ramblings on Kazakhstan
Apr. 24th, 2011 08:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hnpccI have been reading "In Search of Kazakhstan: the land that disappeared" by Christopher Robbins. It's a fun read - I certainly recommend it if, like me, you'd actually no idea where the country was or anything else about it (although I could at least spell it, unlike some of the other ex-Soviet Republics. Kyrgyzstan I'm looking at you - damn Sporcle for making me spell you quickly!!) Two of the things that really stayed with me though were the descriptions of the gulag within Kazakh borders during the USSR period, and the description of the deportation of almost the entire Chechen population.
I'd never heard of the second event, and I think what shocked me the most about it was that it occurred during World War II, at a time when the USSR was unsurprisingly rather preoccupied with a major invasion of its borders by Nazi Germany. I'd heard of the mass deportations of the pre-war period, and of some of the atrocities in the post-War Stalin period - but I'd never heard of this one. Reading further on Wikipedia the deportations were as a collective punishment after an uprising and independence attempt by Chechens (and Ingush), aided unsurprisingly by Nazi Germany - none of which really excuses the massacre of civilians, or the shooting of people unable to be deported, such as the old, the very young, invalids and pregnant women. Or the wiping out of an entire village, because they couldn't get them to the deportation trains due to a snowstorm.
The gulag... well the gulag continues to amaze me. Partly because of how little is known about it in the West, at least at a public consciousness level. We've all heard of the Nazi death camps (and with good reason) but most people couldn't tell you about the Soviet Union's penal system. Stalin didn't need gas - he had the winter, and lack of nutrition to ensure that many prisoners never came home again. But just the sheer displacement of people into the camps, and the lives that were ruined through such trivial things - referring to Stalin as "the whiskered one" in a letter to a relative; being denounced by a jealous subordinate who wanted your job; being taken prisoner by the Germans; fighting with the Allies against the Germans, and having the misfortune to return home. And not just the person involved, but their families, exiled to the bitter cold end of the world, occasionally imprisoned in the same camps despite not having committed any crime. If you survived to be released, then you were equally as screwed - no one would touch a political prisoner, which could bring down the wrath of Moscow upon them too. It's interesting reading the interview with one ex-prisoner, who was sent to the camps when he was 8, alongside his father. (Unsurprisingly he hadn't actually committed any crime, not even a thought-crime. It was just easier to send him along, so they did.) The thing he relishes most about the post-USSR period is the lack of fear - people can sit and argue politics in his kitchen, without doing it in whispers and being paranoid that one of their friends will inform, or the neighbours will overhear, or somehow or other the State will find out and pull you all from your beds in the middle of the night. It's just something that I really find hard to imagine, that level of underlying, pervasive fear permeating through all of society. I cannot imagine how people lived through all that, both in Stalinist Russia and Nazi Germany, and currently in North Korea.
The last thing that stayed with me from the book was the description of nuclear tests carried out in Kazakhstan and, more importantly, the complete lack of any ethics about using civilian populations as guinea pigs to find out what the effects of radiation were likely to be. It's scary stuff - and makes me wonder more about the West's nuclear testing program, and what was going on that wasn't discussed (and maybe never will be). The long term damage to people, and to their children and grandchildren, is just chilling.
I would quite like to visit Kazakhstan now, although to be honest that's not likely to happen in the near future at least. Of all the former Soviet stans it does seem to be the most peaceful, democratic and likely to remain so. So hopefully I'll get there at some point - and then I can see where apples come from.
I'd never heard of the second event, and I think what shocked me the most about it was that it occurred during World War II, at a time when the USSR was unsurprisingly rather preoccupied with a major invasion of its borders by Nazi Germany. I'd heard of the mass deportations of the pre-war period, and of some of the atrocities in the post-War Stalin period - but I'd never heard of this one. Reading further on Wikipedia the deportations were as a collective punishment after an uprising and independence attempt by Chechens (and Ingush), aided unsurprisingly by Nazi Germany - none of which really excuses the massacre of civilians, or the shooting of people unable to be deported, such as the old, the very young, invalids and pregnant women. Or the wiping out of an entire village, because they couldn't get them to the deportation trains due to a snowstorm.
The gulag... well the gulag continues to amaze me. Partly because of how little is known about it in the West, at least at a public consciousness level. We've all heard of the Nazi death camps (and with good reason) but most people couldn't tell you about the Soviet Union's penal system. Stalin didn't need gas - he had the winter, and lack of nutrition to ensure that many prisoners never came home again. But just the sheer displacement of people into the camps, and the lives that were ruined through such trivial things - referring to Stalin as "the whiskered one" in a letter to a relative; being denounced by a jealous subordinate who wanted your job; being taken prisoner by the Germans; fighting with the Allies against the Germans, and having the misfortune to return home. And not just the person involved, but their families, exiled to the bitter cold end of the world, occasionally imprisoned in the same camps despite not having committed any crime. If you survived to be released, then you were equally as screwed - no one would touch a political prisoner, which could bring down the wrath of Moscow upon them too. It's interesting reading the interview with one ex-prisoner, who was sent to the camps when he was 8, alongside his father. (Unsurprisingly he hadn't actually committed any crime, not even a thought-crime. It was just easier to send him along, so they did.) The thing he relishes most about the post-USSR period is the lack of fear - people can sit and argue politics in his kitchen, without doing it in whispers and being paranoid that one of their friends will inform, or the neighbours will overhear, or somehow or other the State will find out and pull you all from your beds in the middle of the night. It's just something that I really find hard to imagine, that level of underlying, pervasive fear permeating through all of society. I cannot imagine how people lived through all that, both in Stalinist Russia and Nazi Germany, and currently in North Korea.
The last thing that stayed with me from the book was the description of nuclear tests carried out in Kazakhstan and, more importantly, the complete lack of any ethics about using civilian populations as guinea pigs to find out what the effects of radiation were likely to be. It's scary stuff - and makes me wonder more about the West's nuclear testing program, and what was going on that wasn't discussed (and maybe never will be). The long term damage to people, and to their children and grandchildren, is just chilling.
I would quite like to visit Kazakhstan now, although to be honest that's not likely to happen in the near future at least. Of all the former Soviet stans it does seem to be the most peaceful, democratic and likely to remain so. So hopefully I'll get there at some point - and then I can see where apples come from.
