The new "History of Kazakhstan from ancient times to the present" consists of seven volumes, each of which is dedicated to a separate era. Archaeologists are working on the first volume, medieval historians (specialists in the Middle Ages) are working on the second volume, who talk about 12 states located on the territory of Kazakhstan and Central Asia between the 6th-13th centuries. The third - about the history of the Golden Horde - is being worked on by the Institute of Juchi Studies, which has recently appeared in Kazakhstan. The fourth volume is devoted to the Kazakh Khanate, the fifth to the colonial period, the sixth to the Soviet era and the seventh to independence since 1991.

An international team of authors has been involved in the work on the project. So, on the second, the most difficult volume, the secretary of which is Academician-Orientalist Bulat Kumekov, besides Kazakh, Turkish, Uzbek and Russian historians are working. The author of the section “100 pages of Kok-Turks” Talgat Zhumaganbetov is engaged in bringing all the materials together.

Justifying the need for a new official academic publication on the history of Kazakhstan, he said that the previous one, written in 1996-199, was completely out of date.

- Academician Kumekov and I are the authors of the school textbook "Ancient Kazakhstan" for the 5th grade, - says the scientist. – And we are often asked why certain facts stated in the textbook do not coincide with this source. And because the 1996 edition is outdated, historical science has gone ahead. In the new "History of Kazakhstan" an attempt was made to capture modern concepts and research.

The seven-volume edition is intended for the widest circles of the reading public. According to Talgat Zhumaganbetov, everything that has been developed by Kazakh and foreign scientists so far is presented in a narrative-academic style so that people can easily navigate their own history. And, of course, it will be useful for students, undergraduates and doctoral students involved in historical research. It will help them figure out which direction to go in, to know which concepts are official and which are not.

The scientist recalled that the Ministry of Culture and Sports is the customer of the official government publication, and the curator of the second volume plus this is the International Turkic Academy.

“The publication is all the more relevant because now there are a lot of fake stories in the media regarding the emergence of statehood in Kazakhstan and Central Asia,” Talgat Zhumaganbetov believes. “For the most part, they are trying to refute the ancient and medieval roots of this process. The task of the academic seven-volume book is to prove and show the origins of our statehood in a reasoned, factual way. It is very indicative that Russian researchers also take part in its writing.

The scientist said that the origins of Kazakh statehood are based on political traditions developed by such a medieval ethnic group as the Turk, who declared himself back in the 5th-6th centuries of our era.

“Officially, this state existed from 551 to 745, which is recorded in all studies, both foreign and domestic,” he says. – Most of this state existed on the territory of Kazakhstan. This people (Kok-Turks, as the researchers call them, so as not to be confused with other Turkic-speaking peoples) had such a special concept as spruce - the state, and they separated it from Budun - society, people. Thus, we took the concept of spruce from Kok-Turks. Turkic ale, which we all heard a lot about, translated from the ancient Turkic language just means the Turkic state.

Quotes from the sketch of the seven-volume book "History of Kazakhstan from ancient times to the present"

"If you write a story, then only the truth"

“... I did not intend to write panegyrics, but I was not afraid to tell the truth, caring little about whether one or another of the figures who had already been glorified and exalted in the fields of Central Asia would like it.”

This is a quotation from the three-volume "History of the conquest of Central Asia with maps and plans" - a fundamental historical and scientific study of pre-revolutionary Kazakhstan and Central Asia, made by Lieutenant General of the tsarist army Mikhail Terentyev (1837-1909).

For the first time, The History of the Conquest of Central Asia was published in 1906 in St. Petersburg, and during Soviet times it became forbidden. The book was sent to the category of objectionable for a banal reason: the colonial policy of Russia, no matter how it was called - tsarist, post-tsarist, post-autocratic - continued into the Soviet era.

