Novel
Thorny Path
Тар жол, тайғақ кешу
Saken Seifullin · 1927
Synopsis
The first-person account of the revolutionary years in the Akmola steppe, as the author lived them. A young schoolteacher won over to the new ideas, elected in 1917 to the Akmolinsk soviet, he is arrested in June 1918 after the Whites' coup de force, thrown into the prisons of Akmolinsk and Petropavlovsk, then transported with other Soviet leaders, at the end of autumn, in a “death train” that will take forty-seven days to reach Omsk, with bread one day in two or three, very little water and the cold. He names those he fought and those who followed him.
Context
The book appeared in Kyzylorda in 1927, from the state publishing house, printed in Arabic script, then in the Latin alphabet in 1936, and was reissued in 1960, 1977, 1988, 2009 and 2012. A 2025 study in the Gumilyov Journal of History shows that these editions do not all carry the same text: the later versions cut or alter data from the original, under the influence of Soviet ideology, notably on the figures of Alash, and the authors call for a return to the text of 1927. Sabit Mukanov saw in it at once a history, a political primer and a work of art.
Who it is for
In Kazakh, a long memoir narrative. It is best to know that the revolt of 1916 began with the refusal of a requisition of men for work behind the lines, and that it was crushed.
Prizes and reception
The critic Serik Kirabayev called it a chronicle of the revolutionary struggle; an English translation appeared in Kazakhstan under the title Thorny Path.
Sources for this page 5
The pages consulted to check this page.