Elusive Rebels: Researching the Uprisings on the Eve of the Great Famine in Kazakhstan (1929-1931)

The article provides an outline of the most recent scholarly literature on the wave of anti-stateinsurgencies against collectivization and procurements of livestock and grain in the period between1929 and 1931 in Kazakhstan. After briefly assessing the primary sources limitation for the study of thetopic, the article provides a periodization and typology of the different uprisings and an overview oftheir development and causes. The authors then summarize the results of the most recent and completemonograph on the topic, written by Talas Omarbekov. Omarbekov’s book provides the most articulateexposition so far of the “national interpretation” of the wave of uprisings on the eve of the great famine,strongly connecting them with the 1916 revolt in the Kazakh steppe. Furthermore, the authors discussother recent historiographical contributions to the topic, especially those from European historians, thusproviding an up-to-date overview of the scholarly debate on this important page of Kazakh and Soviethistory. The most important issues tackled by the scholarly literature about the uprisings are the continuityor discontinuity between the insurgency during collectivization and anti-colonial rebellions in thenineteenth and early twentieth century; the role of Kazakh elites in the insurgencies and the sources oftheir authority; the extent to which Tsarist domination had reshaped Kazakh society and influenced itsability to resist the Soviet state’s onslaught; and the question of whether the category of “civil war” isuseful for understanding the widespread violence that engulfed Kazakhstan during collectivization andthe great famine. The article concludes by underscoring the irreducibility of the diverse dynamics ofuprisings in different provinces of Kazakhstan on the eve of the famine to a unitary political project andlanguage. It also stresses the need for microhistories of single insurgency episodes, based on politicalpolice materials and local archives.