By Trevor Peeters

Abstract: This article examines the formation of Soviet Kyrgyzstan from 1916 to 1928, drawing on Max Weber’s definition that the state operates as an entity that monopolises the legitimate use of force. Focusing on the violent upheavals of Central Asia in 1916 and the subsequent Bolshevik conquests into Transoxania, this article traces how Kirghiz oral poetry and early print media were selectively appropriated to legitimize the emerging state. By analysing urkun yrlary (Songs of the Exodus) and the establishment of the first Kirghiz-language newspaper, Erkin Too (The Free Mountains) from 1924, this study argues that the Soviet administration simultaneously co-opted indigenous expressions of heroism and resistance while embedding its authority, demonstrating that state-building was as much a cultural and ideological negotiation as a military and administrative project.

Keywords: Culture, National identity, Music, Orality, Violence, Mythology.

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“[Until the middle of the nineteenth century] the Kirghiz were unable to lead peaceful lives and could not be with their women and children in their homes.^[1] The manaps herded the people about like sheep. Sometimes the Kirghiz fought the Kalmyks, sometimes they fought Kazakhs, and at other times they fought among themselves. The victors would seize all property from the defeated and would take away the wives and children of the defeated. The defeated would then waste no time in visiting retribution on their enemies. Thus, there was perpetual ‘fighting’ (joo). A man who showed bravery and took the initiative to keep the people together at the time of joo was given the honorific title of baatir, or hero.”

“On the Kirghiz” (1911).^[2]

The violent upheaval of 1916 in the Semirechye Oblast– a widespread uprising against Russian Imperial rule resulting in the exodus of the Kirghiz through the Tian Shan mountain range into Eastern Turkestan. This revolt provided fertile ground for the Bolshevik administration to frame their conquests in Central Asia as the continuation of an indigenous anti-imperialist struggle (1916-1918). In the years following the revolt, Kirghiz oral poetry was increasingly adapted to revolutionary themes. This adaptation reflects Shane Greene’s concept of “indigenous customisation”, which is the integration of compatible indigenous cultural values and practices with state projects and modern technologies.^[3] This article extends Greene’s framework with its application to the Kirghiz case, wherein local cultural forms, such as oral histories, were reframed to express Bolshevik ideals in the first decade of Soviet rule. Rather than replacing existing traditions, Soviet narratives were embedded within familiar idioms of resistance and belonging. Yet the Kirghiz’ affinity for the Soviet project was far from universal. The difficulties faced by the Red Army in suppressing both localised uprisings, and widespread insurgency, underscores the fragmented nature of Kirghiz responses to revolution and the contested meanings of liberation in the aftermath of empire.     

Within the Kirghiz tradition, violence and fighting possessed a particular cultural saliency when enacted as joo, a socially recognised modality of raiding and banditry embedded in societal norms. By analysing how oral poetic traditions evolved between the 1916 revolt to the conclusion of the New Economic Policy in 1928 , Kirghiz traditions that historically celebrated heroism (baatir) and resilience exhibit how Soviet authorities customised an indigenous identity rooted in resistance- adapting memories of violence into state-sanctioned narratives.

This transformation can be further understood through Max Weber’s conception of the state as the entity that monopolises the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory.^[4] Before the upheavals of 1916 and 1917, Kirghiz violence was culturally sanctioned when enacted as joo.^[5] Acts carried out through joo could elevate individuals to the status of baatir, a socially recognised hero whose status derived from success in such sanctioned forms of violence.^[6] Violence and the use of force remained diffuse and decentralised, embedded in kinship structures and contingent leadership structures. Soviet rule did not seek to eradicate these culturally sanctioned frameworks for understanding violence; rather, it rearticulated its legitimacy by absorbing local idioms of heroism into a centralised framework of revolutionary authority. Through this process, violence was rendered legitimate not through customary consensus alone, but through its alignment with the institutional and ideological claims of the Soviet state. Consequently, this customisation served to legitimize state-condoned violence aligned with the Bolshevik tradition of militarism. Additionally, such customisation was also in alignment with Soviet modernisation projects. This intersected with the literacy campaigns of Soviet Central Asia, complementing the creation of the first Kirghiz language newspaper, Erkin Too (The FreeMountains) in 1924.^[7] While Erkin Too served the Soviet desires of modernisation, it was also critical in communicating projects of the centre to the administrators of the Kara-Kirghiz Autonomous Oblast.^[8]

Background to the 1916 Revolt

The Central Asian Revolt of 1916 marked a pivotal rupture in the relationship between the Russian imperial state and its subjects in Turkestan. Triggered by the Tsarist decree to conscript Central Asians into military labour battalions for the First World War, the uprising was not merely a spontaneous reaction to conscription, but a culmination of decades of administrative marginalisation, land expropriation, and disregard for local authority structures.^[9] For the nomadic Kirghiz, whose social and political systems had already been strained by colonial reforms, the revolt laid bare the limits of imperial integration. The revolt thus serves as a critical inflection point in both the collapse of Tsarist authority and the reconfiguration of power later exploited by Soviet state-building.

Wartime pressures intensified imperial extraction and strained the relationship between the Kirghiz and colonial administration in Semirechiye Oblast. In 1915, the imperial government created the Commission for the Study of the Natural Productive Forces of Russia (KEPS), indicating a transition towards a centralised model of resource identification and exploitation across the empire.^[10] For Russian Turkestan, this translated into escalating requisitions that fell disproportionately on the pastoralist populations of Semirechye Oblast.^[11] A 1916 report issued by Governor-General Aleksey Kuropatkin reveals the scale of demands: cotton, meat, livestock, yurts, felt, and 2.4 million rubles were extracted from a region with diverse economic foundations.^[12] The Kirghiz, whose transhumant pastoral lifestyle of seasonal livestock herding was poorly suited to fulfil agrarian requisitions, were compelled to liquidate assets critical to their nomadic subsistence: horses, camels, yurts, and livestock, to meet the demands that extended their productive capabilities as nomads.^[13] Unlike the sedentary populations of Russian Turkestan, who were also exposed to these wartime demands, Kirghiz communities faced acute dislocation as imperial requisitions undermined the material basis of survival.^[14] 

In addition to the material requisitions imposed upon the Kirghiz, which compromised the vitality of nomadic subsistence, monetary demands further exacerbated growing social tensions within Kirghiz society. The imperial administration in Semirechye Oblast, dating to the 1880s, attempted to subsume traditional Kirghiz social hierarchies with a manufactured fight (bor’ba) between the commoner (bukara),^[15] and chief (manap) stratum of Kirghiz society.^[16] While the efforts to incite conflictbetween the commonersand their chiefs did not materialise in the nineteenth century, the acute demands of wartime requisitions, and the disadvantage of nomadism as a mode of production, witnessed a growing sense of “manap parasitism” begin to consolidate amongst the commoners.^[17] For the commoners, the chiefshad lost their baatir. The chiefs were perceived by the commoners to have failed in protecting their tribes from not only inter-tribal conflict but also imperial encroachment. In this way the chiefs had lost their baatir as they were no longer capable of defending and championing the interests of their groups.^[18]

