There's a monument in Moscow on Chistoprudny Boulevard. In 2012, when protests erupted after Putin's inauguration, demonstrators gathered around this statue and it became their reference point. The hashtag #OccupyAbai trended on Twitter for days.
Alexei Navalny, the Russian opposition leader, called it "a monument to some unknown Kazakh."
That unknown Kazakh was Abai Kunanbayev, the founder of Kazakh written literature, our greatest poet and philosopher, the man who is to Kazakhstan what Pushkin is to Russia or Shakespeare is to England.
And one of the most influential opposition figures in Russia had no idea who he was.
I'm 18 years old, born and raised in Kazakhstan, and I think about this moment a lot. Not because I'm angry, though it stung at first. But because it made me realize something I'd taken for granted: I live between two literary worlds. I grew up reading both Abai and Dostoevsky, absorbing wisdom from both the steppe and St. Petersburg. I thought everyone had access to multiple traditions like this.
They don't. And understanding why has taught me more about literature, translation, and cultural exchange than any class ever could.
Growing Up With Abai
Every Kazakh kid grows up knowing Abai. His face is on our money. There's an entire region named after him. Streets, schools, universities bear his name. His poetry is recited at weddings and funerals. Lines from his Book of Words are quoted in everyday conversation like proverbs.
But here's what's strange: for most of my childhood, I didn't actually read Abai. I absorbed him secondhand, through cultural osmosis, the way you might know Shakespeare's "To be or not to be" without ever reading Hamlet.
It wasn't until I was 15 that I sat down and read The Book of Words cover to cover. And it hit me differently than I expected.
Abai wrote in the late 1800s, at a moment when Kazakh civilization was transforming. We'd been nomads for thousands of years, and suddenly that entire way of life was ending. Russian influence was spreading. Traditional structures were collapsing. Everything was in flux.
And Abai, stuck between worlds, was trying to figure out what to preserve and what to change.
He writes: "Human beings are dominated by greed, dishonesty, contempt for others, pride, and ignorance. But these same human beings, both as individuals and as a nation, are free to make moral choices."
He's brutal about human nature. He doesn't romanticize the Kazakh people or pretend tradition is always noble. But he also insists we can choose something better. That education, knowledge, respect, truth, these things matter. That we're not trapped by who we've been.
Reading him at 15, I felt like he was speaking directly to modern Kazakhstan. We're still figuring out who we are, still caught between tradition and modernity, still choosing what to keep and what to let go.
The Cultural Synthesizer
What makes Abai fascinating is that he didn't choose one side. He didn't say "preserve everything Kazakh" or "adopt everything Western." He created something new from both.
He translated Pushkin, Lermontov, Byron, Goethe into Kazakh. He studied Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Spinoza alongside the Quran and Persian poetry. He absorbed Russian, Western, and Eastern thought and tried to synthesize it into something that spoke to his own context.
Mukhtar Auezov, the writer who immortalized Abai in his epic novel The Path of Abai, wanted to call it "Telkara" which means "a child of two queens." The idea being that Abai was born of two cultures, Eastern and Western, and his genius was in belonging fully to both.
But that metaphor doesn't translate to Russian, so Auezov just called it The Path of Abai. And maybe that's the problem right there. So much gets lost when you cross languages.
The Path of Abai has been translated into 116 languages. It's considered one of the great novels of the 20th century. German writer Alfred Kurella wrote: "You haven't read The Path of Abai yet? Then you haven't read anything."
But I've never met anyone outside Central Asia who's heard of it. It's in 116 languages, but it's still invisible.
What I Gained From Living Between Two Traditions
Here's what I didn't expect: reading Abai changed how I read everything else.
When I went back to Dostoevsky after reading The Book of Words, I noticed something I'd missed before. Both writers are obsessed with the same question: how do you modernize without losing your soul? How do you adopt new ideas without abandoning what makes your culture valuable?
Dostoevsky was terrified of Russia becoming too Western. Abai was trying to figure out how to bring Western knowledge to Kazakhstan without destroying Kazakh identity. They're mirror images, asking the same question from opposite sides.
And I could see that connection because I had access to both. Most Russian readers don't know Abai. Most people reading Dostoevsky in English don't know there was a Kazakh poet asking the same questions at the same time.
But I do. And that's not a loss. That's a gift.
When I read Camus talking about the absurd, I hear echoes of Abai writing about human nature being dominated by greed and ignorance, but insisting we're still free to choose. When I read about the Silk Road, I understand it differently because Abai lived at one of its crossroads, synthesizing Eastern and Western philosophy.
Having two literary traditions doesn't mean one is invisible. It means I can see connections nobody else sees. I can draw lines between ideas that seem unrelated until you have both perspectives.
What I'm Learning About How Ideas Travel
Here's what I've figured out: visibility isn't about merit. It's about networks, translation infrastructure, historical timing, and power dynamics. None of which have anything to do with whether ideas are good.
Abai wrote during a period when Kazakhstan was being absorbed into the Russian Empire. His work was published, but not widely distributed. He died in 1904. By the time his ideas could have spread internationally, World War I happened, then the Russian Revolution, then Stalin.
