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I would like to present the results of a research project on the history of the Kazakh Soviet magazine Zhanga Adebiet (Жаңа Әдебиет [New Literature]). Together with a group of students from Nazarbayev University, we are working on an online catalog that will contain information about all the texts published from 1928 to 1941 in what was the first Kazakh Soviet literary magazine. The first issues of the magazine were published in Tote zhazu, but Latin script was used starting from the 1930s. The work of our research group included translating the list of titles into modern Kazakh, English, and Russian languages. We identified the authors and translators of the texts signed by initials and revealed a number of pen-names.

In my presentation, I would like to talk about the magazine as a unique source of information on the history of Kazakh literature in the 1930s and 1940s, present the results of the research group’s work, and demonstrate how the collected database can be used.The value of the magazine lies in the fact that it published texts of various genres. The magazine contains many unique texts created by writers who perished during the repressions of the 1930s as enemies of the people and whose works were later removed from the libraries. In addition, the magazine contains a large number of political articles that allow one to trace the transformation of Soviet policy toward culture during the establishment of the Soviet regime in the region. The study of the magazine as an institution contributes to our understanding of literary life in the Soviet republic and might be of interest to those studying the history of Kazakh literature.

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This paper explores the representation of gender and the evolving role of women's voices in Kazakh prose literature. By analyzing selected works from both Soviet-era and contemporary Kazakh writers, the study examines how gender dynamics are constructed, challenged, and redefined through narrative motifs, character development, and thematic structures. Particular attention is paid to recurring motifs such as motherhood, resistance, silence, exile, and tradition, which reflect broader social and cultural attitudes toward women and femininity. The paper investigates how female authors assert agency within a historically patriarchal literary tradition, and how male authors depict women in relation to national identity, cultural memory, and modernity. Through a comparative lens, the research highlights the shifting portrayals of gender roles and the gradual emergence of a distinct feminine literary voice in Kazakh prose. Ultimately, the study contributes to a deeper understanding of how literature both reflects and shapes gender discourse within the broader context of Central Asian cultural transformation.

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In September-October 1934, the millennium of the birth of the Persian-language epic poet Ferdowsi was celebrated not only in Tehran and the poet’s native Tus but also in Moscow, Leningrad, Kyiv, and across numerous culturally Persianate ethno-national territorial entities of the Soviet Union, most notably in Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Tajikistan. Albeit labeled a Tajik national poet in the later decades, Ferdowsi was still officially considered a Persian/Iranian poet at the time of the Millennium Jubilee (and until the early 1940s). Owing as much to the enthusiastic instigations of Soviet linguist and archaeologist Hovsep Orbeli, who was then director of the Hermitage, as to friendly relations between two rapidly modernizing neighboring states–the Soviet Union and Persia (renamed Iran several months after the Jubilee), the grandiose Jubilee involved the active participation of Soviet leaders, prominent Soviet scholars, and the wider Soviet public on an unprecedented scale. Taking place in the immediate aftermath of the First Writers’ Congress, the Ferdowsi Jubilee marked a watershed in the Soviet approach to the pre-Bolshevik literary and cultural heritage of the non-Slavic nations of the Soviet empire. The foreignness of Ferdowsi notwithstanding, the Jubilee set the ideological and organizational paradigm for future literary jubilees of the national literary figures/works of Soviet nations, particularly in the Soviet republics of the South Caucasus and Central Asia. It is particularly worth noting that some of the most enthusiastic advocates of the popularization of Ferdowsi's legacy in the Soviet Union were members of the Soviet Tajik national intelligentsia. In spite of Ferdowsi's official identification as a Persian/Iranian cultural figure, these celebrated writers, journalists, and translators capitalized on the momentum of the Jubilee to cement the incipient Tajik nation's claim to Ferdowsi's legacy, which eventually proved conducive to an official reassessment of Ferdowsi's national identity less than a decade later. Not only did the 1934 Ferdowsi Jubilee reaffirm the profound cultural ties among the Persianate ethno-national territorial entities of the Soviet Union, it also paved the way for the consolidation of the Tajik national identity in the Soviet context.