Eurasian Studies

Balkans, Anatolia, Iran, Caucasus and Central Asia Studies Notebooks

Čokan Valichanov, l’identità nazionale kazaka e la colonizzazione russa

crossmark logo

Abstract

Čokan Čingisovič Valichanov (1835-1865) has been one of the most significant personalities in Kazakh culture of 19th century. This article aims to examine three items of his intellectual production that highly, although subtly, influenced the self-identification of contemporary Kazakhstan after its independence from Soviet Union: the ambiguous relationship with Russian world, the admiration toward the West, the interpretation of Islam as a cultural element of the steppe rather then the key religious system of Kazakh people. As a result, Valichanov appears not only as a great polymath of the past, but as a constant ideological reference for today’s Kazakhstan.


Open access

Submitted: May 21, 2018 | Accepted: June 12, 2018 | Published Nov. 15, 2018 | Language: it

Keywords Russian Empire • Valichanov • Orientalism • Kazakhstan

Copyright © 2018 Dario Citati. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

Permalink http://doi.org/10.30687/978-88-6969-279-6/006


read this chapter