“Places of Memory” as the Historical and Spiritual Values of the Kazakh Culture Regeneration

Abstract

The Kazakh national memory faced suppression during the 70 years of Soviet rule, leading to a risk of partial loss of national cultural heritage. In this period, Soviet policies often discouraged practices, such as visiting sacred places, a tradition integral to honoring ancestors and perpetuating national memory. Prior to this, during the Russian colonial period, similar policies served as a deterrent to these cultural expressions. It is important to differentiate between the Russian colonial policies pre-Soviet rule and the Soviet policies thereafter, although both had an impact on Kazakh national traditions. When Kazakhstan became independent, the lost historical memory was restored by space ideology formation and was a spontaneous “national canonization”. The initiators of the memory place renovation in the country, including sacred sites, were the holy ancestors’ and patriotic citizens’ descendants. In 2017, the state adopted the Rukhani Zhangyru program aimed at the restoration of historical places, which have the potential to national consciousness growth and national unification around living history. In this regard, the main scope of this work is to study the growth points of a new space ideology in Kazakhstan’s cultural landscape. The authors propose a classification of sacred place types, which shall contribute to the unification of all national identification layers into a single whole.