Peasant uprisings of 1929–1932 in Kazakhstan and Kazakhs’ migration (in the memory of the people)

Abstract

The article deals with one of the topical issues of the history of the XXth century — the history of migrationrefugees of the Kazakhs in the 1930s in Kazakhstan.Confiscation of the property of large bays, kulaks, semifeudal lords (middle peasants and sharua peasants), forced collectivization, forced sedentarization, grain and meat procurement, punitive implementation of the Law «On Three Spikelets» — all these political campaigns led to forced migrations of the population from their homes: at first, migration of bays and representatives of all social strata in whole auls; further, subsequently, the suppression of the Sharua uprising — the flight of their participants and leaders to neighboring territories, as well as refugee as a method of survival of the Kazakhs during the famine, which engulfed the population of all regions of the republic.The article, based on oral materials collected by the author during the expedition of researchers from of the Ch.Ch. Valikahnov Institute of History and Ethnology over Kazakhstan in 1998, as well as declassified archival materials, reveals in detail the issue of one of the forms the people’s protest against the political campaigns of the Soviet
government — the Sharua uprisings, accompanied by migration of population.The history of the peasant uprisings that engulfed the Kyzylorda region in 1929–1930 is supplemented by the author with oral information revealed during a personal conversation between the author of the article and a participant in the
uprising, the sarbaz of Akmurza Ishan — Shamshat Alibayuly, as well as other informants. As a result of the analysis of memoirs and archival documents, the author expresses his opinion about the cause and nature of
the Sharua uprisings.