nation.” Their interpretation of history imbues them with the knowledge necessary to direct and lead the nation.
Modern scholarship tends to see nationalism as a constructed identity, while the nationalists themselves believe that it is a primordial identity. Whereas scholars debate why and how nationality is constructed, nationalists do their best to demonstrate the ancientness of their nation. Therein lies a paradox – by writing histories and researching their cultural roots to demonstrate their nation’s longevity, uniqueness, and innateness, nationalists actually create or invent their nation. “Cohesion of a group may depend on the particular articulation of the sense of commonality, and here a sense of shared past experience, that is, history, becomes important as a record of what binds the group together and distinguishes it from others. Nations are particular forms of collectivity that are constituted by a process of creating histories”.^[6]
The desire to be seen as a nation is the aspiration to be recognized as an equal member of the world community. In the Kazakh case, it was the desire to having an equal voice within the Russian empire. All nationalist assume that the modern world is naturally divided into different nations. By developing their national identity and culture, national groups can demonstrate that they belong to the family of nations and therefore have legitimate claims over a particular territory. While nations are conceived of as natural phenomena, nationalists believe that this identity can lie dormant and unconscious among the national population. It is the role of the intellectual to bring this national identity, which supercedes that of class, gender, familial, tribal, regional, or religious identities, to the forefront of the people’s consciousness.^[7] Therefore, the proponents of national identity often refer to an awakening. The national elites’ goal is to posit their nation as an equal member of the world community.
Intellectuals use history to legitimize a homeland and make a claim of equality with other nations. This is clear in the current rewriting of Kazakh history. Most historians of Kazakh history would agree that the first Kazakh State emerged in the fifteenth century and that the main heroes, the Khans Janibek and Karai, founded this state. This is a focal point in traditional Kazakh history that has long been a part of Kazakh oral traditions, detailing how these great khans freed their people from the despotic rule of the Uzbek Khan Abu’l Khayr. However, today new histories are being written in Kazakhstan that place much more emphasis on the Kazakh’s older ‘ancestors’ such as the Scythians and the Androns, than on the accomplishments of the first Kazakh khans. Kazakhstan’s official government website, for example, gives the following account of the Kazakh history : “Both Androns as well as their descendants, the Scythians were the distant ancestors of the Kazakhs. The name of ‘Usuns’, the people who took the place of the Scythians from the 3rd century B.C. to the 3rd century A.D. is still preserved in the name of one of the large Kazakh clans. Today, the Kazakh-yiusuns live in the same place where their ancestors, the Usuns, lived centuries ago”.^[8]
This historical account goes on to argue that even though the Androns, Scythians and Usuns had a European constitution, a Mongol people appeared on the steppe in the fifth and sixth century and began to mix with these peoples, giving the Kazakhs their present day Asian appearance. The account even goes on to state that there is evidence that the Scythians spoke a proto-Turkic language. A silver bowl that is believed to be of the Scythian period, for example, was found to contain an inscription that is supposedly an early form of the Kazakh language. The purpose of this revised history is to anchor the modern day Kazakh nation to Kazakhstan, the territory on which it is presently located. By providing the Kazakhs with an ancient ancestry, the account roots the Kazakh nation to its historic – and current – homeland and uses history to legitimate existing borders. It is clear from this example of state sponsored nation building that history plays an important role in legitimizing the territorial integrity of a nation.
The Kazakh intelligentsia in the early twentieth century did not have the luxury of undisputed leadership that today’s Kazakh government possesses. There was a struggle for leadership of the Kazakh community during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The Kazakh intelligentsia therefore needed to use their vision of Kazakh history to not only legitimate a homeland and define borders for protection against Russian colonization, but also to legitimate their claims to lead this nation. The histories they constructed served to delegitimize all other notions of nationhood. As Prasenjit Duara argues, the intellectuals viewed history as “not something merely made up, but as the site of contestation and repression of different views of the nation”.^[9] In this spirit, the Kazakh intelligentsia of the early twentieth century constructed a history that demonstrated that the traditional leaders of the Kazakh community, the khans, sultans, biis and beys, destroyed the once great Kazakh nation through their greed and selfishness. The intelligentsia believed that their function was to lead the Kazakhs back to national unity and restore its prestige in the modern world.^[10] By positing themselves as the leaders of a legitimate nation, the Kazakh intelligentsia believed that they would be entitled to a voice in future decisions regarding colonization, and would therefore be in a position to put a stop to Russian abuses and protect the Kazakh’s sovereign territory, the Ata Meken. The role of the intelligentsia was to point out the abuses of the past so they could be corrected and restore the Kazakh nation to global prominence.

