Gulmira Orynbaeva,
Candidate of Historical Sciences, Ch.Ch. Valikhanov Institute of the History and Ethnology, Almaty, Kazakhstan, e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
The Study of the Virgin Lands in Kazakhstan Historiography: Results and Problems
DOI: 10.31518/2618-9100-2023-4-8
The article is devoted to the study of the topic of development of virgin and fallow lands in Kazakhstan, which continues to be debatable in the world historiography. A review of works by Kazakhstani historians of the Soviet period and the era of independence, which touched upon this problem, is presented. The analysis of researches of the last decades has revealed the following main provisions of the established conceptual approach in the researches of Kazakhstani authors. The main positive result of the virgin campaign is the solution of the food problem, technogenic modernization of the region and inherited by modern Kazakhstan ploughed lands. Leading researchers believe that development of virgin lands was the logical conclusion of tsarist government’s policy of mass colonization of Kazakhstani lands in the end of 19th – beginning of 20th centuries. Kazakhstani historians pay a lot of attention to negative sides of the virgin campaign. They see them in ignoring of national interests of Kazakh ethnos which led to language assimilation of most part of it, the results of which are being solved with difficulties even today after several decades. The disregard of soil and climatic conditions of the region also refers to the expenses of the virgin campaign, which caused the ecological disaster – large-scale erosion of the soil, which the team of scientists overcame by the efforts. Further the author of the article sets forth his own judgments about further development of the topic of virgin lands in Kazakhstan, which should be based on drawing of a huge untapped array of archival documents, raw museum sources, periodicals, memoirs, works of art, field materials etc., available both in central cities of the country and in the regions. The priority problems include: the virgin everyday reality; solutions of the environmental problem of the “dusty boiler” by soil scientists under the leadership of A. Barayev; the role of Labor Heroes in the virgin epic; transformation processes in the Soviet everyday life and in the Kazakh folk culture.
Publishing: 28/08/2023
The article has been received by the editor on 02/04/2023
How to cite: Orynbaeva G.U. The Study of the Virgin Lands in Kazakhstan Historiography: Results and Problems // Historical Courier, 2023, No. 4 (30), pp. 106–115. [Available online: http://istkurier.ru/data/2023/ISTKURIER-2023-4-08.pdf]
Links: Issue 4 2023
Keywords: Soviet Union; Kazakhstan; virgin land; historiography; everyday life; Heroes of Labor; culture