Kemel Tokayev in the years of the Great Patriotic war (based on the novel "A soldier who went to war")

Abstract

The article describes the participation of Kemel Tokayev in the major battles of the Don, 1st Ukrainian, 2nd Belarusian fronts of the Great Patriotic War. The author tries to reveal the main points of the battle path of the researched person’s battle path in the 226th Rifle Division and the 7th Guards Tank Regiment breakthrough of the Red Army. It also gives a brief information on the scale of the heavy battle and Kazakhstan’s contribution to the struggle for the liberation of the conquered territory. Special attention is paid to Kemel Tokayev’s autobiographical novel «Soldier went to war», where the content indicates the time intervals of the events. The author of the article used documents of the Central State Archive of the Republic of Kazakhstan, the Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense and the Central State Archive of the Russian Federation, publications of contemporaries in periodicals and a book of memory of a member of the family, Collective monographs and historical and documentary collections of domestic scientists about the Great Patriotic War. Maps supplementing and characterizing the actions of the tank regiment in combat operations helped to improve the accuracy of the data presented in visual form. Comparing the contents of Kemel Tokayev’s work with the information contained in archival documents, it was found that the literary work has a historical background. In conclusion of the research it was noted that the awards received by the veteran writer were the logical conclusion of the battle path of struggle stressing the need for detailed research in this direction. It was also noted that the development of a new detective genre in Kazakh literature is directly related to the name of Kemel Tokayev.