A 1915 taxation report from the Pishpek uezd recorded approximately 40,000 yurts in its jurisdiction.^[19] However, from the time of the census to the time of tax collection, many Kirghiz would have left the winter residence of Pishpek uezd and migrated to summer highland pastures. As detailed in the taxation report, the approximated Kirghiz yurts were required to pay between one and three rubles per yurt to the chiefs- generating a tax revenue of 40,000 – 120,000 rubles.^[20] However, the uezd framework assumed fixed settlements, and as seasonal migrations occurred, those that remained in Pisphek faced challenges in meeting these obligations.^[21] Only a fraction of the expected taxes was remitted. Reprisals fell disproportionately on the commoner stratum, with them being required to work on the farm plots of Russian and European settlers,deepening perceptions that traditional authority had become enmeshed with colonial coercion.^[22]

As the July 13, 1916, conscription decree for service in labour battalions reached Semirechye Oblast, some of the commoners came to believe that the chiefs worked in congruence with the colonial administration and were to blame for the conscription decree.^[23] Ten days after the announcement of the draft reached the periphery, chiefsof Przheval’sk reported they were experiencing retaliation from their communities. Theyreported intimidation from the commoners, who were issuing death threats if the chiefs complied with the creation of conscription lists.^[24] The chiefs demanded that Colonel Ivanov, the head of Przheval’sk, imprison them to ensure their safety.^[25] The compounding pressure of war requisitions, loss of trust in traditional political institutions, and the conscription decree reinforced the social dynamics of resistance.

In the Pishpek uezd, Alymkul Tabaldin and Egemberdi Sarykov emerged in opposition to the current chiefsand rapidly began to develop support from their fellow commoners through their defiance.^[26] Tabaldin and Sarykov mobilised their communities with their calls to openly defy the conscription order. For the Kirghiz, figures such as Tabaldin and Sarykov personified the virtue of baatir. Crucially, while the qualities associated with baatir were often affiliated with authority, they were not monopolised by chiefs in Kirghiz society. As a result, individuals who demonstrated baatir could accumulate prestige and followers, allowing them to challenge the established leadership.^[27] For the colonial administration, such figures personified defiance and began to become known as “agitators.”^[28] In mid-July, the colonial administration sought to extinguish the embers of dissent and began to arrest the agitators. Both Alymkul Tabaldin and Egemberdi Sarykov were arrested by the Turkestan Governor-Generalship and transported to the city of Tashkent.^[29] Sarykov was tried as a leader of the growing rebellion in Semirechye and executed by firing squad, while Tabaldin evaded execution and joined the Bolshevik forces in 1917.^[30]

Arrests of agitators in mid-July rapidly escalated the violence and disorder of the revolt into an uprising categorised by violence and disorder. The Kirghiz of Semirechiye clashed with Russian forces, traditional chiefs and bais (wealthy pastoral elites), and neighbouring groups such as Kazakhs, Uyghurs, Dungans, and Kalmyks.^[31] Raids, property seizures, and kidnappings became common, as cycles of reprisal spread across the highlands. Imperial troops and local collaborators responded with brutal reprisals, including massacres of men, women, and children, which devastated villages and shattered social structures.^[32] These events precipitated the Urkun, a mass exodus of tens of thousands of Kirghiz across the Tian Shan mountains into Eastern Turkestan through the Bedel Pass. Many perished from starvation, exposure, and violence along the way, while survivors endured the loss of homes, livestock, and family members. The Urkun became a defining moment of collective trauma and memory, marking both the human cost of colonial oppression and the vulnerabilities of Kirghiz society under exogenous rule.

The devastation of the 1916 revolt and the Urkun exposed the fragility of Russian authority in Central Asia, revealing the limits of imperial control over nomadic and peripheral populations. The inability of the Tsarist administration to effectively respond to the uprising, combined with widespread local violence and mass displacement, contributed to the broader erosion of confidence in imperial governance. By 1917, the collapse of the Russian Empire and the abdication of Nicholas II provided both an opportunity and a challenge for Kirghiz communities, who had endured extreme social, economic, and political disruption. The memory of the revolt and the Urkun thus shaped local responses to the October Revolution, as indigenous populations negotiated between emerging Bolshevik authority, continuing social hierarchies, and the long-standing legacies of violence.

Bardship and Patronship

The Urkun did not just end with physical displacement or political collapse. It generated a crisis of legitimacy that required cultural interpretation. For the Kirghiz, where written political discourse was severely limited, the medium for cultural interpretation was oral poetry.^[33] Violence, betrayal, and communal trauma were embedded in collective memory through bardic tradition. Oral poetry thus functioned as an arena where authority and legitimacy were evaluated. To understand how Kirghiz society processed cultural development and how these narratives in the aftermath of the Urkun later became valuable for Soviet rearticulation, it is necessary to examine the social contract between the bard and the patron.^[34]

Within this context of rupture and contested legitimacy, bardic performance became an instrumental site through which Kirghiz society interpreted legitimacy and power. Even among the traditional chiefs, self-perceptions of authority and legitimacy were shifting in the late imperial period. These changes are reflected in changing patterns of oral poetic patronage and performance. As Daniel Prior illustrates in his essay “Patron, Party, Patrimony: The Transformation of Epic Tradition in the Kirghiz Republic,” how chiefs engaged with oral poetry became increasingly symbolic of their negotiation between traditional prestige and the social order imposed by the empire.^[35]

Reconstructing a Kirghiz perspective on the period preceding the Central Asian Revolt is inherently difficult given widespread illiteracy; however, oral poetry offers a vital window into contemporary social values. In modern times, reflecting the legacy of early Soviet attempts to foster national myths among Turkic peoples (later curtailed in the 1950s during the campaign against Turkic oral epics), the Epic of Manas has become synonymous with Kirghiz nationhood.^[36] The Epic of Manas recounts the life of the heroic warrior, Manas, who according to the poem, in the tenth century united the forty Kirghiz tribes to defend Semirechye from invasions. Yet, recordings from the late imperial period reveal a decline in the telling of the Epic of Manas itself, with Semetey, an epic about Manas’ exiled son, gaining popularity, particularly among tribal elites.^[37]

The Epic of Manas, in its celebration of the unification of the forty Kirghiz tribes to resist invasion, emphasises the heroic ideal of baatir which was possessed by the poem’s protagonist, Manas. In contrast, late imperial retellings of Semetey focus less on martial heroism and more on domestic and romantic exploits: exile to Bukhara, restoration of his father’s honour in Talas, and marriage to Aycurok, a heroine capable of espionage and shapeshifting.^[38] These episodes privileged kinship, alliance-building, and material stability over battlefield heroism. The prominence of these themes reflects broader social transformations under colonial rule, suggesting an elite preference for narratives centred on continuity, prosperity, and negotiated survival rather than open resistance. Oral poetry thus captures a development in the moral economies of Kirghiz society as mediated by who occupies the position of “patron.”

