Alash Orda – the (Un)Finished Kazakh Nation?

This paper looks at the Alash movement, the Kazakh national movement led by Russian-educated Kazakh intellectuals in the Russian Empire at the beginning of the 20^th century. It aimed at creating a Kazakh nation that would be on par with the Russian and European nations in an attempt to gain political and economic rights within the Empire. The inorodtsy (resident aliens) status, of the Kazakhs, resulted in their exemption from political rights, because they did not constitute an evolved and enlightened nation. The intellectuals established new teaching methods in order to enlighten the nomadic Kazakhs and discussed their economic modernisation by sedentarising and adopting an agricultural livelihood similar to the Russians. The movement turned into a political one, as the Alash Orda political party was established and the Alash Orda Autonomy was declared in December 1917. However, as a result of the political situation and the Russian civil war that was unfolding, with the weak military capacities and missing state structures, the Alash Orda Autonomy could not withstand the Bolshevik power that took over. The following questions are explored: can it be argued that the Alash Orda to have had an influence over the subsequent delimitation of the Kazakh SSR as a nation within the Soviet Union? If so, what are the legacies of the movement in present-day Kazakhstan today? The paper will close with a wider inspection of the significance of imagined nations that intellectuals propagate and how this is accepted or rejected by the people they include within this vision.