Alikhan Bokeikhanov

Who was Alikhan Bokeikhanov?

Alikhan Nurmukhameduli Bokeikhanov was a Kazakh writer, political activist and environmental scientist. He is famous for advocating the idea that Kazakhs should learn Russian culture and simultaneously preserve Kazakh customs and law.

Bokeikhanov's early education took place in a Russian-Kazakh school and at Omsk Technical School. He later studied at the Imperial Forestry Institute in Saint Petersburg, where he graduated from the Faculty of Economics in 1894. During his youth, he is believed to have been influenced by socialists.

Upon graduating, Bokeikhanov returned to Omsk and spent the next fourteen years there working. He was a participant in the 1896 Shcherbina Expedition, which aimed to research and assess virtually every aspect of Russian-controlled Central Asia from the environment and resources to the culture and traditions of its inhabitants. This was the first of a few similar missions which Bokeikhanov accepted. Among his recorded contributions is "Ovtsevodstvo v stepnom krae", which analyzed animal husbandry in Central Asia.