Some aspects of the ethnographic studies in Kazakhstan in period of the 1920s

Abstract

This article is devoted to organizational aspects of the organization of scientific ethnographic re- search. The main purpose of the work is to identify the main features of the ethnographic work carried out in the 1920s in the Kazakh region. For writing this article, materials from the funds of the Central State Archive of the Republic of Kazakhstan were used. At the same time, the focus was also on the au- thors’ articles written as a result of the expeditions of the period of the 1920s. In the early 1920s, at the level of the People’s Commissariat of Education of the Kazakh SSR, the question of organizing an ethno- graphic expedition to the Kazakh villages was raised. As a result a Kazakhstan expedition was created, consisting of several detachments of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union with the aim of con- ducting research in the southeastern and eastern regions of Kazakhstan (Zhetysu and East Kazakhstan). The article analyzes the expeditions conducted in the South-Eastern, Eastern, and Western (Mangistau) regions of the Kazakh territory during the second half of the 20s of the twentieth century. Also, on the basis of archival materials, new previously unknown data were used regarding the scientific activities and work of the collector of Kazakh folk songs A. Zatayevich and the chairman of the scientific commis- sion of the People’s Commissariat of Education of the Kazakh Republic A. Chuloshnikov.

Key words: Kazakhs of Jetisu, Aday district, traditional culture, Soviet ethnographers, ethnographic

expeditions, the study of the culture of the Kazakhs.