Translated material
Dzhambul and Kholmansky...
A lot of caustic and funny things have been written about the figure of the Kazakh akyn Dzhambul (1846 - 1945), exorbitantly inflated in Stalin’s times. But it seems to me that when practicing ridicule, we need to distinguish a real old man named Dzhambul, who at times sang something while strumming a two-string dombra, from the myth created and promoted by Soviet propaganda, presented under the brand “Dzhambul”.
The real Dzhambul (Zhambyl Zhabayev) was born into the family of a poor cattle breeder Dzhabai from the Kazakh Shaprashta family. The same family from which the current President of the Republic of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev, came much later. The clan occupied territories along the northern slopes of the Trans-Ili Alatau mountain range, approximately in the places where the city of Almaty is now. From his youth, Dzhambul delighted his fellow tribesmen with folk poetic tales, of which they say he knew many. He composed his own fairy tales and songs, entertained the public at festivals, and competed with other akyns in the so-called aitys (pair performances of singer-storytellers).
In a word, the real Dzhambul was a more or less famous akyn of his small tribe. Few people knew him outside the Shaprashta villages. By the time of the historical turning point in 1917, the storyteller’s age had exceeded 70; he occasionally picked up a dombra, but had long since stopped working as a professional akyn. He lived out his old age calmly, surrounded by his children, grandchildren and numerous other relatives. I was working on my orchard in a village located in a beautiful foothill valley (about 80 kilometers from Almaty). I couldn’t read and write (I didn’t learn it until the end of my life), I spoke only Kazakh, I didn’t know Russian.
The Dzhambul myth was born much later. In the thirties, Soviet power needed flashy propaganda to reinforce the idea of how the numerous peoples of the country, large and small, lived amicably and happily. Before, under the tsars, they lived poorly, but now, under the Soviets, they flourished and glorify the great Stalin for his tireless concern for their peoples’ welfare. Local party bodies were given the task of finding in the midst of every nation poets, musicians, and artists who could glorify socialist achievements.
In literature, the first such popular celebrity was Suleiman Stalsky (1869 - 1937), an illiterate Lezgin from a Dagestan village. People's poet-ashug. Maxim Gorky dragged Suleiman to Moscow to the first congress of writers (1934), seated him on the presidium and declared him “the Homer of the 20th century.” He called for identifying such talents on all national outskirts and in all remote places, where they undoubtedly abound in abundance.
The leadership of Kazakhstan quickly realized that it would be very profitable to create their own “brand” on this wave. They urgently began to look for some kind of akyn so that they could present it at the events of the upcoming decade of art of Kazakhstan in Moscow (it took place in May 1936). There was no time to search in distant villages, so they launched a search in the immediate vicinity of the capital of Kazakhstan. They found 90-year-old Dzhambul on one of the collective farms, brought him to Alma-Ata, dressed him up, gave him instructions, and quickly published the poem “Tugan Elim” (“My Motherland”) under his name in newspapers, translated into Russian by Pavel.
Then things went on and on (approximately according to the same pattern as with Suleiman Stalsky). A creative team of Kazakh and Russian poets, patronized by party ideologists, began to vigorously promote the Dzhambul brand. An illiterate village old man, who had not written anything for forty years, had a poor understanding of geography and was completely ignorant of politics, suddenly began to pour out a stream of poems and poems not only about people’s happiness, but also about the border guards of the Far East, the Republican miners of Spanish Asturias, bad Trotskyists and Bukharinites. And, of course, about the great Stalin and his closest associates.
They took him to Moscow three times, once to Tbilisi (for celebrations in honor of Shota Rustaveli, whom Dzhambul, presumably, had never heard of before). They were elected as a deputy to the Kazakh Supreme Council, awarded three orders in a row, given the Stalin Prize, allocated a car with a driver, assigned a personal team of doctors... To reinforce the legend that he had previously, before 1936, been a great akyn, they urgently “recorded " and published several songs, tales and adaptations of Kazakh folklore, which Dzhambul sang as if back in the pre-revolutionary years. In general, the three-volume work was completed very quickly. What is from Dzhambul himself, and what from the company of writers who took care of him, is now difficult to say...
The construction of most of his poems and poems of the Stalin period is simple. A popular lexical set from newspaper editorials of the Russian-language Soviet press of the 30s is rhymed. If you look at the links at the bottom of this post, you will find in my LJ an analysis of one of the examples of generated “Kazakh poetry,” “Songs about People’s Commissar Yezhov.” The two-line “author’s” beginning and the subsequent text merely insert some words with national flavor. Insert Armenian words and you will get an Armenian “song”, insert Chukchi words and you will get a Chukchi song. In this case, words from the everyday life of the Kazakhs are inserted - batyr, khan, aul, dzhailyau. Here you have "Dzhambul". It is possible that similar opuses by authors from the national outskirts were first written in Russian, and only then the translators recreated the “original”. Perhaps no one even informed old Dzhambul himself about such tricks.
Would Dzhambul object if someone bothered to honestly explain to him what indecent fuss is going on around his name? Not a fact. Maybe he would be offended that many of the stanzas are wretched, but he would hardly be indignant at their content. Firstly, writing “to order” for rulers and influential persons is an Eastern tradition that has come from ancient times. Over time, the customer will be forgotten, but the beautiful poems will remain and live among the people. Why is the people's commissar worse than a khan or a high-ranking groom at a wedding? Not to mention the great “Sultan” Stalin... Secondly, Dzhambul liked that he suddenly became a “strong” person, with whom people rush around and provide him with all the benefits. They say that he actually helped his fellow tribesmen financially, influenced the solution of local problems, and sometimes protected people from the authorities and punitive authorities. If for all this it is necessary that somewhere in the distance, in a language unknown to him, some poems of unknown meaning to him are printed under his signature, well, it’s not a big deal.
With the light hand of one of the literary critics, the concept of “jambulization” came into use. I think it was Evgeny Vitkovsky. This refers to the continuous production of national “homers” from any available texture in the 30-50s. You have probably been wondering for a long time why Igor Kholmanskikh is mentioned in the title. But that's why. It seems to me that the Kholmansky phenomenon is from the same series. Its phenomenon is also a kind of “jambulization,” only not poetic, but political.
To counter the opposition and denigrators of the government ("enemies of the people"), supporters and defenders of this government ("people of labor") are now needed. Akyn from the Kazakh steppes and ashug from the mountain village glorified Stalin, told how bad it was before him, and denounced the Trotskyists-Bukharinites. For this they received orders, cars, money, parliamentary mandates, influence, and access to the highest spheres. The head of a workshop from Nizhny Tagil supports Putin through a television screen and threatens to come to Moscow, “to go out and defend our stability” (which, it is clear, did not exist before Putin), giving the heat to the street protestors, “loafers” who oppose the authorities. For which he is elevated to the level of a person close to the president and is awarded the post of plenipotentiary representative in the Ural Federal District. To draw an analogy, a kind of “Homer of the 21st century”, found and promoted by court ideologists, created literally out of nothing...
Original material with examples here: