Abstract

SUMMARY:

The article presents a survey of various scholarly publications by Western researchers devoted to Kazakhstan. This survey discusses the recent shift in Central Asian historiography away from Uzbekistan towards the other republics of the region and the shift in research field, in which American researchers, starting in the second half of the 20th century, took over the leading role in Central Asian studies from their Western European colleagues. One of the notable points in this new research is its distinctly political character. Among the central themes of these publications are questions of Kazakh identity, the origins of the Kazakh nation (either as created by the Soviet system or as linked to a tribal identity, which was key to Kazakh consciousness), the importance of demographic aspects in the modern transformation process, and the polarization between those who choose to view modern Kazakhstan through the prism of the theory of colonization and those who work from the point of view of the theory of modernization.

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