* Some aspects of this article were previously treated by one its authors: Kasymzhanov, A. K., Kazak (Almaty: Bilim, 1994); Portrety (Almaty: Universitet Kainar, 1996).Google Scholar

1. This circumstance is evoked by Martha Brill Olcott in the first chapter (entitled “A Premature Birth”) of Central Asia's New States (Washington: United States Institute of Peace Press, 1996), pp. 3–20. See also Hunter, Shireen T., Central Asia since Independence (Westport, CT: Washington Papers, 1996), pp. 20–65, 165–170.Google Scholar

2. The need for such reassessment is due to many factors. One partial answer to this need was Paksoy, H. B., ed., Central Asia Reader: The Rediscovery of History (Armonk: NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1994), especially p. vii and Chapters 3 and 4, “The Rediscovery of Political History” and “The Rediscovery of Political Identity,” pp. 101–183.Google Scholar

3. A broad bibliography of literature dealing with the history of the Steppe and Central Asia can be found in Paksoy, H. B., “Nationality or Religion? Views of Central Asian Islam,” AACAR (Association for the Advancement of Central Asian Research) Bulletin, Vol. 8, No. 2, 1995.Google Scholar

4. A significant part of the Steppe from the Caspian Sea to the Altai Mountains was called “Kipchak”—Desht-i-Kipchak. Correspondingly the name of the tribe “Kipchak” was extended to the whole population dwelling within these parameters. The “Kipchak problem” was raised by historians in connection with the movement of the Kipchak tribe and its offshoots over a considerable area of the Old World. There is some information about the Kipchaks in Henry H. Howorth, History of the Mongols from the 9th to the 19th Century, Vol. 1 (London: Longmans, Green, 1876), pp. 16–18.Google Scholar

5. Materials from archaeological excavations, bearing witness to this process, were summarized in Davis-Kimball, Jeannine, Bashilov, Vladimir A. and Yablonsky, Leonid T., eds, Nomads of the Eurasian Steppes in the Early Iron Age (Berkeley: Zinat Press, 1995). This book presents archaeological finds from Mongolia, southern Siberia, southeastern Europe, the Crimea and the northern Caucasus. The article by Yablonsky relates most closely to the region of interest to us: “The Material Culture of the Saka and Historical Reconstruction,” pp. 201–240.Google Scholar

6. Skelton, R. A., Marston, Thomas E. and Painter, George D., The Vinland Map and the Tartar Relation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965), pp. 17–107 gives a facsimile and English translation of de Bridia's account (dated 1247) of Carpine's expedition. Carpine's Historia Mongalorum was published by A. van den Wyngaert, Sinica Franciscana. I. Itinera et relationes Fratrum Minorum Saeculi 13 et 14 (Quarrachi, 1929).Google Scholar

7. On the notion of the axis moment in history, between the eighth and the second centuries B.C., when society as now known came into being, see Karl Jaspers, The Original and Goal of History, translated by Bullock, Michael (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1948), p. 1. Realizing the boundlessness of the world and their own helplessness, humans, according to Jaspers, began to strive toward eternity. In explaining the reasons for and sources of this axis moment in history, Jaspers refers to Weber's hypothesis concerning the invasion at that time of peoples of Central Asia into China, India and Europe (see Weber, Alfred, Farewell to European History or the Conquest of Nihilism, translated by R. F. C. Hull (London: Kegan Paul, Trench & Trubner, 1947), pp. xi–xii, xv). As members of the dominant race, Jaspers writes, they introduced a heroic and tragic consciousness into the world (see Jaspers, p. 16).Google Scholar

8. Gumilev, L. N., “Vozniknovenie Rossiiskogo prostranstva,” in Kurkchii, A. I., ed., “Arabeski” istorii (Moscow: Tanais, 1994), pp. 288–291.Google Scholar

9. “The Kül Tigin Inscription,” in Tekin, Talat, A Grammar of Orkhon Turkic (Bloomington: Indiana University Research Center for the Language Sciences, 1968), pp. 231–242, 261–273.Google Scholar

