RETHINKING THE PLACE AND ROLE OF THE "STEPPE" ISHAN IN THE CULTURAL AND POLITICAL GENESIS OF KAZAKHSTAN

Abstract

The article is devoted to a little -studied issue and its modern interpretation from new methodological positions. One of the categories of Kazakh society were healers who had spiritual education and healing skills using traditional methods. Being in the steppe regions, observing new processes, they boldly criticized the activities of the border and county authorities throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and their authoritative opinion was an expression of collective opinion. The article is based on materials from Russian archives, materials from pre-revolutionary publications and the press. The research aims to reconstruct the political aspects of the activities of Kazakh healers, who found themselves in that chronological period the objects of influence of different geopolitical vectors, but who made efforts to ensure the stable self-identification of the indigenous population. During the Soviet period, the practice of persecution and persecution of Ishaans was repeated, but was already accompanied by violence, repression, shootings, anti -religious propaganda, confiscation of property (waqf lands, mosques and madrasahs), and forced migration and emigration of Ishaans and their family members.