Ego-documents of the History of Political Terror in Kazakhstan

Abstract

Interdisciplinary approaches have expanded the research space of the history of political repression of 1920–1950s. The surge of interest in documents of personal origin in the historiography of the post-Soviet space led to an appeal to ego-documents — personal letters from victims of political repression. The study is based on archival and investigative materials of the Special State Archive of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Republic of Kazakhstan. Introduction of narrative sources into the scholarship enables to hear the history of political repression “from inside”, “from below”, to feel the psychology of terror. Letters to the authorities touched upon a complex of problems related to the violation of socialist legality in the field, especially in the period of political repression. The main message of the letters sent to the first leaders of the Soviet state was the monstrosity of the accusation of Article 58 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR, the ridiculous mistake made by Soviet justice. The purpose of the article is to reveal the cognitive potential of ego documents in articulating the history of political repression. Based on the theoretical concepts of a linguistic, narrative turn, the historical past of political repressions, represented by ego documents of victims of political terror is constructed. A discursive assessment of the letter suggests its interpretation as a reconstruction of the sociocultural memory of the tragic past that left a cultural trauma in the family frame of memory. Each letter has its own power of power, the inner ‘I’ voices the daily practices of political terror.