10. Malov, S. E., Pamiatniki drevnetiurkskoi pis'mennosti. Teksty i issledovaniia (Moscow and Leningrad: Akademiia nauk SSSR, 1951); Bartol'd, V. V., Sochineniia 5, 1962, pp. 21, 26–27, 39. Melioranskii, P. M., “Ob orkhonskikh i eniseiskikh nadgrobnykh pamiatnikov s nadpisiami,” Zhurnal Ministerstva narodnogo prosveshcheniia, Vol. 317, No. 2, 1898, pp. 263–292.Google Scholar

11. The terms “khakan,” “kagan” and “khan” all mean “ruler.” M. D. Karateev believes that the most ancient of the three is “khan,” which was first used in the third century A.D. The ruling khan of a large state (an empire) is called a great khan, the others are simply called khans. See Karateev, M. D., “Musul'manskie tituly i zvaniia,” in Kurkchii “Arabeski” istorii, pp. 239–240. According to V. V. Bartol'd, it is the other way around: the term “khan” arose from the even more ancient Turkic royal title “kagan.” Later, the distinction developed between them that “kagan” denoted the highest imperial level. See V. V. Bartol'd, Sochineniia, Vol. 5 (Moscow: Izdatel'stvo Vostochnoi literatury, 1968), pp. 602, 604.Google Scholar

12. The territory between the rivers Amu-Daria and Syr Daria (or Transoxiana) was called M_-war_-'n-nahr, literally “between the rivers;” it included such famous cultural centers as Bukhara and Samarkand.Google Scholar

13. Mez, Adam, Die Renaissance des Islams (Heidelberg: C. Winter, 1922).Google Scholar

14. The document called Yasa is the moral and legal code established in the name of Chingiz-Khan to regulate the life of the ruling military group in the empire (i.e., Mongols and recruits adhering to them from their vassal states). It provides specific political and administrative forms for the government of territory under Mongol power, which later served as the basis for ethnic and political consolidation. The Yasa, begun in 1206 and completed around 1225, was written in the Mongolian language using the Uighur alphabet, zealously preserved and consulted by Chingiz-Khanís descendants, and is cited in the histories of Rashid ad-Din Tabit, Ahmad ibn Ali Maqrizi, and Vincent de Beauvais. See Howorth, Henry H., op. cit., Vol. 1, pp. 49–115; Constantin Mouradgea d'Ohsson, L'Histoire des Mongols depuis Tchinguiz-khan jusqu'à Timour bey ou Tamerlan Vol. 1 (La Haye: Van Cleef, 1834), pp. 414–415.Google Scholar

15. On Makhmud Yalavach, see Barthol'd, , Sochineniia, Vol. 2, No. 1, 1963, pp. 147–149, 261–262.Google Scholar

16. The ascendency of Khorezm, whose ruler was Muhammed Khorezm-Shah, occurred at the beginning of the thirteenth century in the region of Mawarannahr, Semirechie (in the South of Kazakstan) and in eastern Turkestan.Google Scholar

17. Bartol'd, , Sochineniia, Vol. 2, No. 1, 1963, pp. 140–142.Google Scholar

18. Bartol'd, , Ibid., pp. 61–62.Google Scholar

19. Fierman, William, ed., Soviet Central Asia: The Failed Transformation (Boulder: Westview, 1991), p. 296.Google Scholar

20. Barthol'd, , ibid., p. 157.Google Scholar

21. DeWeese, Devin, “Yasavian Legends on the Islamization of Turkistan,” in Sinor, Denis, ed., Aspects of Altaic Civilization III, Proceedings of the Thirtieth Meeting of the Permanent International Altaistic Conference. Indiana University, Bloomington, 19–25 June 1987, Indiana University Uralic and Altaic Series, No. 145 (Bloomington: Indiana University Research Institute for Inner Asian Studies, 1990), pp. 1–19; Islamization and Native Religion in the Golden Horde: Baba Tukles and Conversion to Islam in Historical and Epic Tradition (University Park: Pennsylvania State University, 1994).Google Scholar

22. Fischel, Walter J., Ibn Khaldun and Tamerlane (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1952), p. 47: “He is highly intelligent and very perspicacious, addicted to debate and argumentation about what he knows and also about what he does not know.”Google Scholar

