Annotation. The present study deals with the activities of the sultans in the context of the interaction between regional authorities and local national elites on issues uprising 1869 in the Ural, Turgay areas of the Orenburg region. The central problem investigated in the article is the behavior of the Kazakh sultans T. Seidalin and Sh. Bokeev during these protest movements. Based on a broad empirical material, the contradictions between the sultans in Kazakh society are considered: during this period, two different layers were formed: one of them-supporters of the need for modernization for the development of society along the path of progress (here through the Russian system of power), the other-representatives of the group who were against Russian implementations, consider all "innovations" as a threat to traditional Kazakh society and national identity.

The following facts supplement the history of officials who came out of the Kazakh sultans of the XIX century, and indicate the continuity of the liberation movement of the Kazakh people against the colonial policy of the Russian Empire. Through the prism of "the anthropology of power", the activity of the first Kazakh sultans of enlightenment is analyzed. In the article, the author demonstrated the possibilities of the new imperial history in the study of the post-colonial past, which also causes attention to the post-colonial approach on the part of post-German researchers.