Talk:Culture of Kazakhstan

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This article contains information from WikiProject Library of Congress Country Studies, an attempt to incorporate useful information, text, and images from the Library of Congress Country Studies and the related Country Profiles. These are public domain documents with extensive information on many countries. You may see what other Kazakhstan-related contributions have been made by looking at the project's subpage for Kazakhstan, which tracks progress for articles on Kazakhstan, and look for what contributions you can make, including updates to this article.

Kazakhstan was not "conquered" by the Russian Empire, but in fact initiated the process of voluntary ascession to it in the 1730. It was deemed by Kazakh elite that joining the Russian Empire and therefore being protected by it would be the only way to save the remaining kazakh people, who faced near extinction at the hands of the dzhungars - the aggressive nomadic tribes to the west of China.

This issue is open for debate. While some of the Kazakh elite did initially favour Russian Empire's protection, the colonisation practices that followed provoked massive protests among the Kazakhs. The uprisings of Isatay and Mahambet (1837), Kenesary (1847), Amangeldy (1916) were undoubtedly the major ones, but there were many others. The period of Russian Empire's expansion into Kazakhstan (1731-1916) can be viewed as conquest in the sense that it was a succession of wars, intermixed with periods of colonisation and settlement. Also, the Russian Empire cannot be credited with saving the Kazakh nation from extinction at the hands of the Dzhungar Khanate, because there are presently more than a million Kazakhs living within the north-western part of People's Republic of China, who never had the benefit of Russian protection - and yet survived and preserved their heritage.

[edit] Kazakh Culture vs. Kazakhstan Culture

One big problem we come across a lot in Wikipedia, is the idea of Kazakh's and Kazakhstani's as all the same. In some ways they are, but the Kazakh's from Kazakhstan have lost a lot of there culture. . .I wonder if for somethings, at least a culture article there ought to be one of Kazakh culture as well?--Erkin2008 08:20, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Modern Culture

I think the article should contain information about what has been happenning in Kazakhstan's culture in recent years. In particular, there should be a note on "Musagetes", which has been playing a prominent role in supproting and representing Kazakhstani writers and artists. Unfortunately, I could not access their main website www.musagetes.kz (it's probably under construction because I remember it was ok some months ago), so I included a link to their art gallery. I'm not sure how relevant this is, but if one is to go to Almaty and look for the modern Kazakhstani artists, novelists or poets "Musagetes" would be the best place to go.--74.102.81.62 05:06, 9 April 2007 (UTC)