23. The tribes comprising the Kazak people earlier belonged to other political confederations. Similar reconfigurations were part of the politics of the Steppe, in which the hierarchical dominant (tribe or dynasty) gave its name to a new political confederation. Valuable information about the hierarchical power and social structure can be found in: Y_suf Kh_ss H_jib [Balasaguni], Wisdom of Royal Glory (Kutadgu Bilig): A Turko-Islamic Mirror for Princes, translated by Robert Dankoff (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), Chapters 18, 28–34, 38 (hierarchy of government), 47–61 (structure of society). The original text was published by Vámbéry, Hermann, Uigurische Sprachmonumente und das Kudatku Bilik (Innsbruck: Wagnerscher Universitäts-Buchdruckerei, 1870).Google Scholar

24. The term türe means “aristocrats” and denotes the Chengisids as aristocrats of the land. The Chengisids are considered the sole inheritors of power in the Central Asian territory and in this sense to be aristocrats. The folk appelation ak süök (or “white bone”) refers to the Chengisids in contradistinction to all the rest of the population designated by the folk appellation kara süök (or “black bone”).Google Scholar

25. Howorth, , Vol. 1, op. cit., pp. 640–642.Google Scholar

26. Howorth, , op. cit., Vol. 2, pp. 646–650.Google Scholar

27. Bartol'd, , ibid., p. 101.Google Scholar

28. Bartol'd's personal opinion in this regard was tied to his feeling that there was no other alternative; it was not related to chauvinistic tsarist politics.Google Scholar

29. He remained next to Ablai in the folk consciousness and was celebrated as almost even greater than him. P. P. Semenov-Tian'-Shanskii called him the “Mithridates of the Steppe.” See Valikhanov, Chokan, Sobranie sochinenii v piati tomax, Vol. 5 (Alma-Ata: Akademiia nauk Kazakhskoi SSR, 1985), p. 241.Google Scholar

30. Natsional'no-osvoboditel'naia bor'ba kazakhskogo naroda pod predvoditel'stvom Kenesary Kasymova (Sbornik dokumentov) (Almaty: Gylym, 1996), p. 35: “We ought to follow the path of our grandfather.”Google Scholar

31. The concept of “cultural autonomy” stems from the ideas of I. Gasirinskii about Russian–Muslim solidarity. See I. Gasirinskii, “Russko-vostochnoe soglashenie” and “Russkoe musul'manstvo,” in Kurkchii, , “Arabeski” istorii, pp. 370, 374–375, 393, 405.Google Scholar

32. Tchokaieff, Moustapha [Mustafa Chokaev], Chez les Soviétiques en Asie Centrale (Paris: 1928); A. Zeki Velidi Togan, Bugünkü Türkili (Türkistan) ve yakin Tarihi). I. Bati ve kuzey Türkistan, Vol. 1 (Istanbul: Arkados, Ibrahim Horoz ve Guven Basimevleri, 1942–1947), pp. iii–vii, 1–31. The notion of the commonality of the whole Central Asian region, comprising part of the Soviet Union, derives from these two leaders. This idea was adopted and further developed by Baymirza Hayit in a whole series of works, beginning with his first monumental work Turkestan im XX Jahrhundert (Darmstadt: C. W. Leske, 1956). See “The Way of Soviet Russian Imperialism in Turkestan,” in Baymirza Hayit, Islam and Turkestan under Russian Rule (Istanbul: Can Matbaa, 1987), pp. 291–320.Google Scholar

33. This is a complex question requiring separate analysis. See the bibliography in Paksoy, H. B., “Basmachi Movement from Within: Account of Zeki Velidi Togan,” Nationalities Papers, Vol. 23, No. 2, 1995, pp. 273–399; “Basmachi,” in Modern Encyclopedia of Religions in Russian and the Soviet Union, Vol. 4 (Gulf Breeze, FL: Academic International Press, 1991), pp. 5–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