Mukhtar Auezov's novel The Path of Abai came out in the 1940s and 50s, behind the Iron Curtain. It got translated into 116 languages eventually, but the timing was all wrong for global distribution. And by the time the Soviet Union fell, the global publishing industry had moved on.
It's not that Abai isn't good enough. It's that the infrastructure for spreading his ideas didn't exist when it mattered most.
Understanding this changed how I think about literature. Great ideas don't automatically find their audience. They need translators, publishers, advocates, timing, and luck. Shakespeare is universal partly because he's brilliant, but also partly because the British Empire spread English everywhere.
And here's the thing: I can be part of that infrastructure now. I can read Abai in the original. I can read Dostoevsky in Russian. I can write about both in English. I'm exactly the kind of cultural connector these ideas need to travel.
That's not a burden. That's an opportunity.
The Advantage of Standing Between Worlds
I used to think having access to multiple literary traditions was normal. It's not. It's actually pretty rare.
Most American students read the Western canon. Most Kazakh students read primarily Kazakh and Russian literature. But I get both. I can trace philosophical questions across cultures. I can see how different traditions approach the same human problems.
When Western philosophers talk about the tension between individual freedom and social responsibility, I can see how Abai grappled with that in the context of tribal versus modern society. When Dostoevsky writes about suffering as redemptive, I hear echoes of Abai's idea that hardship teaches wisdom if you're willing to learn from it.
This isn't about one tradition being better. It's about having a stereo view instead of mono. Depth perception for ideas.
And the best part? I'm not alone in this. There are millions of people around the world who live between literary traditions. Kids in India who read both Tagore and Shakespeare. Students in Japan who know Mishima and Hemingway. People everywhere who've been creating these connections their whole lives.
We're not fighting to make our traditions visible. We're already making them visible just by existing, by reading widely, by pointing out patterns nobody else sees.
The question isn't "why doesn't anyone know Abai?" The question is "what can I do with this dual perspective that someone with only one tradition can't?"
What I'm Actually Doing About It
I've started working on introducing Abai to English readers. Sometimes that's writing essays like this one, explaining who he was and why he matters. Sometimes it's having conversations where I bring up his ideas and show how they connect to Western philosophy. I'm figuring out how to be that cultural translator in practical ways.
I'm also collecting ideas for a project where I'd annotate some of his poems with cultural context, making them accessible to people who don't have the background I do. Not because I think I'll single-handedly make him famous, but because translation and cultural explanation is how ideas cross borders, and I'm positioned to do that work.
When I apply to universities abroad, I'll be stepping into institutions built on Western literary traditions. I'll study the canon, read the great books, engage with ideas that have shaped global thought. I'm genuinely excited about that. I want to understand these traditions deeply.
But I'm also bringing Abai with me. Not to argue that Kazakh literature is better or to complain about Eurocentrism. Just to add another voice to the conversation. To show my classmates connections they might not have seen. To be the kind of student who synthesizes across traditions the way Abai himself did, connecting cultures and showing that wisdom exists everywhere.
In my classes, when we read Dostoevsky, I'll be able to say "there was a Kazakh poet asking similar questions at the same time, and here's how their approaches differed." When we discuss philosophy of identity and modernization, I can bring in perspectives from the steppe that might illuminate something new.
That's the advantage of standing between worlds. You can see what others miss. You can make connections that enrich everyone's understanding.
The Monument
Sometimes I think about that protest in Moscow. All those people gathering around Abai's statue, using him as a symbol of resistance, not knowing who he was.
Navalny's comment sparked outrage among Kazakhs. But here's what I realized: those protesters were already doing what Abai wanted. They were gathering around ideas of freedom and resistance. They were creating connections between cultures, Russian dissidents standing at a Kazakh monument.
They didn't need to know Abai's name to be touched by his legacy. The statue was there, part of the landscape, part of the cultural fabric connecting Russia and Kazakhstan.
That's how literature works sometimes. Not through fame, but through quiet influence. Through the connections we make, the perspectives we share, the synthesis we create.
I don't need everyone to know Abai's name. I just need to do what he did: read widely, think deeply, connect traditions, and share what I learn with anyone willing to listen.
Because here's what I've realized: I'm not trying to make Kazakh literature famous. I'm trying to live up to what Abai taught me. That education matters. That we should learn from every tradition we can access. That wisdom transcends borders when we're brave enough to look for it. That standing between cultures isn't a burden, it's a privilege.
When I get to university, I won't be "the kid complaining that nobody knows Kazakh literature." I'll be "the kid who can show you connections between Dostoevsky and Central Asian philosophy you never noticed." I'll be someone who makes everyone's understanding richer because I have access to multiple traditions.
That's the gift Abai gave me. Not resentment that he's unknown, but gratitude that I know him. Not frustration about invisibility, but excitement about making connections others can't.
The world is an ocean, like Abai said. And I get to help people navigate it by showing them currents they didn't know existed.
That's more than enough.