Songs of the Exodus: A Site of Soviet-Kirghiz Compatibility

Oral poetry depicting the Urkun began to dominate the landscape of Kirghiz oral poetry by 1917, and developed into its own distinct genre: the urkun yrlary (songs of the exodus).^[39] Among the most prominent examples are the revolt poems of Aldash Zheenike-uluu, published in the Muras (Heritage) collection of 1990.^[40] Born in 1874, Zheenike-uluu was educated in themodel of Jadidist reform of traditional maktabs, pioneered in the region by Talyp Baybolot-uulu (1849-1949).^[41] This background positioned Zheenike-uluu at the intersection between the reformist pedagogy of Jadidism and the turbulent political changes occurring in the empire’s periphery.

Composed during his exile in Eastern Turkestan and upon his return to Semirechye, Zheenike-uluu’s poems articulate a hardened sense of Kirghiz communal identity galvanised under the social pressures of rupture. Indicative of this hardening is the discrimination of minority ethnic groups of Semirechye, such as Uyghurs and Dungans. For the Dungans, Zheenike-uluu denoted them as possessing “a heart of grass”, criticising their failure to participate in the revolt.^[42] The symbolism behind possessing “a heart of grass” is two-fold. On one hand, it provides a poetic framing of solidarity and obligation during a crisis, while on the other, differentiates the sedentary agrarian Dungans, with their vegetable-rich diet, from the Kirghiz nomads that subsisted off their herds of livestock.^[43]

Importantly, this discrimination did not emerge as a direct result of the Urkun. Just as the revolt of 1916 was preceded by escalating imperial pressures, the anti-Dungan sentiments presented by Zheenike-uluu were embedded in the colonial transformation of Semirechye. Tsarist land use and water management reforms prioritised sedentary agriculture, threatening the sustainability of nomadism.^[44] These reforms and the subsequent revolt enhanced the material and social contrasts between pastoral Kirghiz populations and sedentary agricultural groups, providing a structural grounding in which Zheenike-uluu’s urkun yralry gained resonance.

While the earlier verses of Zheenike-uluu articulated the tensions definitive of colonial transformation in Semirechye, the following verses detailed the communal experience of exile, reflecting a more explicit collective Kirghiz identity.

We flew to Altishahr [Eastern Turkestan]

Poor people, you became desperate…

Our land is Zheti Suu [Semireichye].

Because of the contemptuous Germans, and

because of people like you [local officials]

We suffered from conflict and came here for a time.

Altishahr will not be our land(.)^[45]

In the above verse, Zheenike-uluu condemns the abuses suffered by the Kirghiz at the hands of Chinese merchants and Dungan landlords of Eastern Turkestan,^[46] a critique severe enough to result in his arrest.^[47] More significant than the immediate grievance of exploitation is the articulation of an emergent communal Kirghiz identity. The poem communicates collective identity rooted in moral geography, kinship, resistance, and collective suffering, rather than formal territorial sovereignty. Repeated use of personal pronouns establishes belonging as relational and distinguishes the Kirghiz from both the other ethnic groups in Semirechye and from the Chinese society surrounding them in exile. Identity is articulated as a kinship-based moral belonging grounded in resistance and displacement rather than through proto-national categories.

In the subsequent verse, Zheenike-uluu’s depiction of a Kirghiz communal identity appears as a militant rejection of the Tsarist conscription order, framed as a denunciation of traditional tribal authority entirely:

Don’t be deceived by the bais and manaps,

Don’t give your sons to the army.

Take away their signs and stamps,

And tear apart their lists.^[48]

            These lines simultaneously reject imperial coercion and traditional tribal legitimacy. Here, the bardic performance of Zheenike-uluu is communicating a rupture in the relationship of “patron-party-patrimony”.^[49] The “party” or intended audience of the ukrun yralry are the Kirghiz as a collective who experienced the horrors of the revolt and the tragedy of the exodus in 1916. Instead of the “patrimony” expressing a cultural heritage of negotiated survival under the Tsar, as reflected in the Semetey, this urkun yralry reflects a heritage of suffering that facilitates group identity formation. And finally, by speaking out against traditional tribal elites, Zheenike-uluu conveys that there is now space for a new “patron” to emerge.

Even as Zheenike-uluu asserts a Kirghiz group identity, he articulates a nuanced sense of political awareness in the line, “We are people of the Russians” (“Biz Orustardin elibiz”), which indicates who the proponent patron could become.^[50] This is not an expression of allegiance to the collapsed Tsarist regime, but recognition of the revolutionary transformations unfolding in the empire after Nicholas II’s abdication. In the poem’s concluding verses, Zheenike-uluu expresses gratitude to Lenin, thanking him for the uruiat (freedom) he has brought and voicing hope for a return to the Kirghiz homeland.^[51] Through the dual register of critique against colonial and traditional authority, with acknowledgement of revolutionary legitimacy, Zheenike-uluu’s urkun yrlary demonstrates how indigenous expressions of belonging, suffering, and resistance could be reframed to accommodate emerging political frameworks. The poem reveals an early alignment between Kirghiz narrative traditions and Bolshevik ideals, even as Soviet power remained distant from the peaks of the Tian Shan.

Building upon the development of a communal identity and themes of political consciousness present in Zheenike-uluu’s urkun yralry, is the more explicit focus of other poets upon the human and moral consequences of the Urkun. Themes of human loss and suffering, consistent with the lived events of the exodus and revolt, are conveyed poignantly in the urkun yrlary of Isak Shaibekov (1880-1950). In the second poem of his epilogical retelling of the Urkun titled Qairan el (Poor People), Shaibekov communicates a sense of humiliation and moral collapse amongst the Kirghiz: a once proud and free people now reduced to desperate acts of survival. His verses depict a society stripped of dignity, forced to sell their possessions and the future of their families:

Unable to provide for their children, they sold their posterity, those desperate people,

They sold the dowry of their sons and daughters, those desperate people,

They sold into marriage the widows, who survived their husbands’ deaths, those desperate people.^[52]

Through the use of repetition and lamentation, which are defining characteristics of the urkun yralry genre, Shaibekov constructs a collective voice of grief. The sorrows of Shaibekov’s poem underscore the Urkun as both a collective tragedy and a moral rupture. Material deprivation mirrored the erosion of social and familial bonds. In doing so, Shaibekov is also contributing to the bardic cultural responsibility of mediating communal experiences, using poetry to interpret crises, assign moral meaning, and transmit history to subsequent generations.