THE FIRST ATTEMPTS AT WRITING A KAZAKH HISTORY

In response to Russian colonization, the traditionalist and reformist Kazakh elite both engaged in vigorous discussions about the state of the Kazakh people in the second half of the nineteenth century. The new reformist elite, who were mostly educated in Russian military academies, used print media to discuss and transform Kazakh society. They saw the need for modernization to overcome their perceived backwardness. It was this first group of intellectuals who began to write Kazakh histories. Through these histories they sought to find answers to their society’s present misfortunes. Therefore, this elite used historiography to help reform Kazakh society and legitimate themselves as the nation’s rightful leaders. In order to pursue their reforms, this new intelligentsia had to convince the people that their vision of Kazakh history was accurate. They had to compete with the traditional custodians of Kazakh history, the aqyns.
As Kemal Karpat has pointed out, these traveling bards helped to create a sense of community among the Kazakhs as they traveled from aul to aul telling similar tales. They “helped create a sense of shared values and tastes.”^[11] The aqyns preserved Kazakh culture and history in their oral traditions. The typical Kazakh epic was based on the adventures of a national hero and his fight with the enemies of the Kazakhs. The stories were often based on actual historical events.^[12] However, these tales were not intended to be accurate portrayals of past events, but rather lessons for the present day. “The central figure in the Kazakh epic is the warrior hero (batyr), who generally symbolizes the society’s idealized virtues of bravery, military prowess, beauty, and physical strength.”^[13]
The aqyns’ survival as the keepers of Kazakh cultural tradition depended entirely on the continuation of a nomadic lifestyle that necessitated an oral tradition. Therefore, the aqyns remained staunch supporters of the nomadic way of life and fermented distain to anyone who threatened this way of life. A battle for the leadership of the people ensued between the aqyns and the Kazakh intelligentsia. By the end of the nineteenth century, a group of aqyns who called themselves the Zar Zaman engaged in their own ideas of the history of the Kazakh nation. Not surprisingly, they came to view cooperation with the Russians and the abandonment of traditional nomadic customs as the cause of the nation’s current predicament and believed that only a rejection of modernization and a return to the true nomadic spirit could cure their society’s ills.
The Zar Zaman believed that the traditional leaders of the Kazakh community were brave heroes who fought the Kazakhs enemies. They explained the poor plight of the Kazakh people and subsequent colonization as a result of poor leaders who looked out for their own interests rather than those of the people. Some of the more recent khans were corrupted by greed and therefore cooperated with the Russians to fill their own pockets at the expense of the populace. These khans turned their backs on the people and their traditions and settled near Russian fortresses for protection. Because of their actions, the Russian army was able to subdue Kazakh society. The subsequent peasant resettlement created more hardships for the Kazakhs as they were forced into a sedentary lifestyle not compatible with Kazakh national traditions. For the Zar Zaman, the way to revitalize the nation was to return to what made it great in the past, its nomadic roots. This is clear in the verse of Sortambaj Qanayev:

Instead of herds, money.
From such cattle you can obtain no milk.
How can one put a saddle on it?
We had better follow our cattle
And sleep peacefully, not knowing anxieties
Tear your souls out of the captivity of evil
And guard your blood and your home,
So that life may flow quietly again.^[14]

Clearly Qanayev’s view of the Kazakh nation was a nomadic one. He saw sedentary life and capitalism, which the Russians had brought to the steppe, as the cause of the Kazakh’s problems. By returning to their natural condition, the Kazakhs could return to their peaceful existence and preserve their true essence. Only by remaining true to their nomadic roots could the Kazakhs hope to preserve their nation as Qanayev implies when he states, “guard your blood and your home.” The proof of this was in the historic tales that the aqyns spread throughout the steppe, which attributed the Kazakh’s former greatness to the heroic horse warriors of the past. All of the glory and renown of the Kazakhs was a result of their nomadic lifestyle. For the Zar Zaman, history proved that the Kazakhs were destined to be a nomadic nation.
