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Abstract

This paper attempts to place the historical narrative of punitive psychiatry in Qazaqstan in the greater context of global mental health trends led by “Western” countries (here meaning Western Europe and/or the United States). In the 1970s, the Soviet Union had many Western European mental health clinicians in an uproar after news spread of imprisoned political dissidents in psychiatric facilities. After seemingly many failed conversations with the Soviets on rehabilitating this matter, the World Psychiatric Association (WPA) forced Soviet professionals to withdraw from the association in 1983. Information started resurfacing two decades later that the practice of pathologizing and institutionalizing political activists continued in post-Soviet countries, especially in Qazaqstan, a country where youth suicide rates were among the highest in the world. European centers monitoring global practices of democracy were quick to criticize, claiming that the “political abuse of psychiatry” was corrupting Qazaqstan, and that, despite reform efforts, the country was only but a “cunning democracy.”

However, consulting secondary historical articles written by both Qazaqstani and Western scholars on the relationship between Qazaqstani, Russian and Western European psychiatry, there seems to be a trend where 18th and 19th-century European imperialism, including in Central Asia, coincided with a social rise in the authority of psychiatric professionals in Europe, who then became useful instruments of imperialism and social repression with their newfound ability to both pathologize and cure “unwanted others.” This is visible in the publications of British psychiatrist J. C. Carothers—who played an important role in representing psychiatric guidelines of the WHO, as well as in Franz Fanon’s reflections in his book, The Wretched of the Earth, and even in current WHO publications with regards to the representation of researchers on consultation boards for international projects.

Western critics often use the term “political abuse of psychiatry” when referring to countries outside of Europe, but may refer to internal practices of punitive psychiatry as “one-off mishaps.” Fundamentally, the term assumes the following three points: there exists “one preferred way” of practicing psychiatry, this “one preferred way” necessitates a democratic government, and that non-former Soviet European countries practice an exemplary form of democracy. This paper examines, in conjunction, how psychological experiments are conducted and whether "psychiatric normality" exists, the imperalist history of global mental health, and how psychiatry arrived in Qazaqstan to challenge all three of the above assumptions contributing to the suppression of more equitable, cross-cultural exchanges of health information.

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The institutional role of education-oriented philanthropy and patronage among locally authoritative notables in the Kazakh steppe from the mid-nineteenth to the early twentieth century is examined. The central argument conceptualises educational patronage as a negotiated form of infrastructural governance in an imperial borderland, enabling local actors to co-produce institutional change both alongside and beyond formal state structures. Although existing scholarship on Central Eurasia often situates philanthropy within Islamic charitable traditions or reformist movements such as Jadidism, this study contends that education-focused patronage represented a distinct institutional modality. This modality linked the local authority, the material development of educational infrastructures, and the transformation of sociocultural organisation under imperial rule.

This research utilises a multi-layered empirical base, incorporating archival materials from the Central State Archive of the Republic of Kazakhstan, the Historical Archive of Omsk Oblast, and the State Archive of Tomsk Oblast. Additional sources include imperial administrative records, legal documentation, regional periodicals, and Kazakh-language intellectual print culture. Employing historical-contextual analysis, source criticism, and discourse analysis, the study reconstructs how private initiatives contributed to the creation and maintenance of durable educational infrastructures. These infrastructures encompassed maktab and madrasa networks, Russian–Kazakh schools with boarding facilities, libraries, scholarship systems, and trusteeship committees associated with social institutions.

The study demonstrates that philanthropic practices among biys, merchants, and bai patrons were rooted in long-standing traditions of communal reciprocity, such as asar, zhylu, and zhurtshylyk. These practices were progressively continued within imperial administrative frameworks. By financing schools, sustaining reformist print culture, and supporting intellectual networks associated with the Alash movement, these actors transformed economic capital and reputational authority into mechanisms for institutional development. As a result, they contributed to the expansion of literacy, the consolidation of an educated intelligentsia, and the emergence of structured arenas of sociocultural organisation across the steppe.

