Aspiration for truth as a driving force to live and write: lifestory and memories of Gulnar Dulatova (1915-2013) – daughter of Myrzhakyp Dulatov

Abstract

This paper examines the memoirs of Gulnar Dulatova, a member of the family of “the enemy of the people”, and discusses her aging processes as well as other female family members of the repressed through their memoirs. Typologically and chronologically, the analyzed women were divided into two different time phases: spouses born in the early 1900s – aged in the 1960s and children born in the 1920s – aged in the 1980s. Starting from her 60s until she turned 95, Gulnar Dulatova dedicated herself to the revival of her repressed father’s heritage doing research, writing memoiristic books, articles, and giving interviews. This paper presents the first effort to trace the background origins of the motivation behind her aspiration to write. This paper provides an analysis of how aging members of repressed families struggled with the consequences of repression and how their memoirs operated despite forced silencing and personal traumas. It was identified that justice and the desire to commemorate motivated and inspired Gulnar Dulatova and others. These books, articles were written as a tribute to the victims of political repressions and were percieved by them as a duty they were obliged to fulfill. Political repressions were traumatizing not only for the first, but for the second generation of those repressed as well. The fight with the traumas is continuing in some cases in third and even fourth generations of victims of political repressions indicating that the Stalin’s repressiveness still triggers them today.