Public museums of the north-east of Kazakhstan in the second half of the XX - beginning of the XXI century

He article is devoted to the study of the process of formation and development of public museums in the northern and eastern regions of Kazakhstan. The relevance of studying the problems of social movements, in which the desire of people to learn about the history of their small homeland, cultural heritage in modern conditions, is significantly increasing. This is due to the growth of national self-awareness, the search for ethnocultural identity. In a number of former Soviet republics and, first of all, in Russia and Kazakhstan, the analysis of modern phenomena is often accompanied by an appeal to the historical experience of the Soviet Union. The analysis of a large array of documents carried out by the authors made it possible to identify the features of the formation and development of the local history movement and public museums from the 1950s to the present. The article reveals the objective and subjective factors of their mass revival in the second half of the 1960s: improvement of the material situation of the population, democratization of public life, search for effective means to implement the ideological tasks of the CPSU. Based on an interest in knowing its past, the local history movement gained powerful party and state support and was vividly embodied in the form of public museums. In contrast to the pre-war stage of its development, this movement was aimed not at the study of the natural and economic resources of the local region, but at the ideological processing of the main resource - the human one, which was consolidated in the party and state documents. In the 1990s, as a result of the transformation of the USSR , the liquidation of the CPSU, and the change in the role of the party in the political system, mass public museums that carried out an ideological, political and educational mission were deprived of material support for their existence. The only exceptions were museums of corporate, educational, scientific organizations, many of which limited themselves to performing representative functions. However, it would be wrong to limit ourselves to a negative and even neutral assessment of their social role. Even being ideologized, the activities of public museums contributed to the preservation and popularization of cultural heritage, the development of horizons, instilled a sense of patriotism, love for their native land, and contributed to the organization of leisure. Moreover, perhaps we are on the verge of another upsurge in the historical and local history movement. The peoples of many countries, sated with globalization, associate a new paradigm of their development with the growth of national self-awareness, patriotism, looking for their origins in their historical cultural heritage. It is no coincidence that the growth of public organizations is noted, the purpose of which is to preserve and popularize heritage, historical reconstruction, search work in places of battles, patriotic and social volunteering. New museums are also emerging based on private and public initiative.