The reformist intelligentsia did not see a return to a nomadiс way of life as the answer, but rather blamed nomadism for Kazakh society’s stagnation, keeping it from its natural development. The reformists, as the name would suggest, advocated reform and were very critical of the Kazakh’s nomadic traditions. Perhaps the most severe criticism of Kazakh society came from its most esteemed literary figure, Abai Kunanbaev. His verses were full of admonitions to the Kazakh people, decrying the state of Kazakh society and its inability to change. In clinging to the past, such as nomadiс customs and old methods of education, the Kazakh people could not advance. He viewed education on the Russian model as the only way to ameliorate Kazakh society. Abai’s works were an attempt to correct some of the vices he saw in society.
In writing about the misfortunes of Kazakh society, Abai introduced a new medium to spread his message, the written word. Previously Kazakh literature had been purely oral. Now the Kazakhs, many of whom had become literate, could read works in their own language. Abai’s works were meant to cause the Kazakh population to reflect on their current state. He wrote: “I do not write poems for amusement, and not to gather together tales and fables. I write to give an example to the young, whose hearts are sensitive and tongues flexible. These words are available not to the thick-skulled, but the seekers who have a reasonable heart and a clear mind”.^[15] This is a direct rebuff to the aqyns, who he viewed as simple entertainers. His work was serious, and while most of his works were in the poetic forms familiar to a nomadic people, the fact that his poems were written and printed separated him from the aqyns. Abai’s writings were a step on the road to progress, a path that had previously been blocked due to the stubborn resistance to change that the traditional leaders used to keep the Kazakh society from advancing.
Much of Abai’s poetry was written in the last years of his life and reflects a sense of alienation from Kazakh society. In his works he seems bitter and frustrated because he believed that much of the problem of Kazakh society was its own inability to unite together against the evil inclinations of human nature.^[16] In “Besinshi soz” [Word Five] he lamented that “it is not learning and knowledge, nor peace and justice, that the Kazakh holds dear, his sole concern is how to get rich.”^[17] Abai was concerned about how Kazakhs would manipulate each other for their own selfish ends instead of working together for a common cause. The people had learned this behavior from the traditional elite.
The key to progress for Kazakh society was education, not the accumulation of wealth. The socio-economic conditions of the steppe were changing rapidly and the former status of wealth would soon not be enough. “Let us suppose you have chosen this path and gained large herds. Well, use it to get an education! If not for yourself, then educate your son. There can be neither faith nor well being without an education. Without learning, neither prayer, fasts, nor pilgrimages will achieve their purpose. I have yet to see a person who has acquired wealth by dishonest means use it for good. Ill gotten gains are usually ill spent.”^[18] As this quote indicates, Abai advocated that the people should work for their society and not simply for themselves. He believed that by putting their society first, they could overcome their backwardness. Education and modernization was the way to unity, and unity of the community was necessary for the evolution of Kazakh society.
Where lies the cause of the estrangement amongst the Kazakhs, of their hostility and ill will towards one another? Why are they insincere in their speech, so lazy, and possessed by a lust for power? The source of these vices is our people’s preoccupation with one thing alone – to own as much livestock as possible and thus gain honor and respect… There is no end to the pillage on the steppe. If there was unity amongst our people, they would never condone a thief who, making adroit use of the support of one group or another, continue his brazen robbery.^[19]
The depiction of Kazakhs as being lazy, shifty, and predisposed toward banditry pervaded much of Abai’s works. “Truly, the Kazakh has no worse enemy than another Kazakh.”^[20] He equated this immoral behavior to the Kazakh’s lifestyle. To Abai, nomadism resulted in a backward and shiftless society bent on profiting from misdeeds. “Urging Kazakhs to improve their lot through sacrifice and hard work, he notes that if the Kazakhs had ‘taken to farming or trade, if they would have been interested in education and art, this condition would not have been.”^[21]
