Mankurt is the term for an unthinking

slave Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave—someone forbidden to quit one's service for an enslaver, and who is treated by the enslaver as property. Slavery typically involves slaves being made to perf ...

Chinghiz Aitmatov Chinghiz Torekulovich Aitmatov (as transliterated from Russian; ky, Чыңгыз Төрөкулович Айтматов, translit=Chynggyz Törökulovich Aytmatov; 12 December 1928 – 10 June 2008) was a Kyrgyz author who wrote mainly in Russi ...

's novel ''

The Day Lasts More Than a Hundred Years ''The Day Lasts More Than a Hundred Years'' (russian: И дольше века длится день, "And longer than a century lasts a day"), originally published in Russian in the ''Novy Mir'' literary magazine in 1980, is a novel written by th ...

''. According to Aitmatov's fictional legend, mankurts were

prisoners of war A prisoner of war (POW) is a person who is held Captivity, captive by a belligerent power during or immediately after an armed conflict. The earliest recorded usage of the phrase "prisoner of war" dates back to 1610. Belligerents hold priso ...

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, like a steel band, causing

brain damage Neurotrauma, brain damage or brain injury (BI) is the destruction or degeneration of brain cells. Brain injuries occur due to a wide range of internal and external factors. In general, brain damage refers to significant, undiscriminating t ...

and figurative

zombification A zombie (Haitian French: , ht, zonbi) is a mythological undead corporeal revenant created through the reanimation of a corpse. Zombies are most commonly found in horror and fantasy genre works. The term comes from Haitian folklore, in whic ...

. Mankurts did not recognise their name, family or tribe—"a mankurt did not recognise himself as a human being". In Aitmatov's novel, a young man defending his homeland from invasion by the nomadic

Ruanruan Ruanruan (; also called Rouran) is an unclassified extinct language of Mongolia and northern China, spoken in the Rouran Khaganate from the 4th to the 6th centuries AD, considered a likely early precursor to Mongolic. Peter A. Boodberg claime ...

is captured, tortured, and brainwashed into serving his homeland's conquerors. Having completely lost his memory, he kills his mother when she attempts to rescue him from captivity. In the later years of the Soviet Union ''mankurt'' entered everyday speech to describe the alienation that people had toward a society that repressed them and distorted their history. Aitmatov did not take the idea from tradition but invented it himself. N. Shneidman stated "The mankurt motif, taken from Central Asian lore, is the dominant idea of the novel and connects the different narrative levels and time sequences".

Etymology and usage

"Mankurt" may be derived from the Mongolian term "мангуурах" (''manguurakh'', meaning "stupid"), Turkic ''mengirt'' (one who was deprived memory) or (less probably) ''man kort'' (bad tribe). In the figurative sense, the word "mankurt" refers to people who have lost touch with their ethnic

homeland A homeland is a place where a cultural, national, or racial identity has formed. The definition can also mean simply one's country of birth. When used as a proper noun, the Homeland, as well as its equivalents in other languages, often has ethni ...

, who have forgotten their

kinship In anthropology, kinship is the web of social relationships that form an important part of the lives of all humans in all societies, although its exact meanings even within this discipline are often debated. Anthropologist Robin Fox says that ...

. In this sense, it has become a term in

common parlance Colloquialism (), also called colloquial language, everyday language or general parlance, is the linguistic style used for casual (informal) communication. It is the most common functional style of speech, the idiom normally employed in conversa ...

and journalism. In Russian, there have appeared neologisms such as ''mankurtizm'', ''mankurtizatsiya'' (meaning "mankurtization"), and ''demankurtizatsiya'' (meaning "demankurtization"). In some former Soviet republics, the term has come to represent those non-Russians who have lost their

ethnic heritage An ethnic group or an ethnicity is a grouping of people who identify with each other on the basis of shared attributes that distinguish them from other groups. Those attributes can include common sets of traditions, ancestry, language, history, ...

by the effects of the

Soviet system The political system of the Soviet Union took place in a federal single-party soviet socialist republic framework which was characterized by the superior role of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), the only party permitted by the Cons ...

In cinema

In 1990, the film ''

Mankurt Mankurt is the term for an unthinking slave in Chinghiz Aitmatov's novel '' The Day Lasts More Than a Hundred Years''. According to Aitmatov's fictional legend, mankurts were prisoners of war who were turned into non-autonomous docile servant ...

'' (Манкурт) was released in the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

. Written by Mariya Urmadova, the film is based on one narrative strand in the novel ''The Day Lasts More Than a Hundred Years''. It represents the last film directed by Khodzha Narliyev.P. Rollberg (2009). Historical dictionary of Russian and Soviet cinema. Scarecrow Press. pp. 35, 37, 482. , 9780810860728

References

{{reflist

External links

«И дольше века длится день»
Turkic mythology Turkish words and phrases Pejorative terms for people

Etymology and usage

In cinema

See also

References

External links