Chokan Valikhanov was born in a family where the tradition, starting with Vali's grandfather (the grandson of Khan Ablai), the last khan of Middle Zhuz and grandmother Ayganym was a pro-Russian, collaborative orientation. In the steppe, the desire to preserve independence, to defend its own statehood, personified by Kenesary Kasymov, who headed the national liberation movement of the Kazakh people, did not yet fade away at the time of Ciocan's birth. To the father of Chokan Chingis, the tsarist administration favored, as evidenced by the appointment of the senior sultan of one of the districts and the conferment of a rank of colonel to him. But at the same time, he was an educated man, in particular, assisting Russian scientists in studying folklore and life. Chokan Chingisovich Valikhanov (his full name is Muhammad Khanafiy, and Chokan's nickname given by his mother) was born in November 1835. His childhood passed in the steppe, among the people, he received the initial certificate in his native village of Kushmurun in a private Kazakh school, where he learned Arabic, got an idea of oriental poetry and studied drawing. The last occupation was his genuine passion and the preserved sketches of Ciocan indicate that he was a talented artist. Father from a small age attracted Ciocan to collecting materials concerning legends and folk legends, and involved him in the circle of highly educated Russian scientists, engineers, officers. The years of the most intense spiritual formation of the personality of Ciocan are connected with studies in the Omsk Cadet Corps. Here there was a circle of communication, including his mentors and schoolmates in the person of the orientalist N. F. Kostyletsky, the historian P. V. Goncevsky, the publicist, the researcher of the history of the peoples of Siberia and Kazakhstan NM Yadrintsev, the outstanding geographer G. N. Potanin , N.F. Annensky and others. Subsequently, such outstanding figures as Petrashevets SV Durov, PP Semenov-Tian-Shansky, EP Kovalevsky, and FM Dostoevsky entered this circle. The latter wrote in one of his letters to Ciocanu: "I declare to you without ceremony that I fell in love with you ... I love you so much that I dream of you and of your destiny for whole days." A man entered the cadet corps where the seeds of Russian and modern advanced culture, science and art were sown. The further career of Chokan was predetermined by the family tradition and education received: he is a Russian officer, intelligence officer, diplomat and official, performing various assignments of the tsarist administration. And at the same time, he could not help but feel with his own skin that he remains a "foreigner" (for example, the lower abbreviated class of instruction in the cadet corps), could not help but see what harassment and humiliation his relatives are experiencing, subject to unlimited arbitrariness with The parties of the most recent Russian official and gendarme and their local servants. There remained the only hope of remaining a man - to devote himself to a "neutral cause" - science and literary creation. Already in the cadet corps, he had a passion for travel and a dream "to open the world to the unknown Asia." The dream was made, but in a deeper sense than the young Ciocan assumed: he not only explored and described the "unexplored" places of European science as a geographer, traveler, he opened the veil over the very center of Asia - man, his history, thoughts and feelings . Whether the case of his famous Kashgar expedition, thanks to which he became famous for the whole world as a brave traveler, Issyk-Kul expedition or a trip to Kuldja - everywhere he acts not just as a geographer, economist, ethnographer, royal agent, and through all this and beyond this Before us stands a man standing at the junction of civilizations able to look at what he has seen from the inside, and from the outside, through the eyes of an educated European. The world science owes it to him the record of a brilliant passage from "Manas" - "The Death of Kukotai Khan and His Wake".
Chokan Chingisovich Valikhanov (his full name is Muhammad Khanafiy, and Chokan's nickname given by his mother) was born in November 1835. His childhood passed in the steppe, among the people, he received the initial certificate in his native village of Kushmurun in a private Kazakh school, where he learned Arabic, got an idea of oriental poetry and studied drawing. The last occupation was his genuine passion and the preserved sketches of Ciocan indicate that he was a talented artist. Father from a small age attracted Ciocan to collecting materials concerning legends and folk legends, and involved him in the circle of highly educated Russian scientists, engineers, officers.
The years of the most intense spiritual formation of the personality of Ciocan are connected with studies in the Omsk Cadet Corps. Here there was a circle of communication, including his mentors and schoolmates in the person of the orientalist N. F. Kostyletsky, the historian P. V. Goncevsky, the publicist, the researcher of the history of the peoples of Siberia and Kazakhstan NM Yadrintsev, the outstanding geographer G. N. Potanin , N.F. Annensky and others. Subsequently, such outstanding figures as Petrashevets SV Durov, PP Semenov-Tian-Shansky, EP Kovalevsky, and FM Dostoevsky entered this circle. The latter wrote in one of his letters to Ciocanu: "I declare to you without ceremony that I fell in love with you ... I love you so much that I dream of you and of your destiny for whole days." A man entered the cadet corps where the seeds of Russian and modern advanced culture, science and art were sown.
The further career of Chokan was predetermined by the family tradition and education received: he is a Russian officer, intelligence officer, diplomat and official, performing various assignments of the tsarist administration. And at the same time, he could not help but feel with his own skin that he remains a "foreigner" (for example, the lower abbreviated class of instruction in the cadet corps), could not help but see what harassment and humiliation his relatives are experiencing, subject to unlimited arbitrariness with The parties of the most recent Russian official and gendarme and their local servants. There remained the only hope of remaining a man - to devote himself to a "neutral cause" - science and literary creation. Already in the cadet corps, he had a passion for travel and a dream "to open the world to the unknown Asia." The dream was made, but in a deeper sense than the young Ciocan assumed: he not only explored and described the "unexplored" places of European science as a geographer, traveler, he opened the veil over the very center of Asia - man, his history, thoughts and feelings . Whether the case of his famous Kashgar expedition, thanks to which he became famous for the whole world as a brave traveler, Issyk-Kul expedition or a trip to Kuldja - everywhere he acts not just as a geographer, economist, ethnographer, royal agent, and through all this and beyond this Before us stands a man standing at the junction of civilizations able to look at what he has seen from the inside, and from the outside, through the eyes of an educated European. The world science owes it to him the record of a brilliant passage from "Manas" - "The Death of Kukotai Khan and His Wake".