Abai declared that if the Kazakhs educate their children, then their society will see “happier days, when people forget theft, deception, backbiting, and enmity to one another, and turn their attention to knowledge and crafts, learning to get their wealth in honest ways”.^[22] He feared if the Kazakhs did not reform their society, then they would destroy it themselves. However, his writings did not hold much hope for the Kazakhs to reform themselves. “It is impossible to persuade the Kazakh, convince him of something, unless you frighten or bribe him. The ignorance inherited from his forefathers and absorbed with his mother’s mind has reached his marrow and killed all humanity in him.”^[23]
Another prominent Kazakh reformer of the nineteenth century was Chokan Valikhanov, the noted ethnographer, geographer and historian. Valikhanov, like Kunanbaev, was also critical of Kazakh society. He also believed that the oral traditions and stories that the aqyns propagated throughout the steppe were not histories at all. In 1856-57, Valikhanov wrote the first modern history of the Kazakhs with his Kyrgyzskoe rodoslovie, where he described the original formation of the Kazakh tribes under Janibek and Karai, but questioned whether this tribal confederation represented a nation in the modern sense because the Kazakhs were a nomadic people, and therefore not an advanced people.^[24] Valikhanov’s training in Russian schools gave him a similar view as that of the Russians, that nomadic people were backward, landless barbarians that needed to be tamed since they represented a threat to civilization as epitomized by the European states. There was a persistent belief in Europe and America at this time that nomads were uncivilized savages. In justifying the Russian expansion into Central Asia, the Russian Foreign Minister Prince Gorchakov wrote in a memorandum, which was circulated to the European powers in 1864, in which he explained that the Russian state was forced to bring order to these lawless, half-savage nomads in the interests of its own security. Similarly, when the administration began its resettlement policy, they viewed the Kazakh steppe as empty land because the Kazakhs had no permanent settlements. Valikhanov held a similar perception of his people.
Valikhanov’s history is the first attempt to record a written history of the Kazakhs by a native writer. He stated that the Kazakhs did not possess a history of their own, only a few genealogies. From the many references to Karamzin’s History of Russia, it is clear that Valikhanov had an understandable idea of what he believed a history should entail. History was not simply oral legends, but rather a scientific enquiry into the past of the people. Therefore, Valikhanov constructed his history by analyzing the Kazakh legends and comparing them with the existing genealogies as well as with the Russian chronicles and recorded diplomatic relations between the Tatars and Kazakhs.^[25]
Valikhanov’s history focused on the early appearance of a distinct Kazakh people in the fifteenth century. He centered his account on the genealogical ties to the tribal confederations that appeared after the disintegration of the Golden Horde. Valikhanov traced the heritage of the Kazakhs back to Chingiz Khan. He stated that the Kazakhs were a Mongol-Turkic mixed people, but claimed that they attached themselves too strongly to their Mongol roots.^[26]Valikhanov lamented that the Kazakhs continued to demonstrate their Mongol heritage by persisting to use ancient Mongolian laws such as the right of inheritance belonging to the youngest son.^[27] In focusing on the Mongol roots of the Kazakh people, Valikhanov explained the backward and barbarous condition of his people. The Mongols represented Asiatic despotism. Because they attached themselves more closely to the east, the Kazakhs were not able to advance and therefore stagnated. Given that Valikhanov viewed Russia as an advanced society that should be emulated, his history sought to find the reasons for his own society’s backwardness.
The activities of the first generation of Kazakh intelligentsia, as represented by Valikhanov and Kunanbaev, set the foundation for a national identity. They realized their ‘otherness’ and set about to create an enlightened Kazakh population by reforming their society.^[28] There main obstacle to reform was the traditional leaders of their society. In order to gain a following for their reforms they needed to delegitimize the rule of these leaders. Kunanbaev did this by attacking their commitment to nomadism, a backward practice that inhibited Kazakh society from progressing. Valikhanov used history to show that the cause of his society’s stagnation was the attachment to the Mongol side of their roots. By rooting themselves in barbaric traditions, Kazakh society declined and was therefore easily conquered. Through their efforts at reform, the first generation of intellectuals created an awareness of the linguistic, cultural, social and historical attributes of the Kazakhs. This helped create an idea of a single national group as defined by their newly created histories. However, by the twentieth century a new generation of intelligentsia began to use nationalism to make political demands and to define a homeland, something the first generation was not interested in doing.

THE SECOND GENERATION OF THE KAZAKH INTELLIGENTSIA

The second generation of Kazakh intelligentsia appeared in the early twentieth century. They were different from the first generation because they came to see Kazakh national identity as a political tool useful for enacting change. By building on the work of the early reformers, the second generation believed that the Kazakh nation was a historical nation and was therefore entitled to certain privileges within the Russian Empire. Projecting a Kazakh identity as that of a unified and ancient nation, the 20th century Kazakh intelligentsia were politically positioning themselves within the empire.
Another important difference between the early reformers and the 20th century intelligentsia was the concept of homeland. The first generation reformers looked to revitalize their society and culture, but made no claims to a geographically defined homeland. Land was not an issue for the first generation of reformers, but rather they focused on modernizing their society and used nationhood as an organizational and cultural tool. However, due to the rapid incursion of peasants from the European parts of the empire and the displacement of the Kazakhs from the best pasture lands, the second generation realized that to be recognized as a distinct nation, they needed to preserve their remaining territory. Without a distinct territory and culture, their society would quickly be assimilated into the dominant Russian culture of the Empire. If assimilation occurred their society would lose the privileges associated with Kazakhness. Therefore the second generation intelligentsia advocated the preservation of their ancestral lands. To legitimate their claim to the steppe territory the younger reformers traced their ancient territorial claims to the second century BCE.
One of the main reasons for the political evolution of the intelligentsia was the rapid influx of European peasants into the steppe. With the dawn of the twentieth century, Russian peasant resettlement had begun to seriously disrupt the Kazakhs’ nomadic economy by settling on the best pasturelands. By 1917, three million Russian peasants had settled 17 million desiatins of steppe land. This was a tremendous influx of Russians into the steppe. By 1897, sixteen percent of the population in the northern oblasts in the steppe region was Russian. By 1916, the Russian population had grown to 41.6 percent.^[29] Because of this massive resettlement into the steppe, traditional migration routes and many of the most fertile pastures were no longer available for the Kazakhs. As a result, the Kazakhs increasingly engaged in sedentary agriculture as the conditions created by peasant colonization made it impossible to continue their nomadic existence. Paradoxically, resettlement officials were often corrupt and used their authority to seize Kazakh settlements and hand them over to Russian peasants, causing newly settled Kazakhs to once again become nomads or settle on poorer quality land.^[30] As a result of this resettlement, the Kazakhs became largely marginalized in the new society that was taking shape. The pastures that had supported their nomadic way of life were rapidly disappearing, thereby impoverishing much of Kazakh society. In addition, the loss of these pastures also meant the loss of territory – a place that the Kazakhs could call home. This became the central issue of the reformist intelligentsia.
The second generation intelligentsia saw its most important task as that of preserving their homeland, without which they could not be viewed as a nation. Building on the early histories of the Kazakhs produced by Valikhanov and influenced by the Western notion of national self-determination that was current in the literature of the Imperial intelligentsia, the second generation used the grab bag of history to stake its claim to a well defined territorial homeland.
This new elite viewed history as a way to both demonstrate that they were a historically legitimate nation, entitled to certain rights and autonomy, and as a model of development. History showed the mistakes of the past and therefore the remedies to restore the Kazakh nation. This is clearly illustrated in the first of a series of articles entitled Qazaqtyng tarikhi [Kazakh History] by an anonymous contributor who signed the articles Turik Balasy: “If we know what kind of good and bad times our ancestors passed through we will understand the results and profit from them. So in the future, our leaders can draw on the results from the past. In studying history we will know clearly who we are as a people.”^[31]
The Kazakh intelligentsia had their own view of the Kazakh nation and their own interpretation of the history of their nation. The early twentieth century Kazakh intelligentsia believed that it was not their nomadic way of life that had made the Kazakhs a nation, but rather, their distinct culture, language, and, most importantly, their homeland. The intelligentsia argued it was the personal greed and selfishness of the khans and mullahs that had kept the Kazakh nation from progressing as had other nations of the world. The Kazakh nation had not been recognized as a real nation because the rest of the world knew nothing about it. The Kazakhs had not yet progressed to a point where they had their own written language or history. In his second article on Kazakh history, Turik Balasy stated, “The Kazakhs are not known among the foreign peoples of the world because we have no written history. Today the maps of Asia do not show that the million Kazakhs possess any territory.”^[32] The reason for this was that the khans and mullahs sought to keep the Kazakh people in a backward state and thereby solidify their own positions of authority. By constantly keeping the Kazakhs nomadic, the traditional leaders had denied them the opportunity to study, learn and advance. The very nature of nomadic life was not compatible with progress.
