Atomic Steppe

Author: Togzhan Kassenova
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 1503629937
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 490

Book Description
Atomic Steppe tells the untold true story of how the obscure country of Kazakhstan said no to the most powerful weapons in human history. With the fall of the Soviet Union, the marginalized Central Asian republic suddenly found itself with the world's fourth largest nuclear arsenal on its territory. Would it give up these fire-ready weapons—or try to become a Central Asian North Korea? This book takes us inside Kazakhstan's extraordinary and little-known nuclear history from the Soviet period to the present. For Soviet officials, Kazakhstan's steppe was not an ecological marvel or beloved homeland, but an empty patch of dirt ideal for nuclear testing. Two-headed lambs were just the beginning of the resulting public health disaster for Kazakhstan—compounded, when the Soviet Union collapsed, by the daunting burden of becoming an overnight nuclear power. Equipped with intimate personal perspective and untapped archival resources, Togzhan Kassenova introduces us to the engineers turned diplomats, villagers turned activists, and scientists turned pacifists who worked toward disarmament. With thousands of nuclear weapons still present around the world, the story of how Kazakhs gave up their nuclear inheritance holds urgent lessons for global security.

The Silent Steppe

Author: Mukhamet Shai͡akhmetov
Publisher: Stacey International Publishers
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 378

Book Description
"Here is a rare book. It is the first-person story of Mukhamet Shayakhmetov, 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 in central Asia, specifically eastern Kazakhstan." "Thus was brought to an end, with dread ideological ruthlessness, a way of life of sanctified interdependence between man and nature. Designated as a kulak, Mukhamet's father was imprisoned as 'an enemy of the people', and his family were stripped of all possessions, including livestock, and ostracised." "Collectivisation of agriculture was forcibly imposed, and famine ensued. In the years 1932-34 alone, well over a million Kazakhs died: more than a quarter of the indigenous population across a territory as great as western Europe. Of all this, the outside world knew - or chose to know - nothing." "Somewhat as Wild Swans laid bare the truth of Mao's China, so The Silent Steppe awakens the reader to the scale of suffering of millions in Soviet central Asia under Stalin." "Shayakhmetov takes his story to his recruitment in the Red Army, his wounding at Stalingrad, and his long trek home as a discharged solider at the age of 21. He is today in his mid-eighties."--BOOK JACKET.

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.

Speaking Soviet with an Accent

Author: Ali F. Igmen
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Pre
ISBN: 0822978091
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 250

Book Description
Speaking Soviet with an Accent presents the first English-language study of Soviet culture clubs in Kyrgyzstan. These clubs profoundly influenced the future of Kyrgyz cultural identity and fostered the work of many artists, such as famed novelist Chingiz Aitmatov. Based on extensive oral history and archival research, Ali Igmen follows the rise of culture clubs beginning in the 1920s, when they were established to inculcate Soviet ideology and create a sedentary lifestyle among the historically nomadic Kyrgyz people. These "Red clubs" are fondly remembered by locals as one of the few places where lively activities and socialization with other members of their ail (village or tribal unit) could be found. Through lectures, readings, books, plays, concerts, operas, visual arts, and cultural Olympiads, locals were exposed to Soviet notions of modernization. But these programs also encouraged the creation of a newfound "Kyrgyzness" that preserved aspects of local traditions and celebrated the achievements of Kyrgyz citizens in the building of a new state. These ideals proved appealing to many Kyrgyz, who, for centuries, had seen riches and power in the hands of a few tribal chieftains and Russian imperialists. This book offers new insights into the formation of modern cultural identity in Central Asia. Here, like their imperial predecessors, the Soviets sought to extend their physical borders and political influence. But Igmen also reveals the remarkable agency of the Kyrgyz people, who employed available resources to meld their own heritage with Soviet and Russian ideologies and form artistic expressions that continue to influence Kyrgyzstan today.

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 Dead Lake

Author: Hamid Ismailov
Publisher: Peirene Press
ISBN: 1908670193
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 100

