Transition from the Soviet Model of Museums to the Modern Kazakhstani Model: Historical and Cultural Analysis

Research Article

Abstract

The article is devoted to the historical and cultural analysis of the transformation of the museum sector of Kazakhstan in the post-Soviet period. The research aims to identify the key stages of the transition from the Soviet model of museums, focused on ideological representation and centralized management, to the modern Kazakh museum as an institution of cultural memory, identity and public history. For the first time, the institutional, substantive, and conceptual changes that have occurred since 1991 have been analyzed within the framework of a unified approach, as well as the factors that influenced the formation of a new museum paradigm in the context of independence. The article describes the Soviet museums, which were a strictly centralized system subordinate to government agencies and used as an instrument of ideological control. Their main function was to broadcast the official historical version corresponding to the party line. Historical events were presented through the prism of class struggle, socialist construction, and the cult of heroism, especially in relation to the revolution, the Civil War, and the Great Patriotic War. One of the central places in the study is occupied by the question of the representation of historical memory: how attitudes towards such topics as the Famine of 1932-1933, Stalin's repressions, the Alash movement, and the deportation of ethnic minorities have changed. These events were previously marginalized or hushed up, but today they are becoming part of the museum narrative, reinterpreted through the prism of national identity and cultural sovereignty. The study reveals that today museums are increasingly viewed as not only repositories of artifacts, but also as spaces of reflection and dialogue with the past. In addition, they perform educational, communicative and memorial functions, providing a connecting thread between generations. Their activities contribute to the formation of a stable historical culture based on a critical understanding of both heroic and tragic pages of the past. Through museum practices, collective work with traumatic experiences is carried out, which is especially important in a multinational society striving for consolidation. The article also details the current challenges of the museum industry: lack of funding, institutional instability, lack of qualified personnel, lagging behind international standards in the field of digitalization and curatorial practice. The initiatives of the state policy, including "Rukhani Zhangyru" and "Uly Dala Eli", are considered as attempts to update the museum infrastructure and the semantic agenda. The scientific novelty of the research lies in the systematic formulation of issues of identity, memory and cultural transformation through the museum context. The work can be useful for historians, cultural scientists, museologists and specialists in the field of humanitarian policy of the post-Soviet space.