Turik Balasy wrote, “In the past, without strength and might nothing could be created, anyone can see this. This violence was the work of the tyrant. What profit can come from this period of the khans?”^[33] The author’s point is that the khans’ reliance on violence did not advance the Kazakh nation as the Zar Zaman writers and aqyns had argued, but instead resulted in the stagnation of the nation. Because of the despotism of traditional leaders, the Kazakhs were unable to advance. This was demonstrated by their inability to create any attributes associated with the concept of a nation, such as a written language, books and scholarship.
These articles contradicted Valikhanov’s history by stating that the Kazakhs were not descendants of Chingiz Khan. Turik Balasy, as his chosen pseudonym implies [child of the Turks], tied the Kazakhs more strongly with their Turkic ancestors than with the Mongols. The Turks represented a higher civilization to associate with than the Mongols, with their history of pillage and plunder. By disclaiming the Kazakhs’ Mongol heritage, Turik Balasy implied that the Kazakh khans, who claimed their descent from Chingiz Khan, were tying their legitimacy to the despotic east, and its nomadic traditions. By asserting that the Kazakhs were not related to the Mongols, the author argued that the Kazakh nation’s historical development was disrupted by an alien and illegitimate source. Therefore, the intelligentsia could return the nation to its correct path of development by uncovering the true history of the Kazakh people.
The intelligentsia did not believe that the lack of national progress was solely the fault of the khans, but that the Islamic mullahs (who the Kazakh intelligentsia also viewed as an unnatural import from among the emirates and Tatars) also sought to keep the people from fulfilling their historical destiny. Turik Balasy stated that the religious leaders believed that it would be better to forget the history of the Kazakhs, “[they] say about it: ‘Why do we need to know history? What does it tell us? It is just a story. Why do we need to learn anything except God’s commands and Muhammad’s words?’ These simple-minded statements are the cause of harm to the nation; only through understanding our history can we become a nation.”^[34] In the view of the Kazakh intelligentsia, it was this lack of knowledge that had led to the decline of the Kazakh nation.
The Kazakh intelligentsia sought to revive the decaying nation in order to protect it from disappearing altogether. They felt threatened by Russian colonization as the editors of Qazaq stated:

“Now, into our territory foreigners arrive and participate in our society. How much will the foreigners impact our society? History shows that if the outsiders are strong, then the inhabitants will be further weakened and vanish. If the inhabitants are strong, the newcomers will be digested into the population and the foreigners will disappear. If the two are equal, they will not become one or the other, they will not exterminate each other, they will both exist, each one contributing to the other’s nationality.”^[35]

In order to preserve their notion of nationhood, the Kazakh intelligentsia deemed it imperative to continue to develop their culture. As the editors of Qazaq affirmed, “If we wish to use the name Kazakh and become a nation we need to think of our grief in our own language… Let us study so we can join the ranks of the other peoples of the world.”^[36]For the intelligentsia the path to national rebirth lay in native language education and the teaching of Kazakh history and culture. Through these means, the Kazakhs could demonstrate to the world that they constituted a legitimate people. As Turik Balasy maintained, “In this century, we can open the eyes of the world to our Kazakhs through scientific inquiry, we can repair the damage of anonymity and show that we are a people with customs built on Kazakh culture, and protect this by establishing our own literature.”^[37] Therefore, the Kazakh intelligentsia, as the leading advocates of Western-style education and native language publishing were positing themselves as the leaders of the nation.

A HISTORY OF THE HOMELAND

As previously demonstrated, the Kazakh intelligentsia believed that other world nations did not perceive of the Kazakh people as a nation because of their lack of development and the dearth of Kazakh literature and written history. They believed that by providing a written history as well as a national literature, they could legitimate themselves as a nation. Because of Russian peasant settlement and colonization, the most pressing issue for the Kazakh intelligentsia was the issue of homeland. Therefore, the histories constructed by the Kazakh intelligentsia in the early twentieth century focused on legitimating an ancient fatherland for the Kazakh nation.
