Cultural Boundaries in Post-Soviet Russian-Language Texts of Kazakhstan’s Writers

Within the latest decades a general trend has been manifested in the texts of the Russianspeaking writers of Kazakhstan: a comprehensive rethinking of the recent Soviet past in the context of national tradition and self-identification Kazakhstan’s people today. To study and analyze this trend, the stories of the following nine modern Kazakhstani authors were thoroughly selected: A. Sakhariev, R. Kunbaev, G. Doronin, N. Chernova, B. Kanapyanov, S. Nazarova, A. Omar, I. Odegov, and E. Klepikova. The signs of a local Kazakh text are revealed in the writings of these authors, where the patterns coexist and compete with each other, thus fixing the unique national Kazakh picture of the world, on the one hand, and the Soviet realities, on the other one. The analysis of the texts was aimed to clarify the outcomes of the cultural “dialogue” between traditional, deeply existential Kazakh culture and the imposed one - initially Russian, then the Soviet culture. Thus, the main question reads as follows: does this “dialogue” lead to the obliteration of the cultural boundary, or are there any zones of absolute non-coincidence and, perhaps, confrontation between the national and the Soviet? The study of the texts has demonstrated the stable patterns that reflect the entrenched national picture of the Kazakhstani world: the traditional cultural relationships between people, a customary and ritualized way of life, manners and customs, the strength of beliefs, and mythology. The patterns that demonstrate the Soviet features imposed on the life of Kazakhstan, as a rule, indicate only a partial acceptance of such novelty and rejection of what was imposed and harmed the republic (e. g. the Semipalatinsk tests polygon). The contrast and compare between the patterns of city and village / aul that has little in common with the contrast between the city and the countryside in the prose of Russian village writers, bears a special context load. The analysis of the stories showed that it is precisely the Soviet city that could be found in any republic of the ex-USSR, whereas any Kazakhstan’s countryside is precisely the Kazakh aul with its established unique rituals and norms of existence. As a result of the texts study, it has been concluded that these stories reflect a real trend in the development of sovereign Kazakhstan: to do away with the Soviet order and return to traditional values.