ФОРМИРОВАНИЕ КАЗАХСКОЙ ИНТЕЛЛИГЕНЦИИ В УЧЕБНЫХ ЗАВЕДЕНИЯХ ОРЕНБУРГСКОГО КРАЯ: ОТВЕТ НА ВЫЗОВЫ ПОРЕФОРМЕННОЙ МОДЕРНИЗАЦИИ

Abstract

The article summarizes data on the education of non-Russians of Kazakh origin in the so-called “Russian” secondary and vocational educational institutions of the Orenburg region (gymnasiums, teacher’s schools, paramedic schools, agricultural schools) during the period of post-reform modernization. It shows the typical career paths of Kazakh graduates of these educational institutions, reconstructs main difficulties accompanying the process of recruiting Kazakhs to these schools and studying in them. It is concluded that the policy of acculturation in the field of education implemented by the central and regional authorities was activated in the post-reform period in connection with the involvement of national minorities in the modernization processes of the development of outlying territories. The formation of the Kazakh intelligentsia in the Orenburg region and the adjacent Kazakh steppe was directly related to the educational and enlightenment policy of the imperial structures. The empire made great strides on the way of construction of a single socio-cultural space in the region, one of the components of which was the creation of an education system with the inclusion of both Russian-Kazakh and aul schools, and “ordinary” secondary and professional educational institutions that admitted non-Slavic population. As a result, Orenburg has become the city where the foundations were laid for the development of the Kazakh intelligentsia, and, consequently, for the consolidation of the Kazakh national identity. It is emphasized that it was not despite but thanks to the imperial policy of acculturation by means of enlightenment. The author concludes that the post-reform modernization challenge, associated with the contradiction between innovations penetrating the steppe and the lack of an opportunity in the “foreign” Kazakh environment to adequately perceive them and use the proposed infrastructure for the benefit of their own development, gave rise to an response in the form of Kazakhs integrated through the Russian educational system, who became the new elite of the Kazakh people — not by right of blood, but based on the acquired new competencies and outlook on life. This new national intelligentsia has become a powerful factor in the cultural and even state growth of Kazakhs within Russia.