The notion of homeland was emphasized in the histories of the second-generation intelligentsia. Ahmet Baitursunov wrote in the second edition of the newspaper Qazaq, “The Kazakh nation for a long time has inhabited a definite territory, and lived a particular kind of life.”^[38] The intelligentsia needed to establish the principle that the steppe was their historical homeland. The Russians did not view the land as belonging to the Kazakhs because of their nomadic lifestyle and they therefore believed that the steppe land was open for peasant settlement. By declaring that the Kazakhs were the historical residents of this land, the intelligentsia could argue for an end to settlement or at least have a voice in decisions regarding resettlement.
Ali Khan Bokeikhanov was the first member of this new generation intelligentsia to write a history. In 1903, he wrote Istoricheskie sud’by Kirgizskogo kraya i kul’turnye ego uspekhi (The History of the Kyrgyz [Kazakh] Territory and Culture and its Achievements). It is interesting to note that the title of this piece focuses on the territory of the Kazakhs, making a claim to its historic ownership from the start of the essay. In his history he links the Kazakhs to the ancient peoples called the “Chud” (Bokeikhanov is probably referring to the Udmurt who inhabited the steppe in the copper and bronze ages). “The ancient settlements of the Chud were located on the banks of the Irtysh near Pavlodar, in the vicinities of Karkaralinsk, in the upper regions of the Ishim and Tobol rivers, and on the banks of the Ileka and Ural rivers.”^[39] During this time the steppe civilization reached a high state of cultural development. Bokeikhanov indicated that these were the ancestors of the Kazakhs.^[40] In tracing the ancestry of the Kazakh people back as far as there were records of people inhabiting the steppe, Bokeikhanov was establishing the Kazakh historical rights to the land. He was also showing that the Kazakhs were descendents of a highly cultured civilization.
Bokeikhanov’s history claims that, according to Chinese sources, around 200 BCE the Usuns occupied the Kazakh steppe. He states that these people had light hair and blue eyes. They remained in the steppe region until the first century of the Common Era when they were pushed out.^[41] In the seventh century, the first of the Turkic tribes began to appear. Finally, the Kazakh and Kyrgyz tribes appeared in the steppe in the eleventh century. While these early tribes were scattered by the Mongol invasions, they remained on the territories that they claimed as their own. Bokeikhanov claims that the Kazakhs are a mixture of all of the civilizations that had inhabited the region since ancient times.^[42] In claiming territorial primacy, Bokeikhanov is positing the ancient claims of the Kazakhs to this specific territory. His history not only defines a homeland, but imbues the Kazakh nation with a long and distinguished pedigree.
In many of his articles, Bokeikhanov makes a point of detailing the Kazakhs’ attachment and innate link to the land. In an article entitled Kabinet zherindegi qazaqtap (Council on Kazakh Lands), he begins by presenting the history of the Kazakhs in the eastern regions of today’s Kazakhstan between the Ob’ and Irtysh rivers. He stated that in 1750, the Kazakhs defeated the Jungars and since that point they have occupied that territory.^[43] His point is to show that the Kazakhs restored this piece of their ancient homeland before the Russian Cossacks made their way into the eastern part of the steppe, thereby nullifying any claim the Russians may make about acting as protectors of the Kazakhs. In another article, Eki zhol [Two paths], Bokeikhanov also began with a description of the Kazakh living along the Irtysh River, tracing their reappearance on the territory to the beginning of the eighteenth century.^[44] The purpose of presenting the histories in the articles is to demonstrate a historical claim to a territory with defined borders. Bokeikhanov is conscious of the history of the Kazakhs, and the great losses they suffered during the aktaban shuberundu (the great retreat), that occurred because of Jungar and Kalmuk aggression in the beginning of the eighteenth century. It was at this time that the Russians were invited in by the various khans of the three zhuz to help protect the Kazakhs from further Mongol aggression. However, by pointing out that in the regions that Bokeikhanov mentions the Kazakhs were able to restore their own authority, he is undercutting the Russian argument that they were invited into the region and are entitled to territory due to their efforts on behalf of the Kazakhs,.
Bokeikhanov also contributed an essay “Kirghizy” for the political work Formy natsional’nogo dnizheniya v sovremennykh gosudarstbakh (The Formation of National Movements in the Contemporary States). One of the goals of this essay was to demonstrate that the Kazakhs are a historical nation with a legitimate homeland. In this essay, Bokeikhanov stated that the Kazakhs have occupied a set territory since the thirteenth century. He declared, “These territories consist of the plains that are bordered by the Ural and Yaik rivers to the north, the Amu Dar’ya to the west, the Irtysh to the east and the mountains to the south.”^[45] In addition, he claims the Kazakhs also occupied the territory of the Astrakhan guberniya.