Book Description
A haunting Russian tale about the environmental legacy of the Cold War. Yerzhan grows up in a remote part of Soviet Kazakhstan where atomic weapons are tested. As a young boy he falls in love with the neighbour's daughter and one evening, to impress her, he dives into a forbidden lake. The radioactive water changes Yerzhan. He will never grow into a man. While the girl he loves becomes a beautiful woman. Why Peirene chose to publish this book: 'Like a Grimm's fairy tale, this story transforms an innermost fear into an outward reality. We witness a prepubescent boy's secret terror of not growing up into a man. We also wander in a beautiful, fierce landscape unlike any other we find in Western literature. And by the end of Yerzhan's tale we are awe-struck by our human resilience in the face of catastrophic, man-made, follies.' Meike Ziervogel 'A haunting and resonant fable.' Boyd Tonkin, Independent 'A tantalising mixture of magical and grim realism . . . a powerful study of alienation and environmental catastrophe.' David Mills, Sunday Times 'A poetic masterpiece, a novella of shocking legacies, alien beauty and blistering emotional intensity'. Pam Norfolk, Lancashire Evening Post 'A writer of immense poetic power.' Kapka Kassabova, Guardian Elizabeth Buchan, Daily Mail 'This superb novella . . . reads like a modern fairy-tale, full of a surreal yet mundane horror.' Lesley McDowell, Independent on Sunday 'Central Asian storytelling at its best.' Marion James, Today's Zaman LONGLISTED FOR THE INDEPENDENT FOREIGN FICTION PRIZE 2015 INDEPENDENT BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2014 GUARDIAN READERS' BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2014

The Kazakhs

Author: Martha Brill Olcott
Publisher: Hoover Institution Press Publi
ISBN: 9780817993528
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
This compete history of one of the largest non-Slavic ethnic groups charts it from its emergence in the mid-fifteenth century to the present. Olcott details the major events that have shaped the character of the Islamic nation of Kazakhstan, discussing the rise and fall of the Kazakh Khanate, the Kazakhs in imperial Russia, revolutionary and Soviet Kazakhstan, and the struggle for autonomy under Soviet rule.

The Nuclear Borderlands

Author: Joseph Masco
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691194289
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 454

Book Description
An important investigation of the sociocultural fallout of America's work on the atomic bomb In The Nuclear Borderlands, Joseph Masco offers an in-depth look at the long-term consequences of the Manhattan Project. Masco examines how diverse groups in and around Los Alamos, New Mexico understood and responded to the U.S. nuclear weapons project in the post–Cold War period. He shows that the American focus on potential nuclear apocalypse during the Cold War obscured the broader effects of the nuclear complex on society, and that the atomic bomb produced a new cognitive orientation toward daily life, reconfiguring concepts of time, nature, race, and citizenship. This updated edition includes a brand-new preface by the author discussing current developments in nuclear politics and the scientific impact of the nuclear age on the present epoch of a human-altered climate.

The Apocalypse Factory: Plutonium and the Making of the Atomic Age

Author: Steve Olson
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393634981
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 331

Book Description
A thrilling narrative of scientific triumph, decades of secrecy, and the unimaginable destruction wrought by the creation of the atomic bomb. It began with plutonium, the first element ever manufactured in quantity by humans. Fearing that the Germans would be the first to weaponize the atom, the United States marshaled brilliant minds and seemingly inexhaustible bodies to find a way to create a nuclear chain reaction of inconceivable explosive power. In a matter of months, the Hanford nuclear facility was built to produce and weaponize the enigmatic and deadly new material that would fuel atomic bombs. In the desert of eastern Washington State, far from prying eyes, scientists Glenn Seaborg, Enrico Fermi, and many thousands of others—the physicists, engineers, laborers, and support staff at the facility—manufactured plutonium for the bomb dropped on Nagasaki, and for the bombs in the current American nuclear arsenal, enabling the construction of weapons with the potential to end human civilization. With his characteristic blend of scientific clarity and storytelling, Steve Olson asks why Hanford has been largely overlooked in histories of the Manhattan Project and the Cold War. Olson, who grew up just twenty miles from Hanford’s B Reactor, recounts how a small Washington town played host to some of the most influential scientists and engineers in American history as they sought to create the substance at the core of the most destructive weapons ever created. The Apocalypse Factory offers a new generation this dramatic story of human achievement and, ultimately, of lethal hubris.

Gold of the Great Steppe

Author: Rebecca Roberts
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781911300915
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 160

Book Description
This catalogue accompanies an exhibition which presents artefacts from burial mounds of the Saka people of East Kazakhstan, who, over 2,500 years ago, lived lives rich in complexity. The Saka people occupied a landscape of seemingly endless steppe to the west, bounded by mountains to the east and south. Known to be fierce warriors, they were also skilled craftspeople, producing intricate gold and other metalwork. Their artistic expression indicates a deep respect for the animals around them - both real and imagined. They dominated their landscapes with huge burial mounds of sophisticated construction, burying their horses with elite members of their society. Recent excavations and analyses, led by archaeologists from Kazakhstan, have demonstrated that by looking through a scientific and social lens at what the Saka left behind we can paint a picture of a complex society. We can start to understand how it affected the way people lived, how they travelled, the things they made and what they believed in.00Exhibition: The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, UK (October 2021-January 2022).