Mankurt
{{Short description|Term for an unthinking slave}}
{{about||the 1990 Soviet film|Mankurt (film)}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=July 2022}}
Mankurts are unthinking slaves in Chinghiz Aitmatov's novel The Day Lasts More Than a Hundred Years. After the novel, in the Soviet Union the word came to refer to people who have lost touch with their ethnic homeland, who have forgotten their kinship.{{cite web|url=http://krugosvet.ru/enc/kultura_i_obrazovanie/literatura/ATMATOV_CHINGIZ_TOREKULOVICH.html|title=Айтматов, Чингиз Торекулович|work=Krugosvet|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20130121182258/http://krugosvet.ru/enc/kultura_i_obrazovanie/literatura/ATMATOV_CHINGIZ_TOREKULOVICH.html|archivedate=2013-01-21|access-date=2018-09-22|url-status=live}} This meaning was retained in Russia and many other post-Soviet states.
Origin
According to Aitmatov's fictional legend, mankurts were prisoners of war who were turned into non-autonomous docile servants by exposing camel skin wrapped around their heads to the heat of the sun. These skins dried tight, causing brain damage and figurative zombification. Mankurts did not recognise their name, family, or tribe—"a mankurt did not recognise himself as a human being".Excerpt from: [http://celestial.com.kg/articles/people/Persons/Writers/Chingiz-Aitmatov_150.htm celestial.com.kg] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131029185846/http://celestial.com.kg/articles/people/Persons/Writers/Chingiz-Aitmatov_150.htm |date=2013-10-29 }}
Aitmatov stated that he did not take the idea from tradition but invented it himself.Dmitry Bykov, Лекции по русской литературе XX века. Том 4 (Moscow: Eksmo, 2019), p. 52: «народ этого не выдумал, это выдумал я» 'The people did not invent it, I did.'
Usage
In the later years of the Soviet Union mankurt entered everyday speech as a metaphor for the Soviet people affected by the distortions and omissions in the history by the official teachings.{{cite book|first1=Andrew |last1=Horton |first2=Michael |last2=Brashinsky |year=1992 |title=The zero hour: glasnost and Soviet cinema in transition |edition=illustrated|publisher=Princeton University Press |isbn=0-691-01920-7 |page=[https://books.google.com/books?id=9gZPIRMv-EIC&dq=mankurt+Soviet+Union&pg=PA131 131]}}
In the figurative sense, the word "mankurt" refers to people who have lost touch with their ethnic homeland, who have forgotten their kinship. In this sense, it has become a term in common parlance and journalism.[http://www.elitat.ru/index.php?link=11&st=139&type=3&str=&parent_m=11&lang= Элита Татарстана — журнал для первых лиц] In Russian, there have appeared neologisms such as mankurtizm, mankurtizatsiya (meaning "mankurtization"), and demankurtizatsiya (meaning "demankurtization").{{ill|Zhan Toshchenko|ru|Тощенко, Жан Терентьевич}} "Манкуртизм как форма исторического беспамятства." // Пленарное заседание «Диалог культур и партнёрство цивилизаций: становление глобальной культуры». 2012. — С. 231. In some former Soviet republics, the term has come to represent those non-Russians who have lost their ethnic heritage by the effects of the Soviet system.{{cite book|last=Laitin |first=David D.|year=1998 |title=Identity in formation: the Russian-speaking populations in the near abroad|edition=illustrated |publisher=Cornell University Press |isbn=978-0-8014-8495-7 |page=[https://books.google.com/books?id=S1NVYdVFQWIC&dq=mankurt+Soviet+Union&pg=PA135 135]}}
In 1990, the film Mankurt was released in the Soviet Union,Oliver Leaman (2001). Companion encyclopedia of Middle Eastern and North African film. Taylor & Francis. p. 17. {{ISBN|0-415-18703-6}}, 9780415187039 based on the legend about the mankurt from Aitmatov's novel.Horton & Brashinsky (1992). pp. 16, 17.P. Rollberg (2009). Historical dictionary of Russian and Soviet cinema. Scarecrow Press. pp. 35, 37, 482. {{ISBN|0-8108-6072-4}}, 9780810860728