Abstract:

The integration of the Kazakh economy into the system of the All-Russian economy in the second half of the XIX century caused changes in the social stratification of the traditional nomadic society. In its structure, the category of wealthy individuals – Bai – is beginning to play an increasingly increasing role. Bai as representative of the upper class of the Kazakh community (society) as an independent category remains poorly researched in domestic and foreign historiography. The study of the institute of the bai power takes place in the context of studying the repressive practices of the Bolshevik regime, where Bai are the object of state terror. In the work of the Roundtable, the institution of Kazakh Bai will be considered in socio-historical dynamics, described as part of a complex structure in all its diversity at the macro and micro levels.

The purpose of organizing the Round Table is a comprehensive discussion of the phenomenon of Kazakh Bai, its genesis, socio-economic and political role in the key events of the second half of the 19th - first third of the 20th centuries and its "responses" to the challenges of imperial and Bolshevik modernization.

The main content of the event will be the history of the Bai estate as a social community - its position, composition, social behavior, place and role in the system of social relations, sources of material well-being, social alliances and conflicts, social prerequisites and consequences of political, cultural and economic transformations.

We believe that the results and conclusions obtained in the course of presented and presented research results will help to rid our society of complexes formed under the influence of Soviet historiography, which tendentiously, exclusively in negative connotation, approached the description of the category of Kazakh Bai.

The optics of research attention will be focused on the study of the wealthy class of nomadic society (Kazakh Bai). The peculiarities of its worldview and world perception and the values dominating in the nomadic environment will be studied. The focus of attention is on individual characteristics and common features.

The social institution of Kazakh Bai will be presented in interaction and mutual influence with the main structures in which it is embedded: natural and climatic conditions and geographical environment, other social groups and strata, family and nomadic blood community, society and state, customary law (adat), Muslim law (sharia) and official imperial and Soviet legislation, etc.