JOINING OF THE KAZAKH LANDS TO THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE: HISTORIOGRAPHICAL REVIEW XIX – EARLY XX CENTURY

Abstract

At present, new facets are being discovered in covering and identifying important issues in the relations between Kazakhstan and Russia in the 18th and early 20th centuries. Appeal to historical research on this issue from the standpoint of rethinking the views of the authors is necessary and timely. In this context, the work of Russian researchers who were in Kazakhstan in the service is of great interest. The authors wrote about contemporary events for them, and in their views were dependent on the influence inherent in imperial ideology. The works are characterized by descriptiveness, a weak source base, the absence in some cases of historical interpretation of factual data, and groundless conclusions and generalizations. The works of Russian authors can be classified according to directions and theories: the theory of «natural borders», the theory of ethnographic and geographical factors, chauvinistic direction, the direction of «civilizing mission.»
A large number of materials in Russian historiography devoted to the acceptance of Russian citizenship by the Kazakh zhuzes testifies to the interest in this problem. But this interest is due to the desire to learn the history of the indigenous people for the successful implementation of the colonial policy of tsarism.