ASTANA — The ashes of one of the most prominent Kazakh political figures of the last century, Smagul Saduaqasov, have been reburied in Astana, RFE/RL’s Kazakh Service reports.
Historian Dikhan Qamzabekuly, an initiator of the idea to rebury Saduaqasov on Kazakh soil, told RFE/RL at the reburial ceremony on May 20 that Saduaqasov’s ashes were interred in a Muslim cemetery along the Astrakhan highway near Astana.
Qamzabekuly said Astana Mayor Imanghali Tasmaghambetov, parliament deputies, and intellectuals were present at the ceremony.
Saduaqasov’s ashes were extracted from the Don Cemetery in Moscow on January 20 and transferred to Kazakhstan the next day.
Saduaqasov (1900-1933), a prominent journalist, was one of the first leaders of Kazakhstan after the 1917 October Revolution. His early death in 1933 has never been precisely explained.
His wife, Elizaveta Bokeykhanova, was convinced until her death in 1971 that her husband was executed in a Soviet purge.
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