Dark Shadows

Author: Joanna Lillis
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0755626702
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 369

Book Description
Dark Shadows is a compelling portrait of Kazakhstan, a country that is little known in the West. Strategically located in the heart of Central Asia, sandwiched between Vladimir Putin's Russia, its former colonial ruler, and Xi Jinping's China, this vast oil-rich state is carving out its place in the world as it contends with its own complex past and present. Journalist Joanna Lillis paints a vibrant picture of this emerging nation through vivid reportage based on 17 years of on-the-ground coverage, and travels across the length and breadth of this enigmatic country that lies along the ancient Silk Road and at the geopolitical and cultural crossroads where East meets West. Featuring tales of murder and abduction, intrigue and betrayal, extortion and corruption, this book explores how a president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, transformed himself into a potentate and the economically-struggling state he inherited at the fall of the USSR into a swaggering 21st-century monocracy. A colourful cast of characters brings the politics to life: from strutting oligarchs to sleeping villagers, from principled politicians to striking oilmen, from crusading journalists to courageous campaigners. This new edition features two additional chapters covering the aftermath of Nazarbayev's fall from power in 2019; the Chinese government's repressions against the Kazakhs of Xinjiang as part of its crackdown on Muslim minorities; and an Afterword reflecting on the tumultuous events of January 2022 in Almaty. Traversing dust-blown deserts and majestic mountains, taking in glitzy cities and dystopian landscapes, Dark Shadows conjures up Kazakhstan as a living, breathing place, full of extraordinary people living extraordinary lives.

The Hungry Steppe

Author: Sarah Cameron
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501730452
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 395

Book Description
The Hungry Steppe examines one of the most heinous crimes of the Stalinist regime, the Kazakh famine of 1930–33. More than 1.5 million people perished in this famine, a quarter of Kazakhstan's population, and the crisis transformed a territory the size of continental Europe. Yet the story of this famine has remained mostly hidden from view. Drawing upon state and Communist party documents, as well as oral history and memoir accounts in Russian and in Kazakh, Sarah Cameron reveals this brutal story and its devastating consequences for Kazakh society. Through the most violent of means the Kazakh famine created Soviet Kazakhstan, a stable territory with clearly delineated boundaries that was an integral part of the Soviet economic system; and it forged a new Kazakh national identity. But this state-driven modernization project was uneven. Ultimately, Cameron finds, neither Kazakhstan nor Kazakhs themselves were integrated into the Soviet system in precisely the ways that Moscow had originally hoped. The experience of the famine scarred the republic for the remainder of the Soviet era and shaped its transformation into an independent nation in 1991. Cameron uses her history of the Kazakh famine to overturn several assumptions about violence, modernization, and nation-making under Stalin, highlighting, in particular, the creation of a new Kazakh national identity, and how environmental factors shaped Soviet development. Ultimately, The Hungry Steppe depicts the Soviet regime and its disastrous policies in a new and unusual light.

Apples Are from Kazakhstan

Author: Christopher Robbins
Publisher: Atlas and Company
ISBN: 1934633933
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 305

Book Description
In this funny and revealing travelogue of Kazakhstan--a blank in Westerners' collective geography--Robbins reveals the country to be diverse, tolerant, and surprisingly modern. A superlative addition to the literature of travel--"The Observer" (UK). Illustrated.

The Day Lasts More than a Hundred Years

Author: Chingiz Aitmatov
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253058686
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 368

Book Description
" . . . a rewarding book." —Times Literary Supplement Set in the vast windswept Central Asian steppes and the infinite reaches of galactic space, this powerful novel offers a vivid view of the culture and values of the Soviet Union's Central Asian peoples.

