Mankurt

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Mankurt is the term for an unthinking slave in Chinghiz Aitmatov's novel The Day Lasts More Than a Hundred Years.

According to Aitmatov's invented legend, mankurts were prisoners of war who were turned into slaves by being exposed in the hot sun with their heads wrapped in camel skin. These skins dried tight, like a steel band, thus damaging their brains and enslaving them forever. A mankurt did not recognise his name, family or tribe — "a mankurt did not recognise himself as a human being".[1] Aitmatov did not take the idea from a preexisting tradition but invented it himself.[2]

"Mankurt" may be derived from the Mongolian term "мангуурах" (manguurakh, meaning "stupid"), Turkic mengirt (one who was deprived memory) or (less probably) man kort (bad tribe).[citation needed]

In the figurative sense, the word "mankurt" is used to refer to people who have lost touch with their historical, national roots, who have forgotten about their kinship. In this sense, it has become a term in common parlance [3] and is used in journalism.[4] In the Russian language there have appeared neologisms such as mankurtizm, mankurtizatsiya (meaning “mankurtization”), and demankurtizatsiya (meaning “demankurtization”). [5]

In Aitmatov's novel, a young man defending his homeland from invasion by the nomad Ruanruan is captured, tortured, and brainwashed into serving his homeland's conquerors. Having completely lost his memory, he kills his mother when she attempts to rescue him from captivity. N. Shneidman stated "The mankurt motif, taken from Central Asian lore, is the dominant idea of the novel and connects the different narrative levels and time sequences".[6] In the later years of the Soviet Union mankurt entered everyday speech to describe the alienation that people had toward a society that repressed them and distorted their history.[7] In some former Soviet republics, the term has come to represent those non-Russians who have been cut off from their own ethnic roots by the effects of the Soviet system.[8]

In cinema[]

In 1990 the film Mankurt (Манкурт) was released in the Soviet Union.[9] Written by Mariya Urmatova, the film is based on one narrative strand from within the novel The Day Lasts More Than a Hundred Years.[10] It represents the last film directed by Khodzha Narliyev.[11] Its main cast included the Turkish actors Tarık Tarcan, Yılmaz Duru and the Turkmen actors Maýa-Gözel Aýmedowa, Hojadurdy Narliýew, and Maýsa Almazowa. The film tells about a Turkmen who defends his homeland from invasion. After he is captured, tortured, and brainwashed into serving his homeland's conquerors, he is so completely turned that he kills his mother when she attempts to rescue him from captivity.

See also[]

References[]

  1. ^ Excerpt from: celestial.com.kg Archived 2013-10-29 at the Wayback Machine
  2. ^ Dmitry Bykov, Лекции по русской литературе XX века. Том 4 (Moscow: Eksmo, 2019), p. 52: «народ этого не выдумал, это выдумал я» 'The people did not invent it, I did.'
  3. ^ "Айтматов, Чингиз Торекулович". . Archived from the original on 2013-04-04. Retrieved 2018-09-22.
  4. ^ Эли��а Татарстана — журнал для первых лиц
  5. ^ Манкуртизм как форма исторического беспамятства. // Пленарное заседание «Диалог культур и партнёрство цивилизаций: становление глобальной культуры». 2012. — С. 231.
  6. ^ Shneidman, N. N (1989). Soviet literature in the 1980s: decade of transition. University of Toronto Press. ISBN 978-0-8020-5812-6.
  7. ^ Horton, Andrew; Brashinsky, Michael (1992). The zero hour: glasnost and Soviet cinema in transition (illustrated ed.). Princeton University Press. p. 131. ISBN 0-691-01920-7.
  8. ^ Laitin, David D. (1998). Identity in formation: the Russian-speaking populations in the near abroad (illustrated ed.). Cornell University Press. p. 135. ISBN 978-0-8014-8495-7.
  9. ^ Oliver Leaman (2001). Companion encyclopedia of Middle Eastern and North African film. Taylor & Francis. p. 17. ISBN 0-415-18703-6, 9780415187039
  10. ^ Andrew Horton, Michael Brashinsky (1992). The zero hour: glasnost and Soviet cinema in transition. Princeton University Press. pp. 16, 17. ISBN 0-691-01920-7, 9780691019208
  11. ^ P. Rollberg (2009). Historical dictionary of Russian and Soviet cinema. Scarecrow Press. pp. 35, 37, 482. ISBN 0-8108-6072-4, 9780810860728

External links[]

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