34. During his emigrant years in Paris, in June 1940 Mustafa Chokaev was arrested by the German Nazis. In 1941 the German Nazis organized Chokaev's visit to a prisoner-of-war camp. Among the latter was B. Hayit, who later became famous for his series of studies about Turkestan. See Hayit, Baymirza, Turkestan im XX Jahrhundert (Darmstadt: C. W. Leske, 1956); Islam and Turkestan under Russian Rule (Istanbul: Can Matbaa, 1987). In 1995 when B. Hayit during a visit to Almaty spoke on television about his ideas and impressions, in particular about his brief meeting with M. Chokaev, some television viewers were indignant that air time was being provided to a traitor of the fatherland, who was glorifying Chokaev's pan-Turkism. Thus the virus lives on of the Mankurt from which the political leader (perhaps one of the most distinguished) had wanted to free his clansmen. In the West, Chokaev was famous not only in emigré circles. His book Turkestan pod vlast'iu Sovetov was published in Turkic languages, in Russian, in French and in English. See Tchokaieff, Moustapha [Mustafa Chokaev], Chez les soviétiques en Asie Centrale; Mustafa Chokai-ogly, Turkestan pod vlast'iu Sovetov. K kharakteristike diktatury (Paris: Iash Turkestan, 1935); Chokai-ogly, Mustafa, Turkestan pod vlastiu Sovetov, with introduction in English, Reprint Series, No. 8 (Oxford, Society for Central Asian Studies, 1986). On the literary legacy of Chokaev, see Oktay, A., “Mustafa çokay'in Ariv ve kitaplari,” Türkistan, Vol. 1, No. 6, 1953, pp. 22–24; Lazzerini, Edward J., “The Archive of Mustafa Chokay Bey: An Inventory,” Cahiers du monde russe et soviétique, Vol. 21, No. 2, 1980, pp. 235–239.Google Scholar

35. Togan, Zaki Velidi, Vospominaniia. Bor'ba narodov Turkestana i drugikh vostochnykh musul'man-tiurkov za natsional'noe bytie i sokhranenie kul'tury. Kniga 1 (Ufa: Kitap, 1994), pp. 270.Google Scholar

36. See Togan, Zaki Velidi, Vospominaniia, Gordeev, A. A., Istoriia Kazakov (Paris: n.p., 1986), p. 195. Gorbachev's inability to deal with “particularly national features” led to the success of Yeltsin, who pronounced the slogan: “Take as much independence as you can.”Google Scholar

37. On Wilson's understanding of the right to self-determination of each nation, seen as preservation of a multinational state in which all citizens of the given country would participate in the democratic process of determining political orientation, see Schild, Georg, Between Ideology and Realpolitik: Woodrow Wilson and the Russian Revolution, 1917–1921, Contributions to the Study of World History, No. 51 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1995), pp. 60–61. It was for this reason that he supported Kolchak's slogan about “Unified and Inseparable Russia” and to a significant degree was close to the Lenin's Great Powers policy. According to Schild (p. 2), Wilson's assessment of Bolshevism was ambivalent. But in this regard Wilson's thought stemmed from the American political tradition and laid the basis for the political confrontation between socialism and “the Western world,” which for him stood in opposition as the atheistic–autocratic philosophy of socialism versus the religious–political philosophy of liberal democracy (98–102). Nevertheless, the actual politics of Lenin and Wilson were characterized by ideological rhetoric (pp. 129–131) and there were many and varied contacts between the United States and Soviet Russia in the years 1917–1920. See also David W. McFadden, Alternative Paths: Soviets and Americans, 1917–1920 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993).Google Scholar

38. The word “tartar” derives from the ancient Greek name Tartaros, which was one of the Greeks’ terms for hell.Google Scholar

39. “I would learn Russian for the sole reason that it was the language of Lenin” (Maiakovskii); “As is well known, the land begins at the edge of the Kremlin” (from a popular song).Google Scholar

40. From here the reaction of bystanders identifying the Russian people with the ideology of Lenin and Stalin follows naturally. The forced compromise of Alash Orda and Bashkortostan with the Soviets has been explained by Z. V. Togan as due to the necessity of following those Russians who had decided to learn from the bitter experience of Bolshevism. A. A. Gordeev strove to prove historically and factologically the adherence of the Cossacks to the land, work, military valor, independence and their own way of life: “The Russian people and communism were synonymous for the Cossack masses.” Gordeev, Istoriia Kazakov, Vol. 4, p. 130. “A sudden logical turn of the screw brought down millions of Russian heads in two to three years. From blind admiration for autocracy, from complete indifference to politics our people immediately turned … to communism, at least to a communist government.” This conclusion drawn by V. G. Korolenko in a letter to A. V. Lunacharskii grew out of his series of works as publicist. Korolenko, V. G., Sobranie sochinenii v piati tomakh, Vol. 3 (Leningrad: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1990), p. 455.Google Scholar

41. Aitmatov, Chengiz, I dol'she veka dlitsia den': roman (Frunze: Kyrgyzstan, 1981).Google Scholar