A Hero’s Head and the Last Khan’s Skull

“Planning a meeting with D.Medvedev to raise the question on returning the heads of Kenesary Khan and Keiki Batyr,” Kazakhstan Prime Minister Karim Massimov tweeted on August 11.

The next day, according to Kazakh government reports, Massimov brought up the issue of the two skulls in a meeting with Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev in Sochi. Medvedev promised to look into it and issue the appropriate orders to ensure that the remains of the two Kazakh heroes were returned.

Kenesary Khan and Keiki Batyr lost their heads in 1847 and 1923, respectively.

While the location of the skull of Keiki Batyr is known, it’s not eminently clear that the Russians know where Kenesary Khan’s skull has ended up.

“The skull of Keiki Batyr indeed we have. We never hid this, all are perfectly aware of it. This skull is kept in the collection, it was never exhibited,” Efim A. Rezvan, the deputy director of research at the Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography, said. The museum, better known as the Kunstkamera, was established by Peter the Great on the Neva Riverfront in St. Petersburg, it sits on the bank opposite the Winter Palace. The museum’s impressive building was completed in 1727 and served as a cabinet of curiosities: a repository for “curiosities” and rare artifacts.

Rezvan told Radio Baltica that if the order came to return the skull, it would be quickly transferred to Kazakh hands.

Why are the Kazakhs so concerned with a pair of very old skulls?

The Resurrected Hero

“One hundred years ago, in 1917, a plethora of various historic events took place,” Massimov said to Medvedev by way of introducing his request to reclaim the remains of “Keiki Batyr, one of the leaders of Kazakhstan’s national liberation movement of that time.”

Massimov’s comment about “a plethora of various historic events” is quite an understatement.

On June 25, 1916, Tsar Nicholas II signed a conscription order for his Central Asian subjects, who had previously been exempt from military service on the European front. The Kazakhs of the Turgai oblast (roughly covering the present-day Kazakh regions of West Kazakhstan and Atyrau north of the Caspian sea), led by Amangeldy Imanov, Nurmagambetov Kokembayuly, and others, refused the Tsar’s conscription order and openly fought Imperial Russian forces across the steppe.

As tsarist forces put down the Central Asian rebellions, the Bolsheviks were plotting in the shadows of the empire. In March 1917, the February Revolution began when workers at the largest industrial plant in what is now St. Petersburg went on strike. Among the rebelling Kazakhs, some, like Imanov, made common cause with the emerging communist movement. In 1919, Imanov was killed by the White Army, at the time led by Admiral Alexander Kolchak who based his forces--in opposition to the Red Army--in Omsk, in southern Siberia near the modern Kazakh border. Imanov was recorded by Soviet historians as a hero.

But not all Kazakhs threw in with the Bolsheviks. Those who did not suffered not only inglorious deaths but near erasure from history. It is not easy to find information about Kokembayuly, who came to be known as Keiki. Batyr, the title his name now carries, means “hero” in Kazakh but he wasn’t always seen that way.

Keiki Batyr reportedly did not recognize the authority of the Soviet government and continued to fight Russian armies--whether Red or White--on the steppe. He was captured and killed by the Red Army in 1923. His head was taken back to Russia as a trophy and has been kept in St. Petersburg’s cabinet of curiosities for nearly 100 years.

The Last Khan

The second skull Massimov was concerned about was that of Kenesary Khan, the last true Kazakh Khan. Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries Imperial Russia gradually expanded southward into Central Asia. The vast steppe was occupied by the Kazakhs and other nomadic confederations but they had few permanent cities or fortresses. The Russians made a habit of slowly moving into an area, making agreements with the nearby nomads, and then settling peasants and Cossacks in the area. In this fashion the empire absorbed more and more of the steppe. The cities of Semipalatinsk, Omsk, and Orenburg--the first now the Kazakh city of Semey and the latter two Russian cities near the Kazakh border--were founded as frontier fortress cities from which the Russians colonized the region.

Ablai Khan, the grandfather of Kenesary, tried to unite the three Kazakh hordes--what remained of the great Mongol Golden Horde--in the early 19th century. He was only partial successful. When Kenesary took over the khanate in 1841, Russian administrators had already abolished the office of the khan. Kenesary fought Russians, Junghars and Kyrgyz tribes--notably, tsarist documents referred to both Kazakh and Kyrgyz tribes as “Kirgiz”; when a distinction needed to be made, the Kyrgyz were called “Kara-Kirgiz” and the Kazakhs called “Kirgiz.”

The Kyrgyz, like the Kazakhs, were dealing with encroaching Russian influence. Precisely what happened is lost to time it seems, but according to some accounts Kenesary was betrayed by the Kyrgyz, killed, and his head gifted to the Russians in 1847, ostensibly to win their favor.

Where the skull is now is anyone’s guess. In the nearly 170 years since Kenesary’s death the Central Asian region has undergone what Massimov may call “a plethora of various historic events.” From the Russian Empire to the Soviet Union and then into independence, the artifacts of Kazakh history have been shuffled and lost, censored, destroyed, and some resurrected.

Two Skulls, One Legacy

What the pair of skulls have in common--and why they have become a focal point for the modern Kazakh state--relates in a poetic fashion to their deaths. Both Keiki and Kenesary were vibrant national heroes directly opposed to outside (i.e. Russian) rule. Kazakhstan, which celebrates the 25th anniversary of its independence this December, has made great efforts to define itself as not simply a young state but one with ancient heritage.

In 2014, Russian President Vladimir Putin made a comment that prior to President Nursultan Nazarbayev and 1991, “Kazakhs had never had statehood.” In response, Astana lined up historians and festivals throughout 2015 to celebrate 550 years of Kazakh statehood--dating itself to the 1465 founding of the Kazakh Khanate.

This is in part the operationalizing of history to make a modern nationalist point about sovereignty. Reclaiming the skulls of two of its heroes fits into this initiative. With the Soviet Union 25 years dead and modern Russia needing to be reminded of its borders at times, Kazakhstan’s batyrs are experiencing a rebirth.