Б2.Б.3 Инженерная графика

Chokan Valikhanov, the remarkable son of the Kazakh people, an outstanding writer and polemicist, thinker and scholar, and a fearless traveller, who studied the history and culture of the Central Asian peoples.

By Anuar ALIMZHANOV

Extension

Ex. 45. Express your view on the text and relate it to your own experiences. Write a summery of it.

FRIENDSHIP WITH DOSTOYEVSKY

I'd like to begin my story with some excerpts from Dostoyevsky's letters.

When in exile in Semipalatinsk, Dostoyevsky wrote:

"Never have I felt so keenly attracted to anyone, not even to my brother, as I feel attracted to you.

"You are asking my advice concerning your service and the like of it. You have collected a lot of material. Write an essay dealing with the steppe. Isn't it a grand aim and a sacred duty to be among the first of your people who could explain to us here in Russia the meaning and essence of the steppe and the role it and your people are playing with regard to Russia.... And besides, as fate has willed, you're a superb man endowed with both heart and soul.

"Certainly, many a time have I settled and cherished your fate in my daydreams. But among those dreams I could see this verity: you are the first of your nation who had reached European standards of education. This fact alone is remarkable and its realization, of necessity, imposes on you certain obligations."

These lines were addressed to Chokan Valikhanov, who then was 21 serving as private A.D.C. to the Governor-General of Western Siberia. By that time Chokan's talents and an indefatigable ability to do research had won him wide renown among Russian orientalists. He was known not only as a gifted artist and storyteller, a connoisseur of Farsi and Arabic, Oriental poetry and history, but also as an ardent lover of Dickens, Thackeray, Неine, and Hugo (he had a perfect command of German and French), Pushkin, Lermontov and Gogol. Lying behind him were important scientific discoveries he had made while travelling in his native land Zhetusy (Semirechye, in Russian – the Land of Seven Rivers, South-Eastern Kazakhstan), in the Zaili (Transili) and the Kirghiz Ala-Таu, and along the shores of Lake Issykkul.

Valikhanov was the first to commit to paper, study and then translate fragments of the Kirghiz epic Manas, and also published his essays on the history, culture and everyday life of the Kazakhs and Kirghiz. He likewise studied the oldest lyrical and epic Kazakh folklore pieces "Kozy-Kor-pesh" and "Bayan-Slu", that dated back to the turn of the 8th century. Chokan engaged himself in a thorough study of the diplomatic and trade relations between Russia and the Central Asian Khanates, India, Persia and China. He studied the history of Siberia and the genealogy of the Volga Bulgars, the Kazakh khans and Oriental rulers, down to, the Baghdad caliphs. Well versed in the history of the Turkmens, Uzbeks, Uighurs, Kirghiz, Tajiks and Kara-kalpaks. Valikhanov brilliantly interpreted and translated Tarikhi Rashidi and the works of Duglat Khaidar (16th century).

Chokan managed to accomplish all this enormous work before the age of 20. Dostoyevsky knew this and highly respected his friend, who was 14 years his junior. Neither the disparity in age nor the difference in origin could prevent such a rare, touching and tender friendship between these two remarkable sons of that time. And for us, their descendants, their friendship symbolizes and embodies the brotherhood of peoples.

JOURNEY TO KASHGARIA

When at the age of 14-15 Chokan was a cadet at the Omsk Military School, he was already then regarded as a future explorer and scholar. Both, Academician Vladimir Obruchev and the notable orientalist, Chokan's friend Grigori Potanin, wrote about this. In June 1856, before Chokan's expedition to Tien Shan, the great geographer Pyotr Semyonov (later known as Semyonov-Tienshansky or Semyonov of Tien Shan) visited the young explorer. He was carried away by the young Kazakh's studies and essays on the history of culture of the Central Asian peoples. On Semyonov-Tienshansky's recommendation, Valikhanov, then 22, was elected, in his absence, a member of the Russian Geographical Society.

In 1859, Dostoyevsky got his long-awaited freedom at length, and left Semipalatinsk forever. On his way to St. Petersburg he visited Omsk to see Valikhanov, who had just returned from his famous and dangerous journey to Kashgaria.

Not only orientalists, but also the St. Petersburg nobility, the governmental circles, writers and journalists closely followed all the particulars of Valikhanov's hazardous journey in the unknown country, where any adherent of a different fate was most likely to meet his death any minute. No single European explorer after Marco Polo (13th century) and the Portuguese Geos (early 17th century) managed to slip into that mysterious "Country of the Six Cities".

