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Does anybody have any material at hand on Bukeikhanov, Leader of the Kazakh National Alash Orda Government?
I am interested in his date of birth.
He was elected to the Central Executive Committee of the Kazakh Autonomous Republic, when the latter was created by Bolsheviks in October 1920. After that the track of him somehow disappears. In 1922 he was allegedly exiled to Moscow and worked in the Central Publishing House of Peoples of the USSR, translating Russian classics into Kazakh and Kazakh folk tales into Russian.
Did he hold any official positions in the Government between 1922 and 1937, when he was arrested and shot?
Date: Mon, 5 Feb 1996 02:53:01 -0500
From: Brian Auten <Bjauten@AOL.COM>
Bukeikhanov is listed in the index of Stephen Blank's _The Sorcerer As Apprentice: Stalin as Commissar of Nationalities, 1917-1924_ (Greenwood Press, 1994) as on pages 34-35; his name is mentioned briefly as leader of Alash Orda and Blank's citation is from _Pobeda Velikoi Oktiabr'skoi Sotsialisticheskoi Revoliutsii v Kazakhstane 1917-1918gg: Sbornik Dokumentov i Materialov (Alma Ata: Kazakhskoe Gosudarstvenooe Izdatel'stvo, 1957), p. 195. Blank has another article on Alash-Orda--"Ethnic and Party Politics in Soviet Kazakhstan," in _Central Asian Survey_ (10), number 3 (1991), pp. 1-19.
Brian Auten
Bjauten@aol.com
Date: Mon, 5 Feb 1996 09:06:32 -0500
From: James Critchlow <critchj@SEACOAST.COM>
There are also substantial references to Bukeikhanov in Martha Brill Olcott's "The Kazakhs" (Hoover, 1987). Bukeikhanov was of course portrayed in Soviet literature as a "feudal bay" and "counter-revolutionary"; see, for example, the one-volume Russian version of the Kazakh Soviet Encyclopedia.
James Critchlow
2 Moseley Avenue
Newburyport, MA 01950
Date: Tue, 6 Feb 1996 08:46:05 -0500
From: "Steven O. Sabol" <hissosx@GSUSGI2.GSU.EDU>
Alikhan Nurmukhameduli Bukeikhanov was born in 1867 in Karkarlinsk uezd, Semipalatinsk oblast. He died in 1937. I heard two causes for his death, SSin or natural causes, from friends in Almaty. He worked on the Shcherbin expedition to the steppe in the late-1890s, later was elected to the first and second dumas. His shygharmalary were recently published in Almaty in 1994. Several articles which he published in "Qazaq" and other newspapers and periodicals appear there. His most notable work, "Kirgizy," which was published in A. Kostelianskii's "Formy natsional'nogo dvizheniia v sovremennykh gosudarstvakh" (StPete, 1910), is not reproduced. His shygharmalar also has a nice biography and other sections devoted to his years has leader of Alash.
Steven Sabol
Georgia State University
Date: Tue, 6 Feb 1996 14:06:36 -0500
From: James Critchlow <critchj@SEACOAST.COM>
There are numerous references to Alikhan Bukeykhanoglu in Zeki Velidi Togan's "Bugunku Turkili Turkistan" (Istanbul 1981). There are also references to Bukeikhanov in Velidi Togan's memoirs ("Hatiralar," Istanbul 1969), which unfortunately lack an index.
James Critchlow
2 Moseley Avenue
Newburyport, MA 01950
Date: Thu, 8 Feb 1996 18:47:25 +1100
From: Mikhail Alexandrov <Mikhail.Alexandrov@ANU.EDU.AU>
As a result of my query I received several replies and comments on Bukeikhanov. I would like to specifically thank Steven Sobol, James Critchlow and Brian Auten who provided valuable information.
The discussion showed, however, that there are still very substantial black spots in the Soviet history of Central Asia despite the fact that archive documents related to the period of 1920's and 1930's are now available to scholars. Bukeikhanov's biography is simply a very obvious example, since he was the most prominent personality, in fact, man No 1 in the Kazakh national movement, and still the information about him is very limited, fragmentary and even contradictory. What can be said about other less prominent figures, political groups etc?
It looks like that whole layers of uninvestigated historical material are awaiting to be uncovered by those who specialises in Central Asia. Without this, in my opinion, proper understanding of political developments in the Post-Soviet Central Asia is hardly possible.
Mikhail Alexandrov.