Writers' Organizations of East Kazakhstan in 1925-39

The present work aims to analyze the activities of the first writers' organizations in the East of Kazakhstan in 1925-39: the Se-mipalatinsk Association of Proletarian Writers and the East Kazakhstan Branch of the Writers' Union of Kazakhstan. Based on a wide range of sources (historical and journalistic literature, the archival press of the 1930s, a number of documents from the Central State Archive of the Republic of Kazakhstan), the composition, main activities, organizational issues and relations between creative organizations and the Soviet power were analyzed. Local literary associations, founded by the creative intelligentsia in the early 1920s, under the influence of party resolutions were transformed into an organization of proletarian writers on the platform of the Russian Association of Proletarian Writers in 1925. From the first steps, members of the writers' organization began to actively participate in the social and cultural life of the region. A feature of the creative staff of the Semipalatinsk Writers' Association of the 1920s was the instability of the team, because throughout the 1920s there was an outflow of the most capable authors from the ranks of the writers' organization of the region. In accordance with the Decree of the Secretariat of the Kazkrai Committee of the CPSU (b) of 9 May 1932 "On the reorganization of art and literary organizations", the Kazakhstan Association of Proletarian Writers was liquidated and the 0rganisational Committee of the Union of Soviet Writers of Kazakhstan was established. The East Kazakhstan branch became one of the first three departments of the Union of Writers of the Republic; its authorized representative was the poet and public figure T. Kasenov. However, by the end of the 1930s the Writers' Section was incomplete, the sections were developed unevenly, communication between the circle members was poor, there was no tradition of literary criticism. The author made a conclusion about the ambiguity of the relations between the political leadership and the regional creative intelligentsia. On the one hand, there was assistance from the regional leaders in the broader involvement of young talented people in the ranks of the writers' organization, awareness of the need to strengthen and develop Soviet literature of the region; on the other hand, the strengthening of the party censorship, uniformity and dogmatism was obvious, which reduced the writer's role to the role of an agitator and conductor of party attitudes. The strengthening of negative trends is also connected with mass political repressions against the literary intelligentsia that started in the mid-1930s. The repressions affected, among other things, the most prominent writers of the East Kazakhstan region: T. Kasenov, B. Lapin, M. Ivanusiev (Altayskiy), which resulted in a significant slowdown in the development of the literary process in the region.

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