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Heroes, Chieftains, and the Roots of Kirghiz Nationalism
Author(s) -
Prior Daniel
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
studies in ethnicity and nationalism
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.204
H-Index - 8
eISSN - 1754-9469
pISSN - 1473-8481
DOI - 10.1111/j.1754-9469.2006.tb00150.x
Subject(s) - nationalism , poetry , epic , theme (computing) , ethnic group , literature , consciousness , focus (optics) , history , political science , art , law , philosophy , computer science , politics , physics , optics , epistemology , operating system
Modernist native elites had a very tenuous existence in prerevolutionary Kirghiz society, so the development of Kirghiz national consciousness (if any) before 1917 has been debatable. Tribal chieftains ( manaps ), though politically and economically reduced under Russian rule, still held pre‐eminent positions in society and were favoured with dedications of original literary works. One such manuscript dedicated to the manap, Shabdan, uses the genre frameworks of traditional epic and expository poetry to express fresh concepts of ethnic difference with a nationalist bias. Thus a traditional tribal leader emerges as the focus of the first documented discourse in Kirghiz on an explicitly nationalist theme.