This paper analyses Kazakhstan's new generation literature textbooks for Kazakh-medium schools, with a focus on national identity and citizenship constructs that the revised textbooks promote. By comparing the literature textbooks of the Soviet and post-Soviet periods, the paper discusses Soviet institutional and cultural legacies that continue to exist in Kazakhstan's literature curriculum. Implications of the recurrent patterns of nation-building discourse in the literature textbooks for democracy and social cohesion in Kazakhstan are also discussed. (Contains 1 note.)