Stalinism in Kazakhstan: History, Memory, and Representation 2021933814, 9781793641625, 9781793641632

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Stalinism in Kazakhstan

Stalinism in Kazakhstan : History, Memory, and Representation, edited by Zhulduzbek Abylkhozhin, et al., Lexington Books,

Copyright © 2021. Lexington Books. All rights reserved. Stalinism in Kazakhstan : History, Memory, and Representation, edited by Zhulduzbek Abylkhozhin, et al., Lexington Books,

Stalinism in Kazakhstan History, Memory, and Representation

Copyright © 2021. Lexington Books. All rights reserved.

Edited by Zhulduzbek Abylkhozhin, Mikhail Akulov, and Alexandra Tsay Translated by Simon Pawley and Anton Platonov

LEXINGTON BOOKS

Lanham • Boulder • New York • London

Stalinism in Kazakhstan : History, Memory, and Representation, edited by Zhulduzbek Abylkhozhin, et al., Lexington Books,

Published by Lexington Books An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www.rowman.com

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Copyright © 2021 by The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Library of Congress Control Number: 2021933814 ISBN: 978-1-7936-4162-5 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN: 978-1-7936-4163-2 (electronic) The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Stalinism in Kazakhstan : History, Memory, and Representation, edited by Zhulduzbek Abylkhozhin, et al., Lexington Books,

Contents

Acknowledgements vii Disclaimer ix Introduction 1 Catriona Kelly

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SECTION I:  HISTORY 9 1  Limited Welfare State: On Utopia and Terror in the Third Reich and the Soviet Union Mikhail Akulov

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2  Stalinist Anti-Peasant Repression Policy and Its Implementation in Kazakhstan (Late 1920s–Early 1930s) Zhulduzbek Abylkhozhin

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3  An Episode in the History of the Academy of Sciences of the Kazakh SSR in the Early 1950s Zauresh Saktaganova

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SECTION II:  MEMORY  73 4   Altynshash Yuriy Serebrianskiy

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5  The Winds of Time Dry Out the Grass of Oblivion Ekaterina Kuznetsova

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6  Between Oblivion and Remembrance Alexandra Tsay v

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SECTION III:  REPRESENTATION 125 7  Reclaimed Names Marinika Babanazarova

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9  The Endless Time After: Art as a Medium for Understanding Cultural Memory and Trauma in Post-soviet Kazakhstan Asel Kadyrkhanova

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About the Contributors

199

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8  “Our Camp Grew into a Busy City . . .” The Art of Deportee Artists in Karaganda (Late 1930s–Early 1960s) Guldana Safarova

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Acknowledgments

This book is a collaborative work by many different people representing diverse generations, fields of expertise, and countries. We express our gratitude and appreciation to all the authors of this collection of studies, as well as to the Soros Foundation Kazakhstan for their support in the publication of “Stalinism in Kazakhstan,” and personally to Anton Artemiev, Aida Aidarkulova, Aizhan Oshakbaeva, and Bota Ayazbaeva. This book would not have been possible without the events held as part of the Open Mind project. Many of the lecturers and organizers who took part are also editors of and contributors to this book. We express our gratitude to Saule Suleimenova, Valeria Ibrayeva, Umida Akhmedova, Azhar Dzhandosova, Valeria Korotkova, Valeriy Mikhailov, Zarina Akhmatova, Berik Abdygaliev, Dina Mukhamedkhan, and Yevgeny Zhovtis. Unfortunately, it would not be possible to list all of the friends who helped to organize the series of lectures, “Living Memory,” which formed the basis of this collection. Arslan Akanov, Lena Pozdnyakova, Vitaly Morozov, Alua Suleimenova, Suinbike Suleimenova—you have not only made our work easier, but you also made it very enjoyable. We express deep gratitude to the magician Lilia Kalaus for her linguistic intuition and literary editing of volume in Russian, Abylai Stambayev and Adina Tulegenova for painstaking editorial work on the final version of the texts, and artist Zoya Falkova for the book cover design. A special thanks to Anton Platonov, the translator, and Simon Pawley, the translation editor of the English edition; to Anuar Duisenbinov and Zhuldyz Abdilda for their work on the Kazakh translation, to Timur Nusimbekov for the idea of publishing the book, and to Elzbieta Matynia, professor of Sociology and Liberal Studies at The New School for Social Research. vii

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Acknowledgments

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Last but not least, we would like to thank once again Catriona Kelly, a renowned British scholar, historian of Russian and Soviet culture, and Fellow of the British Academy. Professor Kelly promptly responded to our invitation to give a lecture in the southern capital of Kazakhstan in the middle of the academic semester, and then wrote an excellent introduction for this collection of articles. That is the highest compliment one could hope for. We dedicate this book to our grandparents, because nothing would have happened without them.