Taken together, the urkun yrlary of Aldash Zheenike-uluu and Isak Shaibekov reveal how some Kirghiz oral poets processed the trauma of 1916 through pre-revolutionary moral and aesthetic frameworks. Both poets evoke suffering as a communal experience, portraying the disintegration of kinship, moral order, and the political economy of nomadism, yet their portrayals diverge. Zheenike-uluu channels political anger. Whereas Shaibekov provides an internalised articulation of emotions: how the sentiments of humiliation and desperation were accentuated by the loss of agency.

 In these early urkun yralry, the Urkun was a lived experience, yet it is gradually becoming mythologised through the contents of each verse. The bards speak as witnesses to exile, translating trauma into collective memory. Shaibekov’s language of lament and Zheenike-uluu’s defiance together mark the final phase of pre-Soviet Kirghiz oral tradition, positioned between the fading world of tribal authority and the emerging revolutionary discourse that would soon redefine suffering as sacrifice for socialist liberation.

Soviet Customisation

The mythologisation of the Urkun did not occur in isolation from political change. As bardic voices translated exile into collective memory and reconfigured the relationship between the party, patron, and patrimony, the imperial order that produced the catastrophe was collapsing. The 1917 upheavals in the metropole of Russia introduced new forms of authority that would seek to interpret and capitalise upon the moral language of the Kirghiz oral tradition as it expanded to the periphery. Transition from Tsarist collapse to Soviet consolidation denotes a phase in which lived trauma, bardic performance, and revolutionary ideology became intertwined.

The February Revolution of 1917 saw the end of the reprisals against native Kirghiz by tsarist troops and by European settlers. As in European Russia, the event was marked in Turkestan by an upsurge of political activity: parties and movements proliferated, giving many of the future Kirghiz leaders their start in institutionalized political arenas.^[53] By late 1917 and early 1918, Bolshevik authority was proclaimed first in the mining towns of Sulukta and Kyzyl‑Kiya, then in Osh and Talas (January, 1918), and finally across the Northern Kirghiz lands of Semirechye by mid‑1918.^[54] While the Bolshevik takeover was rooted in existing worker and soldier councils, it faced resistance from White Cossack forces and local elites who desired an autonomous Semirechye Cossack Republic.^[55] The process was thus neither instantaneous nor complete until the Soviet state consolidated control beyond the mines and urban centres into rural and nomadic regions by the end of 1918.^[56]

Soviet authority, though formally asserted by the end of 1918, remained fragile in the countryside. Armed resistance coalesced in the form of the Basmachi movement, demonstrating the limits of Soviet de jure authority.^[57] Despite sustained Red Army campaigns, co-optation of local elites, and ideological efforts to absorb Kirghiz oral traditions into state narratives, insurgent groups continued to mobilise culturally legitimate resistance across northern and eastern regions.^[58] Their persistence underscores that Soviet monopolisation of force at this time was not complete. Actors outside of the state were still capable of operationalising the use of force as effective resistance against the authority of the Soviet regime. Persistence of armed resistance underscores that Soviet authority was a negotiation mediated through cultural forms, rather than a decisive military campaign.

Unlike the 1916 uprising, which was a mass colonial revolt, Basmachism reflected a disparate yet persistent insurgency shaped by the defence of customary authority. Islamic networks and growing opposition toward Soviet policies targeting religious institutions, demanding grain requisitions, land reformations that favoured sedentary agriculture, and early attempts to break the nomads, provided fertile ground for mobilisation.^[59] In northern Kirghiz regions, the movement lacked the centralised command structures seen in the agrarian Ferghana Valley, but drew on familiar bases of legitimacy: clan solidarities, local strongmen, and charismatic baatir figures who framed resistance both as protection of communities and as defence of moral and religious order.^[60]

By the mid 1920s, sustained Red Army campaigns, political co-optation of Kirghiz elites, a revival of the borba, and the fragmentation of insurgent networks curtailed organised resistance. Yet Basmachism marked a structural shift: armed dissent transitioned from anti-imperial revolt to a struggle against Soviet state penetration. These upheavals, and the uneven consolidation of Soviet power across Kirghiz lands, are reflected in changes to the urkun yrlary of the 1920s. In the decade following the October Revolution, the memory of suffering became increasingly reframed through revolutionary idioms.

This transformation is visible in the prose of Togolok Moldo (1860-1942), whose poem Nasiyat (Advice) which is about the wider Tsarist period, as well as the Urkun, reveals an early attempt to translate Marxist concepts into Kirghiz moral vocabulary.^[61] An example of this is found in lines three and four: “You, beggars with dirty feet! Follow you all the right path [ong jol]”.^[62] The expression ong jol, which in traditional Kirghiz usage denotes the righteous path, can be interpreted to take on new political significance.^[63] In the political context of the 1920s, ong jol can be read as “the ideologically correct path,” aligning moral virtue with revolutionary correctness. Additionally, lines five through eight further demonstrate the integration of Kirghiz moral idioms into class discourse:

You, poor villein with dirty feet!

Miserable wretch, what do you say?

You keep turning over your enslavement in your mind

Pay attention to your condition [jay]!^[64]

Here, jay, which translates literally to “condition”, can be recontextualised to signify one’s social position or class condition. The verse thus can be understood to encourage class consciousness (taptyk es) through Kirghiz idioms, urging the listener to reflect on their class condition rather than accept it as fate. The subsequent lines reinforce this message through the imagery of exploitation and endurance:

You experienced subjection;…

You worked as a hired man, always deceived…

Always crying in despair.

From the rich you drew no benefit

Although you toiled as a beast of burden.^[65]

Together, these verses mark a decisive departure from the mournful tone of imperial era urkun yrlary. Experiences of wider Tsarist oppression in the Nasiyat are reframed from being collective tragedies to products of class oppression, serving to embed the Soviet moral code within indigenous forms of expression.^[66]

These poetic changes in the urkun yralry mirror broader developments in Soviet nationalities policy. Following the Twelfth Party Congress in 1923, Soviet theorists, notably Nikolai Bukharin, warned against “local chauvinisms” while emphasising class solidarity as foundational for socialism.^[67] Within this framework, Soviet interpretations of the Urkun changed. Instead of viewing the exodus as evidence of Kirghiz primordialism, interpretations after 1923 began to treat the event as a site capable of articulating class consciousness.^[68]

Soviet cultural policy thus sought to bridge the pastoral Kirghiz experience with proletarian narratives. Earlier poetry, which presented an identity bound by locality, community, and suffering, was reframed to demonstrate compatibility with the Soviet project. Daniel Prior’s “patron-party-patrimony” dynamic again helps explain this dynamic.^[69] As the “patron” shifted from tribal elites to Soviet cultural institutions, the medium of bardic transmission persisted, but was now reshaped to satisfy ideological expectations of Marxist-Leninism while maintaining cultural legitimacy.