By situating educational patronage within recent historiographical frameworks that conceptualise empire as a negotiated and infrastructural order, this study contributes to broader debates on Muslim modernity, institutional transformation, and the socio-historical dynamics of imperial borderlands. It offers a historically grounded interpretation of philanthropy as a key modality through which local notables shaped institutional landscapes and articulated new forms of organised social life. The findings identify philanthropic patronage as a formative yet underexamined dimension of Kazakhstan’s historical development and Central Eurasian imperial history.

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In the mid-19th to early 20th centuries, complex and heterogeneous Muslim communities emerged across the Qazaq steppe. The intensification of trade relations, the development of urban culture, population migration, and other factors led to the formation of ethnically mixed Muslim communities. Relations among Muslims (Qazaqs, Tatars, and Sarts) in these communities were not always peaceful. These communities were often shaken by conflicts that had a serious impact on the socioeconomic, social, and cultural life of Muslims.

I will examine three conflicts between Tatars and Qazaqs in regions such as Semipalatinsk and Omsk. The first occurred in the mid-19th century and was linked to an attempt by a group of Qazaqs from fifth Muslim community (mahalla) of Semipalatinsk to remove their Tatar imam from office. This conflict was not rooted in any fundamental contradictions between Tatars and Qazaqs. It was part of the various vicissitudes of everyday relations. For example, the Tatar imam’s periodic quarrels with local Qazaqs over the fact that the Qazaqs allegedly adhered to their “ancient customs” rather than Sharia (Muslim law).

The second conflict, which occurred in 1915 in the sixth Muslim community of Semipalatinsk, was more complex. After the Qazaqs were excluded from the jurisdiction of the Orenburg Muslim Spiritual Assembly in 1868, the Tatars attempted to assume a dominant position in some mixed Muslim communities. The Russian authorities did not know how to handle such situations. They often acted in a contradictory and inconsistent manner. Paradoxically, in the case of the sixth Muslim community, despite the existence of the 1868 law, imperial officials continued to turn to the Orenburg Muslim Spiritual Assembly for help as a mediator in resolving interethnic conflicts among Muslims.

The third conflict occurred in the city of Omsk in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In other words, it lasted several decades. This conflict stemmed from the fact that the Qazaqs wanted to establish their own Muslim parish and separate from the Tatars. At the same time, the Qazaqs insisted on the need to choose their own imam. Although Omsk was located outside the Qazaq steppe, the imperial authorities refused to grant the Qazaqs their own parish, citing the 1868 law. Ultimately, the efforts of a single individual played a crucial role: the imam of Omsk, Niyaz-Muhammad Suleimanov.

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This paper examines the role of imperial infrastructure – railways, telegraph networks, and postal services—in governing the Kazakh steppe in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, focusing on the Semipalatinsk, Akmola, and Semirechye regions. Drawing on archival materials from the Central State Archive of the Republic of Kazakhstan, the paper analyzes the dual nature of infrastructure as both an instrument of integration and a space of resistance.

The central argument is that infrastructure functioned not only as a mechanism of imperial control but also as a field of interaction in which Kazakh populations were simultaneously incorporated into imperial economic processes and engaged in practices of resistance. On the one hand, Kazakhs actively participated in the economic system by supplying livestock and raw materials and facilitating their transportation to railway stations and regional fairs. On the other hand, this very integration created opportunities for contestation.

A revealing case is documented along the Altai railway line on April 5, 1914, when a telegraph official discovered damage to a communication line. According to the report, the damage was caused by local individuals, presumably with the intention of removing telegraph equipment, although no theft ultimately occurred. The incident required immediate repair and official investigation, demonstrating the vulnerability of the communication network.

Such actions should not be interpreted merely as isolated criminal offences but rather as forms of everyday resistance aimed at disrupting infrastructural functioning. By targeting telegraph lines, railways, and postal routes, local actors could slow administrative processes, interfere with the transmission of orders, and create zones of relative autonomy. Thus, participation in the imperial system did not preclude resistance. On the contrary, it enabled the emergence of new strategies of contestation.