Raimbek Zhubanysh: The establishment of the Soviet government in the Kazakh steppe destroyed the traditional Kazakh society that had long existed, and those who opposed it in various places were immediately expelled from their native land. For this, false accusations and cases that they did not know about were covered up and they reached the bottom of many pits. Driven by such false accusations, under the clutches of the bloody Soviet government, my ancestors also disappeared. Our descendants are still suffering the consequences of this. Because they did not fully know their seven ancestors, trampled on their ancestral land, and brought them to a state where they could not recognize their ancestors' tombstones from the old cemetery in the basement. That is why my grandfather Zhubanysh, who grew up witnessing the government's brutal policies since childhood, tried to become a leading driver of the state farm. During his work, he chose the most difficult trips and spent most of his life in the cab of the car, not finding any improvement in winter and summer. The idea was that the government, which did not allow me to wear a pioneer tie at school as the son of an enemy of the people, would not allow my children to wear such a bad name, and that only if I became an excellent worker at the state farm would I have a chance to get rid of the black mark. Our grandfather finally died in 1987 at the age of 53 from a heart attack caused by long years of unproductive work. Grandfather: - Our father was from a wealthy family living near the village of Bashenkol in the Temir district of the Aktobe region. We are from the Shekty tribe of the younger zhuz, the Nazar clan. The Nazar clan is considered a nation descended from nine ancestors who inhabited the Zhem and Mugalzhar mountains from ancient times. One of our ancestors, Nazar, was from the famous Sankibai batyr family. Our grandfather Sankibai was famous throughout the country as a rich man and a leader during the Kazakh-Kalmyk conflict in the 18th century. The settlement of that Sankibai's son, Bashen, is called Bashenkol. The umbilical cord blood of my ancestors dripped here, and the bones of seven ancestors remained there. The Bashen clan was divided into five clans, including us, from eighty divisions. The famous Alash figure Alpysbai Kalmenov was born in this clan. On September 25, 1928, in A. Kalmenov’s response to the OGPU employees, the Bashen clan was divided into Sart, Kulan, and Sauan. Today, Baidakov Bakhyt works in the party service from the Sart division, and my two children, Atlash and Myrzash, from Sauan, work, he would say. Here, the fact that we, having come from one clan and living in a neighboring village, directly affected the difficulties of the coming years. Before that, the “nazar-jekey” slander carried out on the previous generation in the Temir district, and then the bloody politics of 1937–1938, devoured the next generation. Because Sarttan - Baydak - Alzhan - Jonat - Zhubanysh, Sauan - Kalmen - Alpysbay - Atlash, etc. developed. Families originating from one family eventually became victims of the Soviet system. Here, the Soviet government, in order to further strengthen its power, tried to eliminate the long-established families in various places. Because the Sankibai family, having shared the inheritance left by their ancestors, was a household name in the settlements where they lived, and there were many who even became nobles. For example, it is now established from the data that Alpysbay's younger brother Mukash Kalmenov was a noble. In order to eliminate such noble families, the government tried to instigate class struggle in each village. For example, in the village where our ancestors settled, they tried to portray the Kisyk section, which was considered an entrance to Bashen, as poor, and the Kalmenovs as rich, as exploiting classes. Accurate data about this is preserved in the Aktobe regional archive. In the archival documents, in 1924, when the false clan group "nazar-zhekey" was exposed in the Temir district, the name of Baidakov Alzhan from Emba village is mentioned at meetings held on re-election to the government. However, there is no data on the fact that he was accused of the "nazar-zhekey" slander. This is because the accused in this case were tried since 1926, and most of them were exiled. It is also possible that he died after reaching old age. In this regard, in the 1917 census, Baidakov Alzhan from Emba village, village No. 7 was listed as 59 years old. Based on this data, which is stored in the 69th fund of the Aktobe region state archive, it turns out that Alzhan was born in 1858. Further, it is indicated that his wife was 40 years old, and his children were 25 and 2 years old. It seems that the family was not included in the complete list here. Because he must have evaded the per capita tax and military service. However, the data is very valuable for us. The memorial book dedicated to the victims of political repression in the Aktobe region states that Alzhanov Zhanat was born in 1893 in Temir district, village No. 13, with primary education, and was sentenced to 10 years in a labor camp on December 14, 1937 under Article 58. Comparing the two documents, it is possible to determine that our grandfather Zhanat was born in 1893–1892. Our grandfather Zhanat was a wealthy man in his old settlement, Bashenkol. After all, he himself had a primary education and did not leave his children out of school. In his family, his wife Dilda (whom