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Accepted Paper:
Making the Golden Horde “Great Again”: Historians as Memory Actors and Reinterpretation of the Historical Narratives in Independent Kazakhstan
Bakhytzhan Kurmanov
(University of Central Asia)
Zhaxylyk Sabitov
(Research Institute for Jochi Ulus Studies)
This article investigates the transformation of the official historcal narrative of the Golden Horde in Kazakhstan, tracing a significant shift from Nazarbayev to Tokayev's presidencies. The narrative of the Golden Horde became a strategic component of the second president Tokayev, who announced the commemoration of 750 years of the Horde foundation in Kazakhstan and proclaimed that it laid the foundations for Kazakh statehood. The research explores the abrupt transformation of the official historical narrative and underscores the pivotal role of historians as memory actors. The study delves into the "memory game" between two schools of historians in independent Kazakhstan, revealing the agency of a new generation of historians in reshaping the national historical narrative through the historicizing strategies (Mink and Neumeyer 2013), thus, engaging in memory politics. This contribution extends the literature on the mnemonic context in Kazakhstan and non-state memory actors in authoritarian settings, shedding light on the dynamics of historical representation and memory politics in evolving mnemonic landscapes.