Modern analysis of historical records about kazakh people in journalism of royal Russia

Abstract

It’s been over century since the question «Did the royal Russian government pursue a tough colonial policy in Central Asia and Turkestan including the Kazakh steppes?» has been the matter of heated debate in the scientific literature. Many articles about colonial policy of royal Russian in Central Asia including Turkestan region were published over the last decade. In particular, scientists from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Russia, Japan, Italy, the United States, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom conducted joint investigations. The scientists of Western Europe and the United States consider that Russian royal empire used the harsh methods of colonialism not only economically, but also spiritually and educationally. Purpose of article – scientific assessment of tough colonial policy of royal Russian government in Central Asia and Turkestan region as well as Kazakh steppes on the basis of historical data from articles and essays in Russian newspapers and magazines published in the late XIX and early XX centuries. Main lines and ideas includes the disproof of conclusions of some scientists who considers that «royal government was not an exploiting government; primarily, the policy here was described by tolerance and not by economic exploiting (regions produce revenues for empire), there were strategic objectives; as Russia itself depended from the West; the empire was based on class consciousness  not on Russian consciousness, there were not considerable differences between Russian and Non-Russian people for Russia to include local people». Research methods – critical analysis, comparison of historical sources, content analysis of data and information in articles and essays in newspapers and magazines and their assessment from nationwide belief. Main conclusions, analysis and concept – we conduct research on studying the policy of colonization of the Kazakh steppe as well as Turkestan region for forty years based on the historical sources, such as articles and essays published in newspapers and magazines of royal Russia at the end of the XIX – beginning of the ХХ centuries. We present scientific results which were not published earlier, the results based on the sources, historical data and information collected by us in the context of historical journalism. Research value is that scientific assessment of the modern national idea of Kazakhstan was given to the colonial press published by the royal Russia. Keywords: historical journalism, newspapers and magazines of the royal government, the colonial nature of the press, «Turkestan collection», the colonization policy of the Kazakh steppe.