The Border as a Space of Negotiation: National Identity and the Transformation of the Image of the "Other" in Shaken Aimanov’s Film, <i>The End of the Ataman</i>, Келіссөздер кеңістігі ретіндегі шекара: Шәкен Аймановтың «Атаманның ақыры» фильміндегі ұлттық бірегейлік және «өзге» бейнесінің трансформациясы, Граница как пространство переговоров: национальная идентичность и трансформация образа «другого» в фильме Шакена Айманова «Конец атамана»

<jats:p>This article examines the image of the “other” in Soviet-era Kazakh cinema through Shaken Aimanov’s film, Konets atamana (The End of the Ataman, 1970), analyzed within the context of the Eastern genre — the Soviet counterpart of the American Western. The classical Eastern reproduced a colonial logic of representation: Russian characters acted as bearers of progress, while Central Asia was portrayed as an object of modernization. The article explores how a Kazakh director, working within a genre historically marginalizing Kazakh subjectivity, rethinks its logic from within and asserts national identity as a cultural resource. The methodological framework of the study is based on an analysis of representation that combines three analytical axes: the fluidity of the border between the categories of “self” and “other”; the reinterpretation of the image of “savagery” in the Kazakh Eastern; and the construction of the image of the “other” — Xinjiang — from the perspective of a Kazakh subject. The analysis demonstrates that the film’s protagonist, Chekist Chadyarov, is constituted through the constant crossing of geographical, political, and cultural borders: national identity is transformed from an object of representation  into a strategic resource, and the border becomes a space of negotiation. For the first time in the Soviet Eastern, the function of the hero as a “screen” for viewer identification is assumed by a Kazakh protagonist. At the same time, in its depiction of Xinjiang the film reproduces an asymmetry of representation, creating what may be called a “chain of Orientalism.” The article concludes that The End of the Ataman functions simultaneously as genre cinema conforming to Soviet ideological norms and as a new space of cultural identification for Kazakh audiences, in which national culture and tradition gain an autonomous voice.</jats:p>