Kazakh revolutionary and traveler (1883–1953)
Älıbi Tokzhanuly Jangeldin (Kazakh: Әліби Тоқжанұлы Жангелдин, Russian: Алиби Тогжанович Джангильдин; 1883 – 14 August 1953) was a Kazakh revolutionary, traveler and Soviet statesman.
Life and career.
Early life.
Alibi Dzhangildin was born in to the a large family of a poor shepherd nomad (sharua) from the Kipchak people in the Middle Jüz. The ten-year-old Dzhangildin caught the attention of a traveling teacher who invited him to his school. Soon afterwards the boy fled from his parents' home and traveled with a caravan to Turgay, where he was accepted into school. There he met the revolutionary baatar Amankeldı İmanov. Following advice from relatives, his father brought his son back from school. At the age of twelve, Dzhangildin fled again, this time to Kustanai, where he was immediately accepted into the Russian-Kazakh school. His father found him there too, and only at the request of the school director did his father agree to allow him to continue attending school. After successfully passing his final exams, Dzhangildin was sent to the religious consistory in Orenburg. Here he met influential compatriots from the steppe.
After he had completed the exams quickly, he was sent to Kazan in 1902 to study at the teacher training college. During the Russian Revolution in 1905, he took part in the revolutionary student movement. The administration then sent him to the history faculty of the Moscow Theological Academy to dismay him from his revolutionary activities. After the second year of the course, he was expelled from the course because of revolutionary activities.
Travels.
In 1908, Shangeldin left Russia with a passport in the name of Nikolai Stepnov and began a world tour, earning his living by photographing interesting places and selling the photos. He traveled mostly on foot through Poland, Austria-Hungary, Serbia, Bulgaria, Turkey, Palestine, Egypt, Abyssinia, Arabia, Persia, India, Siam, Annam and southern China, while he finally stayed in Japan only briefly in 1912, as he was able to return to Russia due to the amnesty on the occasion of the 300th anniversary of the Romanov dynasty.
Because Dzhangildin was not allowed to stay in his home region of Turgay after his return, he worked at weather stations in Crimea in 1913 and was active as a revolutionary among the Crimean Tatars. During the First World War he joined the Russian Social Democratic Workers' Party (Bolsheviks) in Petrograd in 1915.
Central Asian Uprising and Russian Civil War.
When Nicholas II issued his Requisitions Ukase on June 25, 1916, calling on non-Russian men aged 19 to 43 to work near the front, rumors spread that the entire male population would be used to dig trenches between the Russian and German fronts, sparking an uprising in the Kazakh steppe. On behalf of the party, Dzhangildin went incognito to the Torghai region to join Amangeldy Imanov in leading the rebellious Basmachi. İmanov formed a disciplined cavalry force and became commander-in-chief, relying on a war council. At the height of the uprising, around 50,000 fighters followed Imanov's banner. In October 1916, İmanov laid siege to the town of Turgay (in what is now the Qostanai region). When the Russian relief corps approached, the insurgents moved to meet them and began guerrilla warfare . The fighting lasted until February 1917, when the Russian corps withdrew as a result of the February Revolution of 1917. Meanwhile, Shangeldin was sent to Bukhara in early 1917. After the February Revolution, he returned to Petrograd, whereupon he was sent to the Turgay region as a propagandist.
After the October Revolution, Dzhangildin met Vladimir Lenin in Moscow, who appointed him acting commissar of the Turgay region. During the Russian Civil War, Dzhangildin gathered pro-Bolshevik forces for Joseph Stalin in the Turgay region in January 1918 to fight against the Alash Orda. Dzhangildin's units crushed anti-Bolshevik uprisings in Astrakhan and Fort Alexandrovsk on the Caspian Sea. From the Buzachi peninsula, they marched with supplies and ammunition on 300 camels and 600 horses to the Turkestan front. In November 1918, they were in Shalkar and then brought supplies to the Orenburg front. In 1920, military operations there were completed.
In Soviet Kazakhstan.
Dzhangildin participated in the preparation and work of the Constituent Congress of Kazakh Soviets for the establishment of the Kazakh Republic in 1920. The Congress elected him a member of the Presidium, Vice-chairman of the Central Executive Committee of the Republic and People's Commissar for Social Security. Shangeldin represented the party organization of Kazakhstan at the first All-Russian Conference of Communist Party Organizations of the Peoples of the East in January 1921. In 1937 he became Chairman of the Central Executive Committee of Kazakh SSR.
After the German invasion of the Soviet Union Alibi Dzhangildin wrote a letter to Stalin requesting to be sent to the front. But he was refused, since he would be more useful in the rear. During the war, Dzhangildin was involved in the formation of military units and formations on the territory of Kazakhstan, the placement of people and equipment evacuated to Kazakhstan from the occupied western regions of the country, and carried out political and propaganda work among those going to the front.
Alibi Dzhangildin died in 1953. He was buried in the Central Cemetery of Alma-Ata.
References.
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