Abstract

This article focuses on Soviet toponymic policy in Kazakhstan during the interwar period. The primary objective of this policy was the dismantling of the imperial symbolic legacy. The author posits that the massive wave of renamings in the 1920s and 1930s was not merely a series of spontaneous ideological gestures by the Bolshevik leadership. On the contrary, it represented a considered, albeit contradictory, attempt to decolonize the cultural landscape.

Drawing on a vast array of unpublished documents from the Central State Archives of the Republic of Kazakhstan (TsGA RK), the National Archives of Uzbekistan (NA Uz), and the State Archive of the Russian Federation (GA RF), the author reconstructs the complex mechanics of cataloging "alien" monarchical and religious onyms. This research successfully identifies and systematizes over one hundred cases of radical name changes within the republic during the period under study.

Ultimately, the author concludes that Soviet toponymic policy was characterized by a profound dualism. On one hand, it declared a struggle against the imperial legacy and the liberation of oppressed borderlands. On the other hand, it inevitably constructed a new, even more rigid hierarchy of dominance. This system transformed both the natural and urban environments into a resource for Soviet propaganda.