YOUTH AND HISTORICAL MEMORY IN KAZAKHSTAN: FROM FRAGMENTED NARRATIVES TO THE FORMATION OF SHARED MEANINGS

Abstract

The article analyzes the formation of historical memory among the youth of Kazakhstan under the conditions of competing official, academic, and alternative narratives. The empirical basis is a large-scale sociological survey of young people (January-February 2024, N=1970), ensuring representativeness by gender, age, language, and education level. The results revealed three main challenges: the gap between high interest in the past and the superficial acquisition of knowledge; symbolic fragmentation along linguistic, regional, and ethnocultural lines; and differences in satisfaction with the official narrative, most evident at the regional level. The scientific novelty lies in emphasizing the «participatory turn» and the dialogical model of memory, where youth act as subjects of historical dialogue. The practical significance of the study is related to the justification of a transition to a dialogical memory policy, which opens new opportunities for public history and the engagement of the digital generation.