The Concept Of Awakening And Kazakhs

In languages, firstly concrete concepts have taken shape, then abstract forms of these concepts have emerged. One of these is the concept of “awakening”. The concept in question means oyanuw in Kazakh language. Parallel to the embodiment of the language, while the concept of “awakening” was previously expressing a person’s waking up after sleeping, then it becomes to express human’s liberation from unawareness and carelessness. Texts which are belonging to Soviet and post-Soviet (independence years) period present to us important data for this matter. Famous Kazakh poet Abay, who lived in 19th century call to Kazakh people in this way: “Wake up from sleeping of awareness, be a man!” This concept has an important place in the works of Kazakh intellectuals who lived at the beginnings of 20th century like Mirjakıp Dulatov, Ahmet Baytursınov, Mağcan Cumabayev. For example, Ahmet Baytursınov, has written his book called Masa (gnat, mosquito) to save Kazakh people from foreign ideology. Baytursınov, said in the introduction of this work: “I wanted to sting my people who has fallen asleep of unawareness and awake them from this deep sleeping.” Moving from this idea, Mirjakıp Dulatov has written his book called Oyan Kazak “Wake Up Kazakh” and said in this work: “Open your eye, wake up Kazakh, lift up your head, Don’t spend uselessly your years in the dark.” These verses, had become slogan of the Kazakh intellectuals in the years of 1930-1940 which are accepted as Kazakhs’ national awakening period. In 1990s, after the collapse of Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, a new awakening period has begun; new awakening began to develop with 1986 “Jeltoksan” events. Kazakh people, waked up from “sleeping of century” and has begun to ways of claiming national, moral, historical values especially his native language. In this presentation, perception of the concept of awakening in abstract meaning between Kazakh people will be studied.

Keywords

Kazakhs, the concept of awakening, pre-Soviet period, independence years, new awakening period.