Abstract
The article describes the people’s struggle against Soviet power and the leaders of this movement in people’s memory in the village of Aibas, Novobogat district, Guryev Territory. Following the Civil Resistance of 1918-1920, Soviet power was established in Kazakhstan. The shift from War Communism to the New Economic Policy (NEP) in the 1920s proved highly beneficial for Kazakh peasants, whose lives were based on livestock farming. During the NEP, farms in the western region of Kazakhstan successfully bartered surplus livestock products in populous Central Asian cities such as Astrakhan, Orenburg, and Tashkent. This exchange was so profitable that some traders grew wealthy. Crucially, closed archives confirm that this barter network was the main channel through which the latestmodel English or European weapons and ammunition reached Kazakh villages. The relative stability was abruptly broken on August 27, 1928, with the confiscation of wealthy farms—the economic foundation of the Kazakh village. This was quickly followed by forced sedentarization and collectivization. The period of 1929-1933, which stripped the people of their entire livelihood and all their livestock, became the primary cause for the armed resistance against Soviet rule. Initially scattered, the struggle in the Guryev region soon evolved into a disciplined "guerrilla warfare system." New archival data reveal resistance centers in areas such as Novobogat, Tengiz, and Kyzylkoga. Although the number of people in the militias was small, they caused some confusion for the authorities. The history of bloody clashes with the OGPU forces includes the famous Aibas Uprising. It highlights new names of organizers, such as Mukit Irmukhametov and Zhumagali Zhangozhin, who have now entered the historical record.