Problems of Kazakh Horse Breeding in the Works of Researchers of the Russian Empire

Abstract

The article is devoted to the problems of Kazakh horse breeding in the works of researchers and scientists of the Russian Empire. As you know, the Russian people from Ancient Russia to the Russian Empire have been interested in horse trading with the Kazakh Khanate for a long time. Due to the small number of horses in the Russian army and the general population, the Russian Empire provided its army and people with horses from neighboring Kazakhstan. Most of the works devoted to horse breeding in the late XIX - early XX centuries are limited only to the description. Since the materials were collected haphazardly, many issues of this topic were investigated in them differently. Many of the works about horses are written superficially, dictated by curiosity and surprise caused by the original horse breeding of the nomadic people. In such works, for the most part we are talking about grazing, keeping horses, and only occasionally about breeds. Analyzing the literature of the Soviet era, we can say that with all the variety of materials collected about the Kazakh horse, it is still not brought into a single system. Horse breeding in those years was studied from the point of view of agricultural sciences, so its historical and ethnographic side remained poorly studied.