Museum of the Altai Kazakhs

About museum

A branch of the A. V. Anokhin National Museum in the village of Zhana-Aul, Kosh-Agachsky District municipality. Opened on July 31, 1999, during the Small Kurultai of the Kazakhs of the Altai Republic, on the initiative of the chairman of the Kalinin collective farm, Dzhatkambayev Auelkhan Jazitovich. On the same day a monument to those repressed in the 1930s was unveiled. The original name was the Museum of the Kazakhs of the Chui Steppe. The main purpose of the opening was to study the history of the Kazakhs' migration at the end of the 19th century from East Kazakhstan to the Mountainous Altai, and to preserve and popularize the material and spiritual culture of the 'Altai Kazakhs'. One of the main reasons for their migration to the Altai was the reduction of pastures in the Ust-Kamenogorsk uyezd of the Semipalatinsk region after the Chuguchak Treaty in 1864, when the official delimitation of borders between Kazakhstan and Russia began. From that time a new ethnic group appeared in the territory of the Mountainous Altai — the Chui Kazakhs. The history of the Kazakhs' border migrations was very mobile and unstable: Kazakh clans repeatedly crossed the border, sometimes settling in Mongolia, sometimes returning to the Mountain Altai. The migrations continued until the 1950s, since the Chui area had a reputation as a land 'where people get rich.' Today, about 11 thousand Kazakhs live in the Kosh-Agachsky District — slightly more than half of the local population.