Ph.D. HB Paksoy
1989
The struggle of the Central Asians to preserve this dastan in the face of Soviet attacks upon it is the central focus of the present work. The attacks and attempts to save the Alpamysh dastan may be divided into two "phases" -- the first is represented by the Central Asians' own efforts to record the dastan on paper and publish it widely in response to Russian occupation and ensuing Russification campaigns, Christian proselytization, "language reform," boundary revision and creation of special legal classifications and later, "nations," for Central Asians; the second "phase" involves altering the content of the dastan itself and its history or "lineage." The two "phases" are not successive and chronologically distinct, but overlap around the 1930s-1940s. The latest response to the attack has been a revival in the 1980s of dastans in a new form, as befits their own tradition. The in-depth examination of the struggle over the Alpamysh dastan, however, is more than the study of the treatment of a single historical and literary monument. It represents Soviet policy in Central Asia and Central Asian resilience in preserving the historic identity and values. The case of Alpamysh is a documentable and representative example of Russian rule --both imperial and Soviet -- in Central Asia. The study of identity, inter alia dastans, also has political and military implications. As the academic historian and political actor Z. V. Togan noted at the time of the Bolshevik revolution, it has been the Russian tactic to absorb (biologically and culturally) the smaller non-Russian nationalities. Under the slogans of "friendship of peoples," the "drawing nearer" or "merging" of the peoples of the Soviet Union and other expressions of so-called "internationalism," Russian nationalism has been at work. The Russian's aim of absorbing the Central Asians could only be realized by breaking the Central Asians' link to their own past.
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