Representation of the Kazakhstani famine (1931–33) in secondary school history textbooks, 1992–2021

Abstract

This paper studies the role of textbook authors when portraying the Kazakhstani famine of 1931–33 in textbooks printed between 1992 and 2021 for the secondary school subject ‘The History of Kazakhstan’. Drawing on a multilayered and inter-discursive analysis of seven of these textbooks, and after 10 interviews with curriculum developers and textbook authors, this paper argues that authorship agencies have reflected a level of ambivalence: on the cause(s) of the famine; on their evaluation of it as a tragedy or as a genocide; on the identification of the perpetrators and victims; and the people’s revolt against the collectivization. The textbook authors have echoed the narratives from the cautious approach to the famine’s commemoration portrayed in state-led nation-building, to those in Kazakh nationalist narratives and the academic history. The results of this paper oppose the general assumption that textbook narratives are merely constructed from ‘above’ in a non-democratic state such as Kazakhstan.