New book reveals documents on Kazakh soldiers in World War II
Satbayev University hosted a presentation of the collection of documents "Kazakhs in World War II: Documents from Foreign Archives". The event was timed to Kazakhstan Independence Day and was held in the furtherance of Rukhani Janghyru Program and Nursultan Nazarbayev's proposal regarding the Archive 2025 Program.
The first volume of the collection of documents represents the results obtained in the course of a comprehensive research on the participation of the Kazakh people in World War II in European countries. The collection is based on documentary materials found in 15 foreign archives, libraries, and museums in the UK, France, Norway, Russia, and Finland. The first volume also includes documents from soldiers' personal archives. Most of the documents and materials have been published for the first time.
Creating the book, Kazakh scientists did their best to systematically and comprehensively explore history. Based on archival and memoir documents, they reconstructed a real picture of the Kazakh soldiers' participation in the Second World War.
One of the authors, Doctor of Historical Sciences, Professor Gulnara Mendikulova, underlined the importance of such work: "The military say that a war does not end until the last soldier returns home. Now, according to historical evidence, 350,000 to 600,000 Kazakhs in the Second World War are considered as missing. And we would like to emphasize that several thousand people published in the first volume list were found and returned home. ".
The published documents are intended for Kazakhstanis, students, historians and military scientists, as well as anyone interested in the history of Kazakhstan and world history.