The silent steppe : the memoir of a Kazakh nomad under Stalin

Documents the tragic story of the Kazakh nomads of central Asia under Stalin's regime, offering insight into the culture's Islamic and pagan heritage, the ancient traditions that established their nomadic way of life, and the author's family's struggle to relocate and survive after his father was fatally incarcerated within a prison camp. 15,000 first printing. "This rare and moving book is a first-hand account of the genocide of the Kazakh nomads in the 1920s and 30s. Nominally Muslim, the Kazakhs and their culture owed as much to shamanism and paganism as to Islam; their ancient traditions and economy depended on the breeding and herding of stock across the vast steppes of central Asia, and their independent, nomadic way of life was anathema to the Soviets." "Mukhamet Shayakhmetov was born into a family of nomadic Kazakh herdsmen in 1922, the year of the consolidation of Soviet rule across his people's vast steppe-land. As the devastating Soviet policy of collectivization of agriculture took hold, it set off wide spread famine; in 1932-34 over one million Knzakhs died; more than one quarter of the indigenous population. Seven-year-old Shayakhmetov and his mother and sisters were left to fend for themselves after his father was branded a kulak (well-off peasant and thus class enemy), stripped of his possessions, and sent to a prison camp where he died. In the following years the family traveled thousands of miles across Kazakhstan by foot, surviving on the charity of relatives. Told with dignity and detachment, this central Asian Wild Swans awakens the reader to the CONTENTS LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS INTRODUCTION PROLOGUE PART ONE Chapter One The Life We Lost Chapter Two My Uncle s Trial Chapter Three The Holy Yurt Chapter Four My Sister s Secret Wedding Chapter Five The Last Autumn of the Nomadic Aul Chapter Six The Escape of the Oralman Clans Chapter Seven School Chapter Eight The Kulaks Son Chapter Nine Confiscation Chapter Ten The Silent Steppe Chapter Eleven Leaving Much-Loved Places Chapter Twelve My Perilous Journey Chapter Thirteen At Kalmakbai Aul Chapter Fourteen Deportation PART TWO Chapter Fifteen The Refugees Chapter Sixteen Fleeing Back Home Chapter Seventeen Hunger Comes to the Aul Chapter Eighteen Days of Mourning Chapter Nineteen The New Harvest Chapter Twenty The Milk of Human Kindness Chapter Twenty-One The Last Days of Famine Chapter Twenty-Two A Home of our Own Chapter Twenty-Three Adolescence PART THREE Chapter Twenty-Four The Coming of the Great Patriotic War Chapter Twenty-Five In the Red Army Chapter Twenty-Six At the Front Chapter Twenty-Seven Stalingrad Chapter Twenty-Eight Casualty Chapter Twenty-Nine On the Border Chapter Thirty The Journey Home EPILOGUE GLOSSARY Born into a family of nomadic Kazakh herdsmen in 1922, Mukhamet Shayakhmetov's father was imprisoned as an 'enemy of the people' as Soviet rule spread across his people's vast steppe-land in central Asia. In this book, Shayakhmetov recalls the scale of suffering in his homeland under Stalin's rule.