Алаш Орда

Bilyal Aspandiyarov was born in the Karabalyk district of the Kostanay region in 1886. He is from   Sharua family of sharua (independent peasants.) In 1898, with the help of his older brother Bilyal Aspandiyarov, he entered the two-year Russian-Kazakh school created by Ibrai Altynsarin.

In 1904, after successfully completing his studies, a graduate of the two-grade school Bilyal Aspandiyarov submitted application about grant to  continue his studies at the Kazan Teachers’ Seminary to the Governor-General of the Turgai District. The request remained unsatisfied. Finally, after many ordeals, Aspandiyarov entered the Orenburg Teachers’ Seminary. In these years the waves of the first Russian revolution reached the Kazakh Steppe. Aspandiyarov also joined the struggle of Kazakh youth for civil rights. In 1906 he was expelled from the teachers’ seminary “for actions known to himself”. Later he recovered with difficulty and in 1909 successfully completed his studies.

Until 1922, Bilyal Aspandiyarov returned to his native village and taught in a number of primary, secondary and other schools in the Kustanai district. In the early 1920s, Bilal Aspandiyarov was  a member of the Kostanay district education committee and took an active part in the creation of schools in the Kostanay region. In 1923 he organized  a pedagogical college in Kustanai. It is the important period in his life. Here he headed  the college until 1925.

In July 1925, by decision of the People’s Commissariat of Education, B. Aspandiyarov was sent as the head of the Zhetysu provincial department of public education to Alma-Ata. Here he closely cooperates with Akhmet Baitursynov, Mirzhakyp Dulatov, Smagul Sadvakasov, Sanzhar Asfendiyarov and others. B. Aspandiyarov opened dozens of schools in Semirechye (Zhetysu).

He was a delegate to the Fifth All-Russian Congress of Heads of Public Education Departments, held in Moscow in 1926.

Aspandiyarov closely cooperated with Russian educators A.V. Lunacharsky and N.K. Krupskaya.

Bilyal Aspandiyarov combined teaching work with scientific, methodological and organizational work, made individual tasks of the People’s Commissariat of Education of the republic. Thus, on behalf of the Institute of Schools, B. Aspandiyarov worked on teaching methods in secondary (Kazakh) schools, examined the condition of schools and provided  assistance to these schools.

In the second half of the 30s, Bilyal Aspandiyarov, worked in the language sector of the Kazakh branch of the Academy of Sciences. He participated  in the compilation of various dictionaries.

Bilyal Aspandiyarov is one of the compilers of the two-volume Russian-Kazakh dictionary, published in 1946, the two-volume Explanatory Dictionary of the Kazakh language (1959, 1961).

From 1942 to 1945 Bilyal Aspandiyarov worked as a senior researcher at the Party Institute (IMEL branch) in Alma-Ata. He  translated the works of the classics of Marxism-Leninism related to the issues of the country’s defense into the Kazakh language .

In the first years of the war, he published his “Textbook of the Russian language for conscripted Kazakhs” (1942) in thirty thousand copies. Since April 1945, Bilyal Aspandiyarov worked  as a senior researcher in the department of history of the XIX century and pre-revolutionary Kazakhstan (the department was headed by B.S. Suleimenov) at the Institute of History, Archeology and Ethnography of the Academy of Sciences of the Kazakh SSR. He researched materials on Bukey Horde.

In the late 40s – early 50s, Bilyal Aspandiyarov began to develop the most difficult problematic topic “The formation of three Kazakh zhuzes”, which was approved and included in plan of the IIAE of the Academy of Sciences of the Kazakh SSR of 1950.

In the same 1950, three months after the approval, the topic “Formation of Kazakh zhuzes” was excluded from the plan of the Institute of Archeology and Ethnography of the Academy of Sciences of the Kazakh SSR. For many years,  this topic was banned .

Bilyal Aspandiyarov died in 1958 in Almaty at the age of 72.