Stalinism in Kazakhstan : History, Memory, and Representation, edited by Zhulduzbek Abylkhozhin, et al., Lexington Books,

Disclaimer

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Articles of the book Stalinism in Kazakhstan: History, Memory, Representation in Russian and its translation into English were prepared with the financial support of the Soros Foundation Kazakhstan. The views expressed in this book are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Soros Foundation Kazakhstan. The authors are responsible for the facts, information, judgments, and conclusions contained in the publication.

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Introduction

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Catriona Kelly

From the moment of its creation in 1922, the USSR was both a multinational empire and a state formation founded upon socialist internationalism. This ambiguous identity was perpetuated in the status of the union republics, whose on-paper status as autonomous federal subjects was at variance with the actuality of control from the center. Central Asia, particularly, was a showcase of Soviet modernization, yet also a distant “periphery” subject to much the same condescension, among members of the metropolitan elite, as distant areas of the Russian hinterland. Certainly, at the most egalitarian period of Soviet history, 1917–1927, “Great Russian nationalism” was taboo and serious efforts were made to foster the political, social, and cultural equality of so-called “national minorities” (natsmen’shinstva).1 However, by the late 1930s, under conditions of “socialism in one country” and “friendship of peoples” (druzhba narodov), as symbolized in images of Stalin accompanied by children from the national minorities, such as Mamlakat Nakhangova (usually girls so as to encode obvious subordination), rigid central governance was the norm. The transformation of “populations” (naseleniya) into “peoples” (narody) between 1928 and 1938 (or in the terms of Stalin’s own Marksizm i natsional’nyi vopros, plemena and rasy into natsii)2 represented not just “nation building” and “state formation,” but also an assault on the integrity and rights of Soviet subjects nationwide. But governance from the center endured after Stalin’s death, and the regionalization of the USSR was both belated and partial.3 Khrushchev’s attack on the “cult of personality” at the XX Congress of the CPSU signally failed to mention most repressions against national minorities, apart from the deportations of the Chechens and Balkarians during the War.4 Later discussions of political repression in the Stalin years (most famously, Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag 1

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2

Introduction

Archipelago) also focused on the Russian metropole. Alongside silence, disparaging attitudes towards non-Russian areas of the USSR persisted. In 1963, architects and planners in Leningrad attributed the slow progress that was being made in the production of modern, stylish wallpaper designs to the fact that most of what was made ended up going to “the periphery.” The most popular designs were “Chinese Vase” and “Tobacco Leaves,” and other tasteless confections. “Trade organizations rely on demand from the periphery, which supposedly requires, in deference to national tastes, wallpaper styled like carpets and tapestries, and other downmarket designs.”5 In large measure, understanding of Soviet history’s impact on regions, ethnic minorities in Russia, and the non-Russian republics had to wait until the disintegration of the USSR in 1991. Even then, what Kazakh historian M. K. Koigeldiev has termed “peripheral consciousness” was widespread.6 Not surprisingly, the upsurge of historical writing that followed the USSR’s demise was concerned not just with speaking of formerly repressed experience, but with boosting the development of the successor nations.7 Studies often focused on particular historico-geographic areas (usually identifiable with administrative units of the Soviet period, from republics down to regions and districts of these).8 Investigation of the Caucasus, Central Asia, Ukraine, and (in the postwar decades) the Baltic and Belarus’ by and large proceeded along national lines. The losses are significant, since, as Niccoló Pianciola aptly puts it, “Historiography based on national paradigms, focusing on one single reified ethnic group, tends to entail a diachronic tunnel vision. ‘National history’ and current political predicaments are the narrative contexts framing the understanding of the event studied. This approach does not encourage comparisons and broader contextualisation.”9 It should be emphasised that this criticism applies by no means just to scholars based in the former USSR, but to those outside as well. While researchers based outside the new nation-states are less likely to be signed up in support of nation-building projects, they have their own kind of tunnel vision. Before the USSR collapsed, few were able to pursue sustained research outside the Russian metropole.10 Since the limitations of language and acculturation added to the continuing geopolitical dominance of Russia, the former metropole have marginalized work on what is often vaguely referred to as “Eurasia,” particularly, perhaps, in the Anglophone world. It is notable that the first in-depth study in English of so important an event as the Kazakhstan famine of 1930–1933 appeared only in 2018, lagging behind work by historians from France, Italy, and Germany, as well as those from Kazakhstan and Russia.11 This is all the more regrettable in that, as Sarah Cameron, the author of that study, argued, discussion of “peripheral” areas raises pressing