Cultural mediation coincided with the 1924 national delimitation of Central Asia, where Soviet nationalities policy was institutionalised by reorganising the region into ethnically defined administrative units.^[70] For the Kirghiz, delimitation marked the first time a territorially defined Kirghiz political unit existed through the creation of the Kara-Kirghiz Autonomous Oblast.^[71] This provided a statist framework through which cultural memory, political authority, and identity could be mediated. Oral traditions such as the urkun yrlary were now interpreted within the emerging structures of a Soviet Kirghiz polity, aligning indigenous narratives of suffering with the broader project of socialist nation-building. Delimitation thus marked the point at which cultural customisation acquired administrative permanence, embedding bardic performance and historical memory within the arena of the nation.

The tension between rupture and customisation is evident in the treatment of oral poems that did not provide a usable past for the Soviet administration. An example is the epic of Semetey and one of the poem’s greatest orators: the great bard Sagimbayev.^[72] In the spirit of national self-determination,^[73] efforts were made to preserve Sagimbayev’s retelling of Semetey as vital Kirghiz cultural heritage.^[74] Yet these ambitions were met with practical and ideological constraints. Recording equipment was unavailable in Semirechye, and attempts to secure institutional support required travel to Soviet cultural institutions.^[75] When Sagimbayev travelled to Tashkent in 1925 seeking access to recording instruments, he was dismissed by a Kirghiz official as “backwards,” reflecting growing suspicion toward epic forms associated with pre-revolutionary patronage.^[76] Rather than preserve Sagimbayev’s performance, Soviet cultural institutions selectively incorporated other elements of Kirghiz oral tradition that could be more easily aligned with emerging socialist narratives.

Even linguistic interpretation reflected this tension between rupture and customisation. In Togolok Moldo’s poem Nasiyat, references to “revolutionary times” originally used the Kirghiz word ozogrush (upheaval).^[77] When reprinted in Cyrillic script in 1925, ozogrush was selectively replaced with revolutsiya (revolution) when referring to October 1917, while ozogrush was retained in passages reflecting upon the Urkun.^[78] This deliberate substitution reveals an important development in Soviet state-building in Kyrgyzstan: hierarchisation of political violence. Within this hierarchy, only state-sanctioned violence was considered a true revolution. The retention of ozogrush for the Urkun diminished its status, recasting it as a mere upheaval rather than a transformative political action. Linguistic intervention served the interests of the development of political authority: the Soviet state simultaneously monopolised force and regulated the vocabulary through which violence and legitimacy were interpreted.

In the years of Stalinisation, Kirghiz oral poetry continued to evolve, reflecting an increasingly deliberate blending of revolutionary language with traditional expressive forms. Orozaqun Lepes-uulu’s poem Qan toguldu (Blood was Shed), recorded in 1928 by Qayum Miftaqov in the newly standardised Kirghiz written language using the reformed Arabic script, exemplifies this dual register.^[79] The act of recording itself situates the poem within a transitional moment in which oral tradition was being drawn into emerging Soviet cultural frameworks without entirely abandoning its inherited structures. In its opening verses, Lepes-uluu recounts the humiliation of being subjugated to the service of the Russian Imperial administration, a theme consistent with earlier urkun yralry:

There being much humiliation seen and oppression suffered….

Your livestock became plunder for another,

the exploiters captured and used them.

Surely the torment which was suffered was quite unbearable.

They bound you into servitude.^[80]

Here, the traditional Kirghiz poetic vocabulary of bodily pain and dishonour is repurposed to mobilise both colonial critique within a socialist critique nativised to the Kirghiz language. The recurrent imagery of humiliation and the loss of freedom, central motifs of the urkun yrlary, persists in this composition, but they are now definitively framed through the language of class struggle and collective awakening:

The rich saw the power of the poor and crowded in,

The poor Kirghiz (Kirghiz) sold themselves [into servitude] and were lost.^[81]

This shift signals a reinterpretation of suffering not as collective tragedy, but as evidence of structural exploitation. In subsequent verses, Lepes-uulu extends this logic by repositioning salvation within a Soviet framework, hierarchising the role of the state above earlier narratives of communal endurance:

[They] remained alive because of the Soviet Government, the defenceless Kirghiz were saved wherever they were.

The just government made them free from Servitude, they cleansed the yearning desire within [their] hearts.

The Red Army preserved your posterity, [and] the poor, whom the bays and manaps had taken as servants.

The Red Army saved your nation, the Soviet government healed your pain.^[82]

Again, the poem is performing a dual function. It is preserving the emotional capital and symbolic grammar of Kirghiz lament while reorienting its moral resolution toward Soviet authority. Collective suffering, which was once framed through exile, betrayal, and endurance, is now interpreted as a prelude to liberation delivered by the revolutionary state. In this synthesis, Lepes-uulu’s composition illustrates how oral tradition did not disappear under Stalinisation, but was recalibrated to align indigenous expressive forms with an emerging political orthodoxy.

Print Media

The transformation of Kirghiz oral poetry under Soviet supervision also required material and bureaucratic mechanisms to extend its reach. Print media became the next logical stage in the state’s effort to shape collective memory and consolidate authority through the creation of print capital.^[83] The establishment of Erkin Too in November 1924 marked a decisive moment in the translation of Kirghiz oral culture into the new Soviet information order. As the first Kirghiz-language newspaper, printed initially in Tashkent, Erkin Too functioned as both a pedagogical tool and a political instrument of indigenisation and Soviet modernisation.^[84]

The significance of this intervention should not be understated. At the time of its creation, the majority of the Kirghiz population was non-literate, and no standardised Kirghiz written language or alphabet yet existed in sustained use. Its pages reflected the state’s attempt to fix the fluid oral idioms of heroism, resistance, and communal memory into the linear logic of state-building.^[85] What had once been performed in the ephemeral setting of bards was now mediated through typeset, editorial oversight, and bureaucratic classification. The fluid oral knowledge was translated, becoming legible and ultimately susceptible to centralised administration.^[86]

In this sense, Erkin Too became an extension of the patron, party, patrimony dynamic described by Daniel Prior.^[87]* The Soviet state acted as patron, Kirghiz readers as the new and largely imagined “party,” and the patrimony of culture, formerly sustained in the immediacy of bardic performance, was re-encoded and fixed in typeset as socialist heritage. Through this process, Kirghiz poetic traditions were recontextualised to serve the dual function of literacy and loyalty, their narratives of defiance transformed into examples of collective labour and revolutionary awakening. Yet, the persistence of heroic imagery and affective attachment to local idioms within its columns reveals that the adaptation of Kirghiz oral traditions to Soviet print culture was not one of total rupture but of negotiated continuity, a rearticulation of voice and memory within the machinery of modernity.