the villagers called "sary bolys") raised eight children. The settlement that belonged to our grandfather Zhanat was "Alzhan togay", named after his father, near today's Bashenkol, in Kumirge. This was a well-known settlement where a pack of wolves would give birth to puppies every year. Each year, the wolf that gave birth to puppies would eat only its own livestock and would not touch anyone else. In this original settlement, Jonathan also managed to live independently, taking care of his own livestock and property. At that time, one of Jonathan's brothers, Bakytzhan, was a party member and, until he was arrested in 1938, was the chairman of the Kostanay regional executive committee. Another brother, whose name is unknown, was forced to move to another place during the so-called "Kempeske". Oral sources say that he went to Karaganda, but it is not known how true this is. However, our brothers often say that in the 1980s, my father Zhubanysh would receive various letters, which he would secretly read and keep in his breast pocket when he passed away. No one knows where the letters that were kept in the breast pocket of his suit are today. What if this is not the work of the lazy generation that experienced the hardships of the Soviet system? When his brother Bakytzhan's only son, Izbasar, died, he left a house in Almaty, and even if he was offered a inheritance, he was afraid to go, thinking that it would be a loss for his children. In this family, one of those who fell victim to the repressions of 1937-1938 was Zhubanysh's father, Jonat. He was arrested in 1937 and imprisoned in Temir's prison. Although his son Zhubanysh was born in 1934 on the documents, his actual birth year was 1933. My grandfather said during his lifetime, "I remember seeing my father in prison in 1937." After his mother Dilda visited Temir's prison three times, she begged him not to come back, saying that they were going to deport us to Aktobe. On one of these occasions, his son Zhubanysh also went there, and that incident remained in his mind until his death. The fence of Temir's prison was made of straw, I only saw my father's red fox fur coat, and I remember his voice only coming out in a growling voice when I talked to my mother. At that time, many citizens from this region were imprisoned in Temir's prison, which caused great irreparable grief. A man from our side named Kurmashev Kashkyn, who was imprisoned with our grandfather Jonat, returned to the country safely after 1953. According to him, he was taken on horseback from Temir's prison to Aktobe with our grandfather Jonat. Later, he was sentenced in Aktobe and sent to hard labor in Vladivostok. I don't remember which direction or year they came. According to them, in Vladivostok, all the prisoners were made to sit with their heads down, and the orderly divided them into right and left, and there he and Jonat parted ways. On the left, he was working on a road for military equipment and returned to the country safely. And our grandfather Jonathan left without a trace, and we see that he was acquitted only in 1989. The day after our grandfather was arrested, the government seized the house and all its belongings. According to our grandmother Nina, who passed away this year at the age of ninety, all her children were taken from their place of study in Kostanay, and the government could not accommodate them in Bashenkol, so she was forced to move to Aktobe. Some of the belongings left by our father were hidden in a relative's house, thinking that she would need them. Unfortunately, when we were kicked out of the house, we saw that those relatives had put up carpets and things that belonged to us on the shelves of shops for sale, - my father recalls. With that excitement, he moved to Aktobe and took refuge with his eldest son Ites, born in 1915. At that time, Ites had joined the party and was working as a deputy director of education at school. However, their stay in the city did not last long, as Ites died of tuberculosis in the fall of 1939. The family, having fled from here, settled on the Ashakenau collective farm, which was established near the Kalmakkyrgan outpost in today's Temir district. The eldest daughters, Iba and Ziba, married local party workers and soldiers who had participated in the war, saving their younger brother Zhubanysh. After all, their husbands were slightly older than them, local party members, and wounded soldiers. Thanks to the care of their sisters, they finished school in Temir and were later drafted into the Soviet army. After returning from the army, they started a family and raised seven children with our grandmother Zagipa. Today, the descendants of six sons born to my grandfather Zhubanysh live in the Aktobe region. As one of their descendants, I became a victim of political repression and began to search for the reasons for his arrest and the way of life. Today, data is being found, albeit in small pieces, in archival documents. In the future, I consider it my duty to conduct a comprehensive search for my grandfather, who was innocently punished during the years of political repression, to study the oral and archival data that have come down to us, and to convey the difficult fate of my grandfather Zhubanysh to future generations. Informant: Zhubanysh Raiymbek. Aktobe, July 5, 2023. The material was prepared for publication by: Kuralai Kuandykyzy Sarsembina, Astana branch of the Sh. Ualikhanov Institute of History and Ethnology, Candidate of Historical Sciences.