Yash Turkistan as a Source of Historical Consciousness and Civic Identity: A Historical-Discursive Analysis of Émigré Intellectual Discourse Using Fairclough’s Framework

Abstract

This study examines how Yash Turkistan (1929–1939), a major periodical of Turkestan émigré political journalism, constructed an alternative intellectual discourse on colonial power, historical memory, national identity, statehood, and political agency. The analysis draws on the full collection of 117 issues and combines historical contextualization, thematic analysis, and critical discourse analysis (CDA). Texts directly relevant to the research questions were examined to identify recurring conceptual themes, narrative structures, rhetorical strategies, symbolic contradictions, and appeals to historical power. The findings suggest that Yash Turkistan interpreted imperial and Soviet power within a continuous colonial framework, linked national continuity with language, knowledge, and intellectual responsibility, and presented statehood as a project of organized political self-determination. The magazine challenged Soviet views through factual correction, irony, re-semanticization of the official political vocabulary, and recurring contradictions such as nation and empire, freedom and dominance, historical truth and ideological distortion. Through these strategies, Turkestan emerged as a historically conscious political community capable of interpreting its past and determining its political future. This study contributes to the study of émigré media, historical consciousness, and the formation of the political subject.