The 1927 retitling of Erkin Too to Kyzyl Kyrgyzstan (Red Kyrgyzstan) illustrates the state’s efforts to legitimize and monopolise a core marker of Kirghiz indigenous identity: the discourse of violence.^[88] This renaming occurred against the backdrop of the 1927–1928 political and economic crisis in Central Asia, when Moscow faced growing distrust of the peripheries and fears of rural unrest.^[89] In line with Stalinist policies, the transformation of the newspaper was not merely symbolic but part of a broader “attack against the countryside.”^[90] By recasting heroic narratives previously preserved in bardic performance as instruments of revolutionary education and loyalty to the Party, the state sought to neutralise the potential of local traditions to foster dissent. What had once been valorised in oral poetry as acts of communal or personal defiance was now reframed as exemplary collective struggle within a socialist moral universe. Through this process, Kyzyl Kyrgyzstan became both a tool of ideological consolidation and a vehicle for embedding a state-sanctioned memory of resistance and heroism into Kirghiz culture, transforming oral traditions into mechanisms of governance and control. The Soviet state thus extended its monopoly over legitimate violence beyond coercive force into the symbolic realm, fixing revolutionary authority through control over the narratives by which violence, sacrifice, and legitimacy could be named and remembered.

Conclusion

The formation of Soviet Kyrgyzstan thus emerged not from a simple break with the imperial past, but from a complex negotiation between inherited forms of expression and the ideological imperatives of revolution. The very idioms that once celebrated individual heroism and tribal endurance were reconstituted to sanctify collective struggle and socialist modernity. In this process, Kirghiz poets and Soviet officials together participated in the selective remembrance of violence: what had been the joo of survival and defiance was now reframed as the revolutionary fervour of progress.

Yet, as the endurance of Basmachi resistance and the ambivalence of local reception reveal, this synthesis was never total. The adaptation of oral poetry and the emergence of written forms like Erkin Too reflected both the success and the limits of Soviet indigenisation. The patron–party–patrimony dynamic remained: poets continued to navigate between local audiences and metropolitan expectations, recasting ancestral memory to align with, or subtly resist, the socialist vision. Ultimately, the Kirghiz encounter with Soviet power illuminates how Soviet nationalities’ policy was forged through cultural translation as much as political coercion. By tracing the transformation of oral traditions into instruments of ideological legitimacy, we uncover not merely a story of imposition, but of mutual entanglement where continuity and rupture coexisted in the same revolutionary verse. This reframing marked the completion of a Weberian process, whereby culturally sanctioned violence was rendered legitimate not through custom alone, but through its monopolisation by the modern state.

---

Endnotes

^[1] I use the historical spelling “Kirghiz” throughout this article. Before 1924, “Kirghiz” was commonly used to refer to the nomadic populations of Semirechye Oblast (parts of southern Kazakhstan and northern Kyrgyzstan). Applying the modern spelling “Kyrgyz” to these historical actors would be anachronistic. To avoid confusion, this article consistently uses “Kirghiz” rather than alternating between the modern and historical spellings. For further discussion about the spelling of “Kyrgyz” or “Kirghiz” see: Mirlan Bektursunov, “Two Parts – One Whole? Kazakh-Kyrgyz Relations in the Making of Soviet Kyrgyzstan, 1917-1924,” Central Asian Survey 42, no. 1 (2023): 111. https://doi.org/10.1080/02634937.2022.2071837, and also: State Archive of the Russian Federation, (GARF), f. 3316, op. 29, d. 573, l. 9, cited in Asel Daniyarova, “‘Kyrgyzi’ zhe ‘Kirgizbi’? Rasmiy etnimmdin dokumentalduu tataal taryhy. 1-Boluk [‘Kyrgyz’ or ‘Kirgiz’? A Dramatic Documentary History of the Official Ethnonym. Part 1],” Sanjarbek Daniyarov Fund, December 25, 2024, https://daniyarov.kg/2024/12/25/kyrgyz-ili-kirgiz-dramatichesk/?lang=ky.

^[2] Sh.V. “qirgizlar tugrusinda”: 104 in: Tetsu Akiyama, The Qirghiz Baatir and the Russian Empire: The Portrait of a Local Intermediary (Leiden: Brill, 2021), 16.

^[3] Shane Greene, Customising Indigeneity: Paths to a Visionary Politics in Peru (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009).

^[4] Max Weber, trans. Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich, Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), 54.

^[5] The period preceding the 1916 Revolt is referred to as the jookerchilik zaman (fighting period) characterised by the struggle against the Khanate of Kokand (early to mid 1800s), efforts to establish the northern Kirghiz Ormon Khanate (1841-1867) which was accompanied by intertribal conflicts, and encroachment of the “Great Game” between Russia and Britain (1860s-1910s).

^[6] Nikolai Grodekov, the military commander of the Syr Darya region wrote: “There were no manap of Chingissid origin. Those who were distinguished for their bravery and generosity, leading the people under a chaotic situation, became manap.” See: Nikolai Grodekov, Kirgizy i karakygyzy Syr-Dar’nskoy oblasti [Kyrgyz and Karakirghiz of the Syr Darya Region] (Tashkent: Tipo-Litografiya, 1889), 6.

^[7] Central State Archive of the Kirghiz Republic (TsGAKR), f. 20, op. 1, d. 306, 8, “Rezolyutsiye po Dokladu. T. T. At’yanova i Dubolitskogo s khode soglasovaniya s mestami proyekta Rayonirovaniya Kirgizii i srokakh provedeniya rabot [Resolution on the Report. T. T. Atyanov and Dubolitsky on the Progress of Coordination with the Locations of the Kyrgyzstan Zoning Project and the Timing of the Work],” 8, November 1924. And also: Zuhra Altimishova, “Kirgizistan’da Ilk Milli Gazetenin Tarihchesi (1924‑1940) [History of the First National Newspaper in Kyrgyzstan (1924-1940)]”, Süleyman Demirel Üniversitesi Fen‑Edebiyat Fakültesi Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi, no. 29, (2013). 75-78. https://dergipark.org.tr/tr/pub/sufesosbil/issue/11408/136214. 

^[8] TsGAKR, f. 20, op. 1, d. 306, 8, “Rezolyutsiye po Dokladu. T. T. At’yanova i Dubolitskogo,”.

^[9] Aminat Chokobaeva, Cloe Drieu, and Alexander Morrison, eds., The Central Asian Revolt of 1916: A Collapsing Empire in the Age of War and Revolution (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2020).

^[10] Jennifer Keating, On Arid Ground: Political Ecologies of Empire in Russian Central Asia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022), 184.

^[11] Keating, On Arid Ground, 184.

^[12] Edward Dennis Sokol, The Revolt of 1916 in Russian Central Asia (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1954), 68.

^[13] Sokol, The Revolt of 1916, 66-70.

^[14] TsGAKR, f. 20, op. 1, d. 146, “Formy zemlepol’zovaniya i zemel’nyye otnosheniya 1. Dorevolyutsionnyy period [Forms of Land Use and Land Relations 1: Pre-Revolutionary Period],” 1-5, 1924-1925.

