Brief history of Kazakhstan

Here’s my loose and sketchy history of the region, just to bring you all up to a dangerous level of knowledge to parallel my own: The Kazakh tribes were directly descended from Genghis Khan, who rampaged through Asia in the 13th century. They were originally ‘tribed up’ with the Uzbeks, but a falling out and a plot of intrigue and murder led to their split. The Uzbeks took up a fairly sedentary agrarian lifestyle, while the Kazakhs remained nomadic. The Kazakhs eventually divided into three ‘hordes’. The Great Horde, the Middle Horde, and the Small or Lesser Horde. It was the usual tale of incursions and territorial battles until about 1918 when they accepted an offer from the Russians of ‘protection’. You guessed it, things don’t go swimmingly from there. Protection led to all-out domination not long after, with a few attempted uprisings dealt with harshly. Under Stalin, the Kazakhs were forced to agricultural collectives, amid some concern about pan-Islamic and pan-Turkic movements (Kazakh is actually a Turkic language). Interestingly, it seems there is the suggestion that this drove more militant Islamic elements into Afghanistan. When the Hordes were disbanded, their rulers were the last direct descendents of both Genghis Khan and his throne.

The collectives were an exercise in disaster. Different regions were given different crops and goods to produce, so that they would remain dependent on the Soviet system of distribution. Water was diverted out of the region’s two main rivers in order to irrigate huge cotton fields in Uzbekistan, ultimately resulting in the environmental disaster at the Aral Sea, where the salination level became so high as the water’s retreated from a lack of inflow, that the Sea can no longer support life. As food stores grew desperately low, people began to starve. Apparently there is some evidence that Stalin’s plans for the region included the depopulation of Kazakhstan in order to free up real estate for Russia. Different statistics I have encountered put the death toll at a quarter of the population or more, and over a million people.

Additionally, as the “Stans” were carved out of a large nebulous region, each was given a healthy dose of conflicting claims by conflicting groups and tribes, in order to ensure the Soviet yoke would be the only way to control the ensuing melee. Stalin then sent in settlers, including freed Russian serfs looking for land, and forced resettlements of people from other Soviet controlled countries, such as Poland, Ukraine, and East Germany. He also constructed a system of Gulags across the country, and parsed out land for the exploitation of resources through mining and other concerns.

While Kazakhstan declared it’s independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, the current president was also the last Communist Party leader under Soviet rule, and has remained in power for over 16 years. Kazakhstan is also a member of the CIS, which includes Russia and all ex-Soviet countries except Georgia and the Caucuses. I find it incredible that they now align with Russia by choice, but what choice really, do they have? Kazakhstan is now the 9th largest country in the world in terms of land mass, with a population of about 12 million, making it one of the least densely populated countries in the world. Here, it would seem, Stalin succeeded.

As for Arkalyk, I was told today by our coordinator’s sister, Zhana, that the economy became so dismal here, that from 1997 to 2001 the entire region, with Arkalyk as it’s center, was ‘shut down’. It was merged with another region at some point, the region of Kostanai. As she told the story, ‘there was only sometimes running water, sometimes electricity, and usually no heat in the buildings. This is a country where the heat is hot water, and pipes are run from a central location to each building, down the sidewalks in most cases, or up over the streets in huge arches alongside the sewage pipes. My guess is that the frost line is fairly deep, and they didn’t want the expense of burying the pipes, so they just ran them right above ground. You step over them regularly as you walk along. Most of them are rusting and decaying at this point. You wonder how long it can hold up. The heat is turned off and on by the government, and they determine how warm the buildings are kept. You regulate temperature by putting on more layers, or opening the windows, even in the dead of winter. The woman who is cooking for us, Bacha (our coordinators Aunt, of course, this is a family business), had the kitchen door to outside open today during a howling blizzard, it was so hot.

(Hot water and Sewage pipes)

There were no trains that came for weeks with food, no jobs, and Arkalyk’s population fell from 80,000 to 40,000. Galina, our translator was about 12 at the time. She told us of having gone to school with winter coats, hats and gloves on, and doing lessons by candlelight. Today she showed me on the Google Earth photo of Arkalyk, the sections of town that were ‘shut down’. It is a huge section. We have walked by dozens of huge apartment buildings that are bricked up. According to Galina, the apartment building we are in is one of the ‘nice ones’. The flats are bigger and have more ‘amenities’.

(closed down section of the city)

The others were built for the common people she says. How eerie, to have parts of a city completely depopulated, under what Zhana terms ‘the centralization’. It makes sense to have half the number of fully occupied buildings rather than many that are only partially occupied. Less overhead costs and probably safer as well. I don’t know how the process worked, but it’s difficult to imagine being told your entire building was being shut down. Hard to imagine a way in which it could have been worked out equitably. The buildings that do remain occupied are run down and dilapidated. Zhana’s family stayed and Galina’s family stayed, and now things are improving, but slowly.

(the front door of our apartment building)

The region exports bauxite, but true to the Soviet system, there is no processing plant here for aluminum, so it is shipped by train far to the South. Despite a population of 40,000 people however, there are no major shops in the city, no true grocery store, and they are only connected to the infrastructure of Kazakhstan by one train a day from Astana (13 ½ hours) and one from the capital of the region, Kostanai (16 hours and 600km away). They have an airport that was completed, but never used, and the roads are impassable in winter and only marginally better in summer. Many cars here are very dilapidated, as the roads are so rutted. I have yet to see a paved road in Arkalyk. Getting goods here is a challenge, and much of the furniture, including cabinetry, etc is knock-down stuff, as it ships more easily. The winter temperatures drop to –30 Farenheit, and summer temperatures can soar to 115 degrees. This part of the world is rife with such things as typhoid, malaria, TB, and diseases you would never want to hear pass your doctor’s lips. Medicines are difficult to get and expensive, and of course you must pay for own medical care and private insurance is non-existent.

And despite this, the people seem happy, are cheerful and friendly. They stay here with their families for generations. Not that they have too many options, especially the women. But it’s interesting to reflect on what it takes to make us humans happy. This is the most integrated example I have seen in all my travels of extended family. Bruce started putting together a simple family tree for our coordinator’s family as there are so many different family members coming and going! They set aside their jobs, families, and who knows what else to jump in and help out Habiba (our coordinator) while she has been out having spinal surgery. There seems to be no question. When she returns later this week, she, her husband and her two young girls are all moving in with her in-laws so they can help her family while she recovers. In the meantime, her sister pinch-hits as our coordinator, he aunt cooks for us, her uncle is our driver, her friend is our translator, her nephew comes to play with Jaden, her niece fills in when the aunt has to work at the hospital.

What a rich, deep quality there is to it all. Jaden is seeing that there are people who live very differently than do we. It is so valuable a lesson, one I hope he retains. It isn’t only what they don’t have, but what they do. A sense of belonging to a place, a family, a tribe even, that I feel we American’s have lost. It is different even than being a part of a community. We live such transient lifestyles, so focused on the busyness. We ‘do lunch’ to catch up on each other’s lives, and somehow fail to be a part of each other’s lives. We swap playdates to catch up on errands, but how do those errands add anything to our experience as human beings? I am as guilty of this as anyone, and perhaps part of the lesson of being here is to absorb this more fully, figure out how to pull this quality more fully into our lives, into my new son’s life, and take that piece of his culture away with us in some bigger way. Not that we are moving in with my parents anytime soon, I don’t want them to get nervous J. But to see that happiness doesn’t come from more, and to see it in a tangible way rather than as a philosophical concept bandied about in a way that inevitably reflects Western culture, reflects choosing to do without rather than being without, what a gift.