Chokan disguised as a Kokand merchant, Alibek, a distant relation of the Kashgar khanate's ruler, joined a merchant caravan and, after many adventures, including encounters with robbers, found himself in mysterious Kashgaria. The expedition lasted from May 1858 to July 1859. Chokan spent five and a half months in Kashgaria proper, where death was awaiting him any minute. The ruler of Kashgar's spies knew that a Russian officer had infiltrated the country. But how was he to be got at? Every man from the caravan was closely watched. But courage and keen knowledge of the ways and means of Oriental people, as well as the inborn talent of a scholar combined with the clear mind of an intelligence officer, allowed Chokan to cover his trail and make sorties for collecting information both in the dark hours and in broad daylight.

Valikhanov managed to collect an enormous bulk of historical, scientific and statistical data on the life of the tribes inhabiting Kashgaria then and in the earlier years, study the writing system of the Uighurs and the causes of innumerable disturbances and riots in Kashgaria. All this he elucidated in The History of Altyshar, or the Six Cities of the Chinese Province Nan-Lu.

In March 1860, Valikhanov arrived in St. Petersburg to give an account of his journey to the Russian Geographical Society. On Dostoyevsky's recommendation, the Kazakh explorer was elected member of the Literary Fund. Literary soirees(= вечера) were held in the Literary Fund building on the Moika Embankment. There Valikhanov got acquainted with Taras Shevchenko, Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov.

Valikhanov's very first lecture in the Russian Geographical Society on Kashgaria and his views on the history of the Central Asian peoples' civilization caused a big stir among ethnographers and historians.

Among Valikhanov's many acquaintances in St. Petersburg, I would like to point out his friendship with the Great Russian chemist Dmitry Mendeleyev.

BREAKDOWN AND DISAPPOINTMENT

On March 5, 1861, laws on the abolition of serfdom were promulgated. That very spring Valikhanov succeeded in having an audience with Alexander II. But all his hopes that the tsar would ease the lot of the Kazakh people suffering a double yoke (= иго) were shattered. Chokan's disappointment was great, and the truth he had learned was horrible.

“We are connected with the Russians by historical and even blood relationship," Chokan wrote, overwhelmed (= переполненный) with bitterness and wrath. "The fate of a million people who consider themselves brothers of the Russians, belonging to one and the same Motherland, and who voluntarily had taken out the Russian citizenship, deserve, I believe, a greater attention in such decisive questions as those formulated in the Shakespearean 'to be or not to be”.

In May 1861, Valikhanov left St. Petersburg for good. He engaged himself in the struggle against the ignorance of the steppe rulers and the despotism of the tsarist punitive expedition soldiers. Those years he also spent working intensively on new scholarly articles and essays. As usual, he subscribed to the magazine Sovremennik (The Contemporary) and read Chernyshevsky's and Dobrolyubov's articles as well as works by Russian and foreign orientalists. He regularly sent his new works, too, to St. Petersburg.

"If I manage to live till autumn," he wrote Dobrolyubov in January 1862, "I'll come to St. Petersburg and give you a hug that'll make you cry."

But he was not fated to see the capital again. In April 1865, Chokan Valikhanov died in a little aul (village), not far from the pass, where he once had waited for a caravan bound for Kashgaria. He had not reached the age of 30 yet.

О HOW MANY FRIENDS HE USED TO HAVE!

Characterizing his brief life full of researches and discoveries and putting forward the question of publishing his complete works, the notable Russian orientalist Nikolai Veselovsky wrote that Chokan Valikhanov "flashed like a sparkling meteor over the field of Oriental studies" and "removed the mysterious veil from Asia". The French scholar Jean Elise Recluse, the author of the multivolume edition of The Earth and the People, ranked Valikhanov among the most outstanding geographers and travellers of the world. Valikhanov's death was a great shock for Dostoyevsky.

Not long ago, I visited the aul where Valikhanov spent the last months of his short life.

On a tall hill, stands Chokan cast in bronze, and at the foot of the monument there is a magnificent new museum that was opened this autumn, when, within the frame of the UNESCO conference on the study of the history of civilization of Central Asia, a meeting devoted to the 150^th anniversary of Chokan Valikhanov's birthday was held in Alma-Ata, the former capital of Kazakhstan. A museum houses Valikhanov's drawings and pictures, books and sketches of his essays, as well as his friends' reminiscences.

О, how many friends he used to have! And how much they had written about him! So many great contemporaries loved him dearly, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, in particular. This explains why the picture in which they were photographed together hangs in the centre of the hall.

Методические указания

к выполнению контрольной работы №1 по инженерной графике

Направление 270800 – Строительство

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Уфа 2012

УДК 514

ББК 22.15

Н 36

Рекомендовано к изданию методической комиссией факультета землеустройства и лесного хозяйства (протокол № 8 от 23 мая 2011г.)

Составители: доцент Тархова Л.М.

Рецензент: д.т.н., профессор

кафедры природообустройства

строительства и гидравлики А.Р.Хафизов

Ответственный за выпуск: заведующий кафедрой «Начертательная геометрия и графика» доцент Тархова Л.М.

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