General Terentiev did not set out to debunk this policy, but followed his credo - if you write history, then only truthful. He revealed a wide panorama of the advancement of the tsarist troops, the spread of Russia's political influence and the conduct of colonial policy in Kazakhstan, Central Asia, the Volga region, South Siberia, East Turkestan, from the era of Peter the Great to the beginning of the 20th century.

This original and thoroughly written book is valuable in that it is built on reliable sources, large archival and historical material and deep knowledge of the subject under study. Mikhail Terentiev was not only a regular military man, but also a professional historian and orientalist. Being fluent in many European languages, he perfectly knew a number of Turkic languages, including Kazakh and Uzbek.

In this book you can find a lot of materials that quite clearly represent the colonial policy of the tsarist autocracy. Showing how the territory of Kazakhstan was turned into a strategic springboard for the further conquest of Central Asia, the author talks about the victorious reports of the tsarist troops, as well as defeats and unsuccessful campaigns. On the one hand, the initiative of the Kazakh nobility to accept Russian citizenship, and on the other, a broad panorama of the national liberation movement. Vasily Bartold, a Russian orientalist who wrote the scientific history of Kazakhstan and Central Asia, has always been critical of both written sources and archival materials, and in particular he did not trust the research literature. But as for Mikhail Terentyev's "History of the Conquest of Central Asia", the academician often turned to this book, since the author gave many materials as a contemporary and a direct participant in the events. In other words, these materials are authentic, that is, corresponding to their time. This is why the "History of the Conquest of Central Asia" is valuable as a primary source.

From Saks to Kazakhs

In the 15th century, according to sources, on the vast expanses of the Great Steppe - Desht-i-Kypchak, stretching from the mouth Danube downstream Syr Darya and lakes Balkhash, in its eastern region, the first Kazakh state was born - the Kazakh Khanate, the foundations of which were laid several centuries before our era.

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Academician of the National Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Kazakhstan, orientalist-Arabist Bulat Kumekov, arguing that this is exactly the case, and not otherwise, refers to Arabic, Persian and Turkic sources of the Muslim circle.

- If we mean the Kazakh state proper, then we need to start with the Kazakh Khanate, that is, from the 15th century. But it did not appear overnight, its origins go back to the depths of centuries, to the society of the Saks, that is, in the 7th-3rd centuries BC. Regarding linguistic attribution, some researchers believe that they (Saki) were Iranian-speaking, as well as their kindred Scythians, others believe that tribes who spoke the proto-Turkic language lived in the Saka community. But no matter what disputes occur on linguistic grounds, the Saks in historical science are considered the ancient ancestors of the Kazakhs.

But most importantly, the history of statehood on the territory of Kazakhstan begins with them. The state of the Saks was formed around the 6th-5th centuries BC. The golden warrior, found in the vicinity of Almaty, lived in that era.

Based on the findings of archaeologists, this ancient society had the most important attributes of statehood: supreme power, property inequality, social differentiation and writing, necessary for the needs of administrative, economic and diplomatic practice.

Assignee of the Golden Horde

The Russian historian Vadim Trepavlov owns the expression that after the fall of the so-called Mongol-Tatar yoke, the Kazakhs became the only people who preserved the “Juchid state in its nomadic manifestation, maneuvering between strong neighbors.”

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“I would not apply the term “Mongol-Tatar yoke” to the Kazakhs,” he said. - The ancestors of the Kazakhs (Kipchaks and other Turkic peoples) were residents of the Golden Horde and, therefore, the very "Mongol-Tatars" who carried out the "yoke". The population of Desht-i Kipchak became part of the largest world empire and subsequently preserved its state heritage. I emphasize: precisely those elements of the heritage that were viable in the nomadic steppe. The states of Desht-i Kipchak - the Nogai Horde and the khanates formed by the Uzbeks and Kazakhs in the 15th century became the guardians of the dying imperial nomadic tradition. History ordered that it was the Kazakh Khanate that turned out to be the most durable of these states and, therefore, retained continuity from the great Chinggisid monarchy in its structure for a longer time.

Merey Sugirbaeva