Introduction: Abai Qunanbaiuli and Kazakh Culture: From Abai Zholy to #okkypaiabai

This special series introduces readers to the complex and ongoing legacy of Abai Qunanbaiuly (1845–1904), a Kazakh poet, composer, philosopher, and cultural icon. Beginning his career as a Russian imperial administrator, Abai began composing poems, songs, and philosophical tracts in the late 19th century. His essay collection the Qara Sozder (Words of Edification) represents an attempt to reckon with the Russian presence in the steppe and to chart a path forward for the Qazaq people. His work inspired movements of Kazakh nationalism in the early 20th century, and with it the formulation of a written national literary tradition. In the Soviet period, he was elevated to the status of a founding father of Kazakh literature through the dedicated efforts of another Kazakh writer, Mukhtar Auezov, whose epic biographical novel Abai Zholy (The Way of Abai), remains one of the best known and most influential works of literature in Kazakhstan today. In the present day, Abai is represented in a variety of ways, ranging from a national icon monumentalized in bronze statues in the cities of Kazakhstan, to a mascot for Russian street protests in Moscow in the spring of 2012. In all of these cases, the attempt to come to terms with Abai is always also an attempt to come to terms with the Kazakh encounter with Russia, and in so doing, to offer some sense of what has been lost or gained and what will or should come next.

This special section grew from discussions at the workshop “Intersections of History and Literature in Central Asia,” hosted by the American University of Central Asia in Bishkek in 2014. Each article in this series takes a different critical perspective on Abai, his life, his work, and his legacy. Gabriel McGuire (Nazarbayev University) and Naomi Caffee (University of Arizona) analyze the process of myth-making by which Mukhtar Auezov attempted to establish Abai as an early progressive, a model Kazakh, and a key cohesive figure in Kazakh literary genealogy. McGuire traces the twists and turns of Auezov's attempts to fit the story of Abai within the generic confines of a socialist realist plot, and in particular traces how this shaped Auezov's treatment of Abai's roots in 19th century Kazakh oral literature. Caffee examines the role of Russian literature in Auezov's novel, including the images of Abai learning Russian and translating the works of Alexander Pushkin. Finally, Diana Kudaibergenova (Lund University/Cambridge University) examines the construction of Abai as the face of Kazakh culture in contemporary Kazakhstan. How was the Abai canon formed in Kazakhstan and what form do attempts to rethink and change this canon in contemporary conditions of independent, post-Soviet Kazakhstan take?