Cultural, Social, and Community Psychology

The Psychocultural Transformation of Kazakh Song Poetry in the 20th Century: Cultural Identity, Collective Consciousness, and Historical Change

Kazakh Song Poetry Soviet Cultural Policy Cultural History Folkloristics Textual Evidence

Authors

  • Akbota Sadyk
    sadyk.akbota@proton.me
    Al-Farabi Kazakh national university
  • Omirkhan Abdimanuly Department of Kazakh Literature and Theory of Literature, Al-Farabi Kazakh National University, Almaty, Kazakhstan.
  • Mohamed Nor Azhari Azman Faculty of Technical and Vocational Education, Sultan Idris Education University, Malaysia.
Vol. 13 No. 10 (2026): October
Theoretical Study(ies)

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Objective: To examine how selected Kazakh song-poetry passages are interpreted in relation to Soviet cultural policy between 1920 and 1950, without treating literary imagery as direct evidence of individual psychology or collective mental states.

Methods and Materials: This is a bounded historical-cultural and hermeneutic reading of identifiable passages quoted from volumes 99 and 100 of the Babalar sözi anthology. The analytic sample consists of excerpts attributed to A, qalqa-au; A, shirkin, zhanai-au; and two numbered Abaykok variants, alongside separately identified editorial and historical contextual materials. A transparent text-level coding rubric classifies imagery, affective address, work-oriented vocabulary, ethical propositions, and performance context. Because no original exhaustive song list, complete transcription audit, or independent coder records were available, neither comprehensive sampling nor intercoder agreement is claimed.

Findings: The cited examples display love and landscape imagery, ethical maxims, and a contrasting passage combining an inherited separation refrain with collective-work vocabulary. This juxtaposition is consistent with ideological reframing as an interpretive possibility but does not independently establish the dating, authorship, censorship, or political insertion of particular stanzas. Historical studies contextualize institutional changes in song collection and performance.

Conclusion: The study provides a qualified case-based interpretation of textual continuity and possible semantic adaptation; it does not measure psychological transformation or establish population-wide shifts in Kazakh cultural consciousness.