BETWEEN SOVIET, RUSSIAN, AND KAZAKH: MULTICULTURAL POETRY OF OLZHAS SULEIMENOV.

Abstract

The collapse of the Soviet Union was a huge event for the entire world and subsequently became the trigger for the development of several independent states. One of such states is Kazakhstan, with its comprehensive language policy. Modern sociological works illustrate that “both Kazakh and Russian are strengthening”. When mentioning the language issue, it is impossible to note that “Kazakhstan is among the few countries in the post-Soviet space in which almost all inhabitants use the Russian language”. The first president of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev even “announced the existence of a ‘Kazakhstani nation’”. Also, Kazakhstan “maintains close ties with the Russian Federation as its leading strategic partner”. All these factors show that Kazakhstan is not a country that can easily switch to the rails of the ethnic state and is forced to adapt to the realities of the post-Soviet reality. And it gives rise to a huge number of questions. One of these is the question of the involvement of authors who gained wide popularity during the Soviet period in the Kazakh literary canon. An interesting case is Olzhas Suleimenov, the author of many poems and books, who wrote his entire career primarily in Russian but using Kazakh titles, words, and cultural concepts, even in his early works. He symbolized the peculiarity of the national policies of that period.