Translation Across Time in Akhmet Baitursynov’s "Mosquito"

Kazakh poet, linguist, politician, educator, and nationalist, Akhmet Baitursynov, wrote Mosquito in 1911 to challenge the Kazakh people to wake up and create a nation together. His poems carry strains of frustration, of hopefulness, of anger, and of pity for a populace he wanted to bring to independent nationhood through Alash Orda, a Kazakh political group that would emerge in the wake of the collapse of the Russian Empire. Although the proto-state would be retaken by the Soviets, Baitursynov worked within the communist government with measured hopes of Kazakh self-governance. However, like m