Kindler, Robert Stalins Nomaden. Herrschaft und Hunger in Kasachstan (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 575 of ‘Uzbekness’ as a lived category, for which archival documents, here little explored, remain peerlessly the most valuable sources available. Nevertheless, Khalid has here produced a fine work, which will doubtless generate as much discussion as his previous one. London Thomas Welsford Kindler, Robert. Stalins Nomaden. Herrschaft und Hunger in Kasachstan. Hamburger Edition, Hamburg, 2016. 381 pp. Maps. Illustrations. Notes. Glossary. List of Sources. Index. €28.00 (paperback). KazakhstanpresentsonethegreatproblemsofSoviethistory.Dekulakization and collectivization were disastrous everywhere in the Soviet Union, but nowhere was the disaster as great as in Kazakhstan, where it was crowned by the sedentarization of the nomadic population. Something like a third of the population was lost to famine, disease and emigration. Horses, sheep, goats and cattle, the mainstays of the traditional nomadic economy, suffered even worse: they declined by 80 to 90 per cent between 1928 and 1934. In spite of these horrors, after 1945 Kazakhstan became one of the most quiescent and loyal of Soviet republics. In the 1980s there was no upsurge of Kazakh nationalism (compare with Ukraine, after Kazakhstan the most seriously damaged by collectivization); moreover, the Kazakh leaders actively tried to hold the Soviet Union together in 1991 as it disintegrated. How is one to explain this paradox? Kindler’s book takes us a long way towards an answer. The process need not have been so destructive: by 1925 some 65 per cent of Kazakhs were already ‘semi-nomadic’, that is, they remained on one territory most of the year, moving their flocks only a few miles in the summer. The Soviet Kazakhleadersproducedtheirowneconomicplanforthegradualdevelopment of this pattern to improve meat production for the entire country. In Moscow, however, the Soviet leaders (like the eighteenth-century North American settlers) regarded nomadic pastures as ‘unused’ or ‘unproductive’; they wanted to use them to develop grain production. They started as in other republics by imposing very heavy taxes on ‘beys’, equivalent to ‘kulaks’ elsewhere. Then they proceeded to full-scale collectivization, accompanied by sedentarization — which, if systematically carried out, should not have been terminally destructive, since so many Kazakhs were already only semi-nomadic. The real problem was the violence and lack of serious planning with which the policy was enforced. To deliver the required amount of grain, nomads had to sell their animals, which were then requisitioned by the new collective ranches and farms. No provision was made for their fodder, transport or care: many of them were left outside in the harsh winter, fell ill and infected others. SEER, 95, 3, JULY 2017 576 One result of the pressure from Moscow was actually to increase the power of Kazakh tribes. In upheavals people tend to seek protection in traditional forms of social solidarity. That meant that the effects of the Kazakh disaster were unequally distributed: stronger tribes would corner scarce resources for themselves, leaving weaker ones to suffer. The process was thus not by any means simply a matter of Russians v Kazakhs: in the implementation of the policy, Kazakhs themselves took a decisive role. The result in 1929–31 was civil war over much of the territory of Kazakhstan. For Communists this was not necessarily unwelcome: they believed that intensified conflict would lead to faster modernization. Besides, in the use of force they had the stronger weapons. Indigenous rebels were numerous but poorly armed; Kazakh rebels might succeed in taking villages and small towns for a week or two, but in the end the army or OGPU would force them out. In 1932 agriculture failed completely, and the emigration grew into a flood, whichtheauthoritieshadnowayofcontrolling,partlybecausecommunications between party and Soviet offices broke down. People simply ignored the authorities in their drive to survive in their own way. Whole towns and regions lost all or nearly all their inhabitants. Famine did not lead immediately to atomization of society, as some theorists have stated: people tried to stick together as long as they could, to members of the same tribe or as nuclear families. But once disaster became total, even these rudimentary communities would fall apart and each individual would seek his/her own salvation. For the defeated and desperate there remained only emigration, if possible with their flocks, into China. However, the Soviet authorities...