Paper abstract:

The uprising of 1916 in the history of the Kyrgyz people left a deep mark on the lives of several generations. In every Kyrgyz family, memories of the tragic events of that period were transmitted from the mouths of grandparents. In the recent Soviet past, there was one official version of the Uprising of 1916, which did not take into account the individual memory of thousands of people who survived the tragedy of the uprising.

Today, one of the qualitative methods of studying historical events is oral history. Oral histories include not only the memories of the participants of the uprising of 1916 and their children, but also the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of contemporaries and witnesses of that time. Oral memoirs are valuable material for sociological and historical science, because they "give the word" to the ignored (so-called "non-historical") layers of society. Oral histories more reflect "small history" (microhistory), individual memories, history created "from below" (history from below), daily memories. The peculiarity of oral history is studying the experienced past and its interpretation and meaning for people in the present.

Oral histories collected from children and grandchildren from eyewitnesses of the uprising demonstrated the deep trauma experienced by the residents of our region. These are stories about forced flight to China, about the trials of crossing difficult mountain passes, about violence by Chinese soldiers at the border, about the loss of their children and close relatives, about the difficult life in a foreign land and the bitterness of loss about their former life together with other refugees from Issyk-Kul. Oral histories of witnesses and eyewitnesses of that time are one of the ways to release individual traumatized memories.

Another important means of conveying ways of experiencing, comprehending and relating to the world that are difficult to discuss is visual sources using photographs. Precisely because they are deeply rooted or — as sociologist Pierre Bourdieu writes — are "beyond awareness, and therefore they cannot be touched through volitional, deliberate transformation, they cannot even become visible" [Bourdieu 1977: 94]. Through the photo, the image of the person himself, her/his family, partner and friends is analyzed, allowing to realize all aspects of everyday life that were previously taken for granted. Photographs allow us to tell about the participants of the 1916 Uprising, about the injured men, women and children, and, therefore, give us an important opportunity to make the faces of the study participants visible and their stories heard.