Secuencia y procedimiento de la técnica

In the second half of the 19th century the tsarist state was beginning to experience what Dominic Lieven has labelled ‘the dilemma of modern empire’ (2003:50-51; 2006:19), which involved the tension between the preservation of a system of traditional authoritarian rule and the increasing challenge from the newly emerging modern ideology of nationalism and popular sovereignty. This drove the tsarist state by the reign of Nicholas II to rely increasingly on an appeal to Russian nationalism to boost its popularity. In addition

increasing socio-economic modernization meant that the traditional tsarist policy of alliance with peripheral elites would not be sufficient to keep the empire together. As the state itself started to interfere more deeply in society to respond to the challenges of modernity, new social groups emerged and new, sensitive issues developed related to the question of language, literacy and education in state employment (ibid.). It was against this background that a Kazakh national identity started to develop.

Some have pointed out that traditionally Kazakhs and their culture showed no awareness of what might be called ‘political’ concerns in the western sense of the term. As Olcott

(1995:109-110) notes: ‘[Until] the mid 19th century, it [Kazakh epics and folklore] showed no evidence of political consciousness or even sub-national loyalties. It was very parochial, dealing only with families.’ It was only in the early 20th century, under influence of the example and competition from similar emergent ‘national’ groups, responding to the tsarist policies outlined above, that leading Kazakh intellectuals started to use the discourse of nationality to promote the idea of Kazakh unity and the conception of a Kazakh ‘nation’ in order to achieve some cultural and even territorial autonomy within the framework of the Russian imperial state. Out of this arose the first Kazakh national movement, the Alash Orda. This tried to combine Turkic, Islamic and nomadic elements of Kazakh identity, but its vision and understanding of Kazakh national identity was clearly geared towards Russia,

although they imagined Russia as a different political entity from the disintegrating tsarist empire (Dave, 2007:41).

As argued above, the increased interaction between tsarist administrators, Russian settlers and nomads had had the effect of unifying the Kazakh elites and general population in outbreaks of protest. These interactions were usually of an infrequent and localized nature, but they created the perception among Kazakhs (both the elites and the masses) that they were persecuted and dispossessed (Kirev and Kolodin, 1957). Furthermore, the crisis of the nomadic pastoralism forced the Kazakh elites to come to the conclusion that traditional skills were no longer sufficient to survive in the face of diminishing pastoral lands and they encouraged their fellow nomads to embrace literacy and acquire education as the new survival mechanisms in the modern time (Buleikhanov 1910, cited in Dave, 2007: 42). The leaders of the Alash Orda movement advocated cultural and territorial autonomy within the boundaries of the Russian state. They hoped that this would allow them to regain control over pastures, to cancel various taxes and dues on land and to reorganize the

existing administrative borders to serve the needs of the nomad economy. To achieve a degree of consensus on the above issues, the Alash Orda leaders, who themselves hailed from various clan, zhuz, social rank and educational backgrounds, had to be involved in a complex process of negotiation. Firstly, with all the clan groupings and political factions within them with whom they discussed and defined a general ‘Kazakh’ national position; secondly, with their Turkic neighbours with whom they had a similar intellectual and ideological orientation within the framework of the Muslim (Jadid) movement; and lastly, with the Russian authorities who were vacillating between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks and advancing different proposals for the restructuring of the Russian empire and establishing a post-revolutionary and post-imperial order. The political alliances and loyalties of the Alash Orda leaders, however, remained fluid and shifting as the practical considerations usually changed the political and ideological positions.

Some observers have argued that by the beginning of the 20th century many Kazakhs had started to organize politically and express their concerns over, and remedies for, tsarist colonization and Russification practices, economic and social dislocation and national- cultural deterioration (Olcott, 1995, Kendirbaeva, 1999, Sabol, 2003). The efforts of the newly formed Alash Orda to stop Russian in-migration and to restore their lands for pasture created bonds of fraternity and solidarity between the Kazakh elites and ordinary nomads and contributed to the development of a common national consciousness (however limited). The February Revolution of 1917 and the subsequent formation of the Provisional

Government were generally welcomed by most sections of Kazakh society (Olcott, 1995:129-55). There was a general agreement among the different strata of Kazakh population that extensive socio-economic reform was required, because nomadic pastoral organisation had become increasingly unsustainable and had to adjust itself to modern conditions.

S. Sabol (2003:4-5) has argued that the development of the pre-revolutionary Kazakh nationalist movement resembled that of other national movements in Europe and Asia. Their efforts – political, social and organizational – conform to Miroslav Hroch’s theory of national revival which contains three distinctive stages or ‘phases’. Phase A was a period of scholarly interest; Phase B was the period of patriotic agitation; and Phase C was the rise of a mass national movement (Hroch, 1985: 22-23). The Kazakh national intelligentsia was aiding the transition from Phase A to Phase B, when the WWI broke out and significantly impaired their efforts. The 1917 Russian revolutions propelled them into Phase C, although the majority of the Kazakh population were possibly not ready for their leadership or type of nationalism. Indeed, it could be argued that gradual, if incomplete transition to Phase C after 1917 was used as important background material that the Soviet authorities tried to co- opt and transform through the Soviet nationalities policies in the 1920s (Sabol, 2003:4-5).