ABSTRACT
On 26 December 1950, Pravda, the official mouthpiece of the Communist Party, contained an article entitled ‘For a Marxist-Leninist Examination of the Problems of the History of Kazakhstan’,1 in which the rebellion led by Khan Kenesary Kasimov from 1837 to 1847 was described as a ‘reactionary feudal movement’.2 Such a re-evaluation represented a fundamental shift for the Party, as this revolt, and the many others which shook Central Asia and the Caucasus under Tsarist rule, had previously been regarded as ‘progressive acts of national liberation’.3