^[15] Note: the Kirghiz were still primarily nomadic even until the late 1920s, however, the practice of pastoralism had adapted and was no longer a ‘pure’ form of nomadism. Most Kirghiz, apart from the most remote communities in the peaks of the Tian Shan, maintained a pattern of seasonal migration. In the winter months, the Kirghiz would typically stay at a kyshtoo (a predetermined winter settlement) and would migrate to the jailau (higher altitude summer pastures). TsGKAR, f. 20, op. 1, d. 146, 32. “Osobaia Komissiia VTsIK, “Otchet za pervoe polugodie 1924-5”, [“Special Commission of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, “Report for the first half of 1924-5”], 1 June 1925.

^[16] Tetsu Akiyama, The Qirghiz Baatir and the Russian Empire: The Portrait of a Local Intermediary (Leiden: Brill, 2021), 64.

^[17] Akiyama, The Qirghiz Baatir, 68.

^[18] Akiyama, The Qirghiz Baatir, 68.

^[19] Sokol, The Revolt of 1916, 68. An ‘uezd’ was an administrative subdivision in the Russian Empire and early Soviet Union, roughly equivalent to a county. Nomadic groups, such as the Kirghiz, were counted within uezds for taxation and requisition purposes, although the uezd subdivision was designed for sedentary populations. This mismatch exacerbated the economic burden on nomadic households.

^[20] Sokol, The Revolt of 1916, 68.

^[21] Sokol, The Revolt of 1916, 69.

^[22] Akiyama, The Qirghiz Baatir, 68.

^[23] Aminat Chokobaeva, “From Rebels to Refugees: Memorialising the Revolt of 1916 in Oral Poetry,” in The Central Asian Revolt of 1916: A Collapsing Empire in the Age of War and Revolution, ed. Aminat Chokobaeva, Cloe Drieu, and Alexander Morrison (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2020), 148.

^[24] Chokobaeva, “From Rebels to Refugees,” 148.

^[25] Chokobaeva, “From Rebels to Refugees,” 148.

^[26] Aminat Chokobaeva, Frontiers of Violence: State and Conflict in Semirechye, 1850–1938 (PhD diss., The Australian National University, 2017), 56. https://scispace.com/pdf/frontiers-of-violence-state-and-conflict-in-semirechye-1850-w710yaims3.pdf

^[27] Note: in traditional Kirghiz tribal organisation, the role of chief was comparatively flexible and could exhibit elements of social mobility. Leadership was often relational to the qualities of baatir rather than determined through geneaologies. Individuals who demonstrated the virtues of baatir could develop prestige and followers, emerging as tribal leaders. This contrasts with the more rigid Kazakh genealogical hierarchy of the ak suyek (white bone) where status was tied to descent from the Chinggisid line. For the social mobility of the Kirghiz see: Bektursunov, “Two Parts – One Whole?,” 110. And also: Adolfo Yanushkevich, Dnevniki i pi’sma iz puteshestviya po Kazakstiim stepyam [Diaries and Letters from a Journey Through the Kazakh Steppes] (Pavlodar: EKO, 2006): 110. And also:  Grodekov, Kirgizy i karakygyzy Syr-Dar’nskoy oblasti, 6. For analysis of the Kazakh genealogy and comparison to the Kirghiz see: Zhanna et. al., “Polemic in Russian pre-Revolution Historiography about the Future of the Kazakh Court of BIYS,” 1.

^[28] Chokobaeva, Frontiers of Violence, 56.

^[29] Chokobaeva, Frontiers of Violence, 57.

^[30] Chokobaeva, Frontiers of Violence, 57.

^[31] Sarah Cameron, The Hungry Steppe: Famine, Violence, and the Making of Soviet Kazakhstan (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2018) 31-33. Note: amongst the Kirghiz bai referred to wealthy pastoralists whose authority and influence derived from their ownership of livestock.

^[32] Alexander Morrison, The Russian Conquest of Central Asia: A Study in Imperial Expansion, 1814–1914, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020) 50-52.

^[33] Sokol, The Revolt of 1916, 75.

^[34] Daniel Prior, “Patron, Party, Patrimony: The Transformation of Epic Tradition in the Kirghiz Republic,” in Epic Traditions in the Contemporary World: The Poetics of Community, edited by Margaret Mills, (California: University of California Press, 2000) 115–134.

^[35] Prior, “Patron, Party, Patrimony,” 115–134.

^[36] Gabriel McGuire, “Epic Inside-Out: Qiz Jibek and the Politics of Genre in Kazakh Oral Literature,” Oral Tradition 35, no. 1 (2021): 45. https://oraltradition.org/wp-content/uploads/OT-Volume-35-McGuire-2021.pdf; and Madeleine Reeves, Border Work: Spatial Lives of the State in Rural Central Asia (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2014) 36-38.

^[37] Prior, “Patron, Party, Patrimony,” 121.

^[38] Prior, “Patron, Party, Patrimony,” 121-122.

^[39] Duishembieva, “From Rebels to Refugees: Memorialising the Revolt of 1916 in Oral Poetry,”294.

^[40] Melis Abdyldaev, ed., Muras: Qalyghul, Arstanbek, Moldo, Qylych, Aldash Moldo, Zhengizhok, Toqtoghul zhana bashkalar [Heritage: Qalyghul, Arstanbek, Moldo, Qylych, Aldash Moldo, Zhengizhok, Toqtoghul and Others], (Frunze: Kyrgyzstan, 1990).

^[41] Ayida Kubatova, “Jadidism in Kyrgyzstan: The Historical Value of its Heritage in the Past and Present Day,” Cultural Heritage and Humanities Unit of University of Central Asia, Research Paper 6 (2020): 6.  Note: Jadidism was a politico-religious movement across the Turkic world in the late 19th and early 20th centuries that aimed to modernise Islam through literacy, educational reform, and engagement with wider global ideas such as the concept of a nation. Its educational reforms transformed the traditional maktab schools of Islam by emphasising the instruction of secular subjects and literacy. 

^[42] Duishembieva, “From Rebels to Refugees: Memorialising the Revolt of 1916 in Oral Poetry,”294.

^[43] Sussan K. I., “Istoriya razvitiya sel’skogo khozyaystva dungan v Tsentral’noy Azii i ego sovremennoe sostoyanie [History of Dungan Agriculture Development in Central Asia and Its Current State],” International Research Journal, no. 6, 156, (May 2025): 1-5, https://research-journal.org/en/archive/6-156-2025-june/10.60797/IRJ.2025.156.53#12606687. And also in: Petr Kokaisl, “Dungan Ethnicity in Transformation: From Totalitarianism to Contemporary Adaptation,” Central Asian Survey 43, no. 4 (January 2025): 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1080/02634937.2024.2442441.  