To further stress the Kazakh claims to the steppe territory Bokeikhanov stated that Kazakhs made up the majority of the population – over 65% in the territory from the Syr-Dar’ya to the Irtysh and from the Tyan’-Shan mountains to the Ural river according to the 1897 census. By citing the census, Bokeikhanov demonstrated that the empire administratively classified the Kazakhs as a people, which further strengthen his argument, even though the census did not really count ethnic groups as such, but rather categorized its subjects by language.
In addition to defining the borders of the Kazakh nation, Bokeikhanov attempted to demonstrate that the Kazakh nation was evolving. He explained that the modern Kazakhs were not simply “primitive nomads that are constantly roaming with their herds and acting half-wild.”^[46] Bokeikhanov wrote that in those areas where natural historical conditions have been favorable, the Kazakhs engaged in agriculture and semi-nomadic livestock breeding. Bokeikhanov utilized this argument to demonstrate that the Kazakhs are not only advancing, but that they knew the territory very well. Because this land is their homeland and they had inhabited it for centuries, they understood how best to make use of it. “Kirghizy” is critical of the Russian peasants’ development of intensive agriculture. Bokeikhanov declared that the land was not suited to this type of agriculture and predicted that the settlement camps would quickly turn to desert after a few good harvests. He predicted that resettlement would bring ruin to not only the Kazakhs who had the land stolen from them, but also the Russian peasants who would soon be facing famine.^[47] In positing his arguments in historical development, he clearly is in line with thinkers from the Imperial intelligentsia who were committed to the idea of the historicized nation. Bokeikhanov obviously believes that the Kazakhs will certainly progress and that in order to do so they must not only educate themselves to catch up with the other nations, but remain in their homeland, which to the Kazakhs is an integral part of Kazakhness. It is expressed in their knowledge of their ata meken, which has allowed the Kazakhs to develop their own culture and deep rooted history. Though they faced misfortunes that stymied their development as a nation, the Kazakh intelligentsia believed that they could help the people develop a true national consciousness and reawaken the long slumbering Kazakh nation.

CONCLUSION

The second generation Kazakh intelligentsia wrote histories of their people and the territory they inhabited in an effort to re-establish themselves as a legitimate nation. They clearly believed that through the articulation of nationhood, they could then make demands for some semblance of autonomy on a defined territory. The histories they constructed contained the first expression of a Kazakh fatherland, the ata meken. With their territory rapidly being confiscated by the Russian Resettlement Administration, the Kazakhs used history to try and answer the questions that they themselves posed in the second edition of the newspaper Qazaq, “When we reflect on the existence of the Kazakhs do we do so with sadness? Do the Kazakhs even exist? When do we say there was a Kazakh nation? What contemporary people inhabit the territory from the Volga to the Irtysh, from the Ural to Afghanistan? In our opinion the Kazakhs did not vanish, but will we remain a Kazakh nation?” The work of this second generation intelligentsia was to preserve and reawaken a Kazakh nation that was once vibrant, but had fallen into decline as the result of illegitimate rule and foreign subjugation. With the Russian Resettlement Administration rapidly confiscating their territory, the Kazakhs used history to define their territory and legitimize their right to this land. The members of the intelligentsia were the first to define the nation territorially and the first to articulate the notion of Kazakhstan in order to argue for a say in what was happening to their ata meken.
In arguing for the settling of the nomads and defining and historicizing their territory, the Kazakh intelligentsia made a strong claim for the recognition of Kazakhs as a territorial nation. The goal was to become a recognized nation in the eyes of the Russian administration and therefore gain a voice in state politics. Unlike the jadids of Central Asia, whose main concern was cultural reform, the Kazakhs were looking for political rights and utilized nation building to political ends. They addressed much of their reform movement to the Russian state, while Central Asian jadids addressed their concerns to the community. However, to keep their movement moving forward, they also needed to produce politically conscious Kazakh national “citizens.” To do this they focused primarily on education as a way to socially reproduce and advance their movement.