Kazakhstan - Ethnicity, Language and Power

Author: Bhavna Dave
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134324987
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 257

Book Description
Kazakhstan is emerging as the most dynamic economic and political actor in Central Asia. It is the second largest country of the former Soviet Union, after the Russian Federation, and has rich natural resources, particularly oil, which is being exploited through massive US investment. Kazakhstan has an impressive record of economic growth under the leadership of President Nursultan Nazarbaev, and has ambitions to project itself as a modern, wealthy civic state, with a developed market economy. At the same time, Kazakhstan is one of the most ethnically diverse countries in the region, with very substantial non-Kazakh and non-Muslim minorities. Its political regime has used elements of political clientelism and neo-traditional practices to bolster its rule. Drawing from extensive ethnographic research, interviews, and archival materials this book traces the development of national identity and statehood in Kazakhstan, focusing in particular on the attempts to build a national state. It argues that Russification and Sovietization were not simply 'top-down' processes, that they provide considerable scope for local initiatives, and that Soviet ethnically-based affirmative action policies have had a lasting impact on ethnic élite formation and the rise of a distinct brand of national consciousness.

Nomads and Networks

Author: Sören Stark
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN:
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 204

Book Description
Catalogue from the exhibition held at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University, March 7-June 3, 2012.

The Soul of Kazakhstan

Author: Wayne Eastep
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780970693907
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 264

Book Description
Essays and information on the countyr of kazakhstan heavily illustrated with photos.

Living Language in Kazakhstan

Author: Eva Marie Dubuisson
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
ISBN: 0822982838
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 311

Book Description
Eva-Marie Dubuisson provides a fascinating anthropological inquiry into the deeply ingrained presence of ancestors within the cultural, political, and spiritual discourse of Kazakhs. In a climate of authoritarianism and economic uncertainty, many people in this region turn to their forebearers for care, guidance, and advice, invoking them on a daily basis. This "living language" creates a powerful link to the past and a stable foundation for the present. Through Dubuisson's participatory, observational, and lived experience among Kazakhs, we witness firsthand the public performances and private rituals that show how memory and identity are sustained through an oral tradition of invoking ancestors. This ancestral dialogue sustains a unifying worldview by mediating questions of faith and morality, providing role models, and offering a mechanism for socio-political critique, change, and meaning-making. Looking beyond studies of Islam or heritage alone, Dubuisson provides fresh insights into understanding the Kazakh worldview that will serve students, researchers, GMOs, and policymakers in the region.

Stalin's Nomads

Author: Robert Kindler
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
ISBN: 0822986140
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 317

Book Description
Robert Kindler's seminal work is a comprehensive and unsettling account of the Soviet campaign to forcefully sedentarize and collectivize the Kazakh clans. Viewing the nomadic life as unproductive, and their lands unused and untilled, Stalin and his inner circle pursued a campaign of violence and subjugation, rather than attempting any dialog or cultural assimilation. The results were catastrophic, as the conflict and an ensuing famine (1931-1933) caused the death of nearly one-third of the Kazakh population. Hundreds of thousands of nomads became refugees and a nomadic culture and social order were essentially destroyed in less than five years. Kindler provides an in-depth analysis of Soviet rule, economic and political motivations, and the role of remote and local Soviet officials and Kazakhs during the crisis. This is the first English-language translation of an important and harrowing history, largely unknown to Western audiences prior to Kindler’s study. The translation of this work was funded by Geisteswissenschaften International – Translation Funding for Work in the Humanities and Social Sciences from Germany, a joint initiative of the Fritz Thyssen Foundation, the German Federal Foreign Office, the collecting society VG WORT and the Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels (German Publishers & Booksellers Association).

Kazakhstan

Author: Sally N. Cummings
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 085771399X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 209

Book Description
Kazakhstan is the largest state in Central Asia. Rich in oil, gas and other natural resources and sandwiched between China and Russia it occupies a key geopolitical position, the importance of which was further heightened following the attacks of 9/11 and subsequent wars in the wider Middle East. But Kazakhstan was born by default, gaining independence only reluctantly as the Soviet Union collapsed. Its political elite, facing complex tasks of state-building, also lacked a monoethnic base on which to build its legitimacy. Based on original material and extensive interviews in the capital and three of the country's regions, the book places the elite in the country's broader institutional and historical context, analysing their identity, behaviour and how they gained and secured power in the early independence years. Kazakhstan: Power and the Elite is essential reading for all those interested in the history, politics and international relations of this fascinating country.