^[44] TsGAKR, f. 20, op. 1, d. 146, “Formy zemlepol’zovaniya i zemel’nyye otnosheniya 1. Dorevolyutsionnyy period [Forms of Land Use and Land Relations 1: Pre-Revolutionary Period],” 1-8, 1924-1925.

^[45] Duishembieva, “From Rebels to Refugees: Memorialising the Revolt of 1916 in Oral Poetry,” 295.

^[46] Petr Kokail and Tereza Hejzlarova, “The Role of Ideology in Creating New Nations in the USSR and Strengthening a Centralised State: The Example of the Dungans in Central Asia,” Heliyon 9 no. 6, (June 2023): 9, https://www.cell.com/heliyon/fulltext/S2405-8440(23)04082-3?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS2405844023040823%3Fshowall%3Dtrue

^[47] Duishembieva, “From Rebels to Refugees: Memorialising the Revolt of 1916 in Oral Poetry,” 296.

^[48] Duishembieva, “From Rebels to Refugees: Memorialising the Revolt of 1916 in Oral Poetry,” 295.

^[49] Prior, “Patron, Party, Patrimony,” 115–134.

^[50] Duishembieva, “From Rebels to Refugees: Memorialising the Revolt of 1916 in Oral Poetry,” 295.

^[51] Duishembieva, “From Rebels to Refugees: Memorialising the Revolt of 1916 in Oral Poetry,” 296.

^[52] Duishembieva, “From Rebels to Refugees: Memorialising the Revolt of 1916 in Oral Poetry,” 296.

^[53] Benjamin Loring, “Building Socialism in Kyrgyzstan: Nation-Making, Rural Development, and Social Change, 1921–1932,” (PhD diss., Brandeis University, 2008), ProQuest (3316488). 35.

^[54] Loring, “Building Socialism in Kyrgyzstan,” 37.

^[55] Loring, “Building Socialism in Kyrgyzstan,” 37.  

^[56] Loring, “Building Socialism in Kyrgyzstan,” 37.  

^[57] Arne Haugen, The Establishment of National Republics in Central Asia (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 138-164.

^[58] Alun Thomas, Nomads and Soviet Rule: Central Asia under Lenin and Stalin (London: I.B. Tauris & Co. ltd., 2018).

^[59] Loring, “Building Socialism in Kyrgyzstan,” 4.  

^[60] Adeeb Khalid, The Politics of Muslim Cultural Reform: Jadidism in Central Asia (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 42-45.

^[61] Hu Zhen-hua and Guy Imart, A Kirghiz Reader (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989) 82-83. Note: Nasiyat means ‘advice’ in Kirghiz, this is of significance and importance as it is emphasising pedagogy, meaning that Moldo is advising the Kirghiz and delivering them the news and lessons of socialist salvation. Additionally, there is a second meaning, as in Russian, sovet tranlisterated into English as soviet, also means ‘advice.’

^[62] Zhen-hua and Imart, A Kirghiz Reader 83.

^[63] Zhen-hua and Imart, A Kirghiz Reader 83.

^[64] Zhen-hua and Imart, A Kirghiz Reader 83.

^[65] Zhen-hua and Imart, A Kirghiz Reader 81.

^[66] TsGAKR, f. 10, op. 1, d. 8, 10-11.

^[67] Nikolai Bukharin, “The Twelfth Congress of the Russian Communist Party,” in The Communist International, 1923, no. 25, 10-17 on Marxists Internet Archive. https://www.marxists.org/archive/bukharin/works/1923/ci/12_congress.htm

^[68] Aminat Chokobaeva, Cloe Drieu, and Alexander Morrison, “Editors’ Introduction,” in The Central Asian Revolt of 1916: A Collpasing Empire in the Age of War and Revolution, ed. Aminat Chokobaeva, Cloe Drieu, and Alexander Morrison (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2020),4.

^[69] Prior, “Patron, Party, Patrimony,” 121-122.

^[70] Postanovleniye Orgbyuro TSK RKP(b) ot 4 iyunya 1924 g. [Resolution of the Orgburo of the Central Committee of the RCP(b) of June 4, 1924], “O Natsional’nom Razmezhevanii Sredneaziatskikh Respublik” [On the National Delimitation of the Central Asian Republics].

^[71] Bektursunov, “‘Two Parts – One Whole’?” 109-111.

^[72] Prior, “Patron, Party, Patrimony,” 121-122.

^[73] “Deklaratsiia prav narodov Rossii,”15 November (New Style), in Dekrety sovetskoi vlasti, vol. 1 (Moscow: izdatel´stvo politicheskoi literatury, 1957), 39-41.

^[74] Prior, “Patron, Party, Patrimony,” 124.

^[75] Prior, “Patron, Party, Patrimony,” 124-126.

^[76] Zhen-hua and Imart, A Kirghiz Reader 81.

^[77] Zhen-hua and Imart, A Kirghiz Reader 81.

^[78] Togolok Moldo, Chigarmalar [Drawings], (Kirgizstan Basmasi: Frunze, 1960) 261-270.

^[79] S. A. Alieva, “Rol’ ffimskogo medrese ‘Galiya’ v stanovlenii mirovozzreniya prosvetitelya I. Arabayeva [The Role of the Ufa Madrasah “Galiya” in the Formation of the Worldview of the Enlightener I. Arabayev].” Ufa University of Science and Technology, no. 4, (2022): 146-148.

^[80] Orozaqun Lepes-uulu, “Qan toguldu [Blood was Shed],” in 1916-jildin qozgoloŋu [The Uprising of 1916], ed. Qayum Miftaqov, manuscript no. 9 (202), National Academy of Sciences Kirghiz Republic Manuscript Archive, 1-2. https://manuscript.bizdin.kg/%D1%80%D1%83%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%BF%D0%B8%D1%81%D1%8C/1916-%D0%B6%D1%8B%D0%BB%D0%BA%D1%8B-%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%B7%D0%B3%D0%BE%D0%BB%D0%BE%D2%A3-%D1%8B%D1%80%D0%BB%D0%B0%D1%80%D1%8B/

^[81] Lepes-uulu, “Qan toguldu,” 1.

^[82] Lepes-uulu, “Qan toguldu,” 1.

^[83] Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1983).

^[84] Altimishova, “Kirgizistan’da Ilk Milli Gazetenin Tarihchesi (1924‑1940),” 75-78.

^[85] Altimishova, “Kirgizistan’da Ilk Milli Gazetenin Tarihchesi (1924‑1940),” 84.

^[86] James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Conditions to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998).

^[87] Prior, “Patron, Party, Patrimony,” 115–134.

^[88] Altimishova, “Kirgizistan’da Ilk Milli Gazetenin Tarihchesi (1924‑1940),” 73.

^[89] Chokobaeva, Drieu, and Morrison, “Editors’ Introduction,” 6.

^[90] Yuri Slezkine, Russia and the Small Peoples of the North: Arctic Mirrors (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994) 193.

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