Resurfaced and Disappearing Past: National Heroes in History Textbooks of Post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan

Abstract

This chapter introduces the findings of a critical review of how history textbooks in Soviet and post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan represented the heroic figures of Kurmanjan Datka and Mikhail Frunze. While Kurmanjan Datka was virtually absent from Soviet textbooks and appeared in public discourse only after 1991, Frunze by comparison, was widely displayed as a revolutionary hero of the USSR but then almost vanished from the contemporary textbooks. The study shows that post-Soviet history textbooks have inherited the Soviet mode of the so called objective historical narrative, while the former general concept of the liberation of the oppressed Kyrgyz people has been substituted for the dominating narrative of the Kyrgyz statehood and independence. Post-Soviet era textbooks have domesticated Kurmanjan Datka’s historical significance within a traditional gendered framework and represented her as a supportive and faithful wife and a devoted mother, and downplayed her role as a leader of several Kyrgyz tribes. Frunze’s portrayal is also downsized despite of his role in building the first state institutions in Kyrgyzstan in the early 1920s. This type of representation does not foster a critical investigation of historical actors based on authentic source material and peer reviewed scholarship. When figures like Kurmanjan Datka and Frunze are portrayed in an anecdotal manner or on the level of romantic or ideological stereotypes, student learners are not encouraged to go beyond these labels. Given the cultural diversity of the country and the importance of popular cultural traditions in understanding such personalities as Kurmanjan Datka and Frunze, there needs to be a greater integration between textbook accounts and other sites of cultural memory.