SCHOOLING THE STEPPE: KAZAKH INTELLECTUALS AS AGENTS OR APPARATUS OF EMPIRE IN RUSSIA’S COLONIAL EDUCATION PROJECT (LATE 19TH – EARLY 20TH CENTURY)

Abstract

This article reconstructs the infrastructure, intent, and impact of Russian colonial education in the Kazakh Steppe and explains how Kazakh intellectuals shaped that project from within. Using primary sources from the Central State Archive of the Republic of Kazakhstan (TsGA RK) and the State Archive of Tomsk Oblast (GATO), complemented by contemporaneous periodicals, the study employs close reading, source criticism, prosopographic reconstruction, selective tabulation, and discourse analysis. Framed by an intermediaries approach, it shows that the empire pursued a dual strategy—tightening oversight of mektebs and madrasas while building a secular, Russian-language school network—that yielded a multi-tiered system from village classrooms to specialist colleges. For the purposes of this study, “Kazakh intellectuals” denotes members of the political elite, teachers, students, and secularly educated professionals who became enmeshed in school and administrative work. Their motives were layered—status preservation, salaried service, social mobility, and communal reform—and their contributions concrete: petitioning for stipends and schools, organizing endowments, staffing and supervising institutions, publicizing or contesting regulations, and translating policy into classroom practice. Reassessing “collaboration,” the article advances the concept of hybrid agency, whereby intermediaries selectively appropriated imperial resources to advance local priorities even as they furthered aspects of imperial rule. The findings clarify how knowledge, funding, and legitimacy were co-produced and how schooling functioned as both a technology of governance and a site of negotiated modernization.