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.

摘要

本文研究了 1992 年至 2021 年出版的中学科目“哈萨克斯坦历史”教科书中，教科书作者在描述 1931-33 年哈萨克斯坦饥荒时所扮演的角色。本文对其中七本教科书进行了多层次和相互讨论的分析，并在对课程开发者和教科书作者进行了 10 次采访后，认为作者署反映了一定程度的矛盾心理：对饥荒的原因；他们将其评价为悲剧或种族灭绝；关于肇事者和受害者的身份；以及人民对集体化的反抗。教科书作者呼应了国家主导的国家建设中对饥荒纪念活动的谨慎态度，以及哈萨克民族主义叙述和学术史中的叙述。