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Introduction 3

questions about the nature of Soviet rule that are of crucial importance for understanding the historical conjuncture of the time.12 A strength of this new collection edited by Zhulduzbek Abylkhozhin, Mikhail Akulov, and Alexandra Tsay, and devoted to Stalin-era repressions in Central Asia, lies precisely in dialogue between scholars from different intellectual traditions working on different ethnic groups (in Soviet parlance, “nationalities”). These latter include both the “titular nationalities,” such as Kazakhs and Uzbeks, and minorities—Polish deportees and Russian artists in Uzbekistan. There is also sensitivity to the curiosities and quirks of repressive mechanisms in what were not simply parts of the Soviet-wide “periphery,” but also local “metropoles,” with their own further reaches and distant provinces. Thus, Zhulduzbek Abylkhozin’s chapter on collectivization in Kazakhstan highlights not just the exceptional cruelty of the repressions (with destruction of over 90 percent of livestock during the grain collection and sedentarization campaigns), but the specific rhetoric employed by the local leadership in order to justify the assault on local practices. “Don’t overreach—don’t miss any cattle!” (Peregibov ne dopuskat’—parnokopytnykh ne ostavlyat’!) Here, “overreach” (peregiby)—usually employed to refer to excesses in pushing forward the collectivization program—signified precisely the opposite, i.e. the attempt to mitigate livestock confiscations on the grounds that these were undermining the pastoral economy across the republic. Administrators in Kazakhstan remained “dizzy with success” well after Stalin’s Pravda article on 2 March 1930. It is here that, in the context of international famine history, one senses the peculiarity of the Soviet situation. British administrators during the Potato Famine in Ireland were ready to blame the locals (families too big, lazy reliance on one crop), and continued to allow the export of grain because of commitment to the principles of free trade. But this exultation in asset-stripping is a highly specific feature that may, along with geographical features and the targeting of Kazakhstan as an agricultural production area, help to explain the scale of the local tragedy. The severity of control applied not only to the period of forced collectivization or merely in the area of political history. As Marinika Babanazarova’s article demonstrates, in Uzbekistan, repressions against artists on ideological, aesthetic, or personal grounds (or a combination of all three) were particularly severe, leading to the complete disappearance from the cultural scene of such talented and idiosyncratic artists as Vasily (alternatively Evgeny) Lysenko or Aleksandr Nikolaev (Usto Mumin). At the same time, distance from the center did not simply empower administrators, but also individuals. As Babanazarova also argues, the ways in which artworks survived were also peculiar. I. V. Savitsky created in the

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Introduction

provincial Uzbek city of Nukus a museum of international significance by resorting to careful subterfuge, such as the registration of works by famous Leningrad unofficial artist Mikhail Shemyakin under the classification “artist unknown” (n. kh., neizvestnyi khudozhnik). Thus, the preservation of memory may also require the creation of blank spaces. In the case of Vasily Lysenko, this is Savitsky’s deliberate elision from the record of salient facts, from the artist’s actual first name to his time as a political prisoner. This—silence as the price of survival—is one of the ways in which memory can be termed “traumatic,” a perspective developed at length in Asel Kadyrkhanova’s article about the impact of the past in the nebulously defined ‘post-Soviet’ period. “The impact of trauma is, theoretically, endless, and time does not heal it.” The term “post-memory” employed by Marianne Hirsch (for those who have inherited recollections of dire historical events, rather than witnessed them directly) suggests in turn “postgeneration” (postpokolenie), for those united by such distanced response to family and, more broadly, national tragedy. The situation is complicated by the fact that, as Kadyrkhanova points out, Kazakhstan was a site where repressions were enacted upon incomers as well as the local population. To this day, the city of Almaty has an identifiable and well-preserved district of housing originally built for officials of the NKVD. Yet there are intangible memories too, which disappear with the generations. Speaking in 2017 at the final lecture of the series at which some of the material here was presented, I suggested that collecting such memories is a vital task in understanding the past, and that includes embracing their ambiguity. Just as British families (including my own) need to come to terms with evidence of slave ownership generations back, so it is vital for family history in “post-Soviet space” to address the ways in which complicity and suffering are entangled, and perpetrators and victims become difficult to separate. The case of Oraz Zhandosov, who published articles justifying and encouraging expropriations, but who was also co-founder of Kazakh universities and the first director of the National Library, and who was himself judicially murdered in the Great Terror, is a striking example of how histories can be “entangled” within one country, as well as across boundaries. By understanding the pervasiveness of historical pain and its shared nature, we can avoid or mitigate the “memory wars” that champion suffering to national ends, and which have erupted across parts of Europe and Eurasia in the recent past.13 We can also understand, as Mikhail Akulov argues strongly in his article, that the positive features of political repression cannot be separated out and the rest discarded, and that such sifting is traceable to ignorance or self-deception—or at the very least to desperation.14 In a 1989 lecture that later became the lead essay in a 1990 collection, Seumas Heaney spoke of “the redress of poetry.” Northern Irish by birth, he witnessed the ter-

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Introduction 5

rors of history at first hand, and grew up in the fug of competing myths that represented national history at the time.15 Alongside “memory wars,” it is a pleasure to record the “redress” of artists, museum workers, and historians in this book here, and across Central Asia, as they grapple with “the memory of a strict regime” pamyat’ strogogo rezhima and its aftermath.16

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NOTES 1.  See particularly T. Martin, The Affirmative Action Empire: Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1923–1939 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001). This is not to deny the centralist and top-down nature of governance even at this time, as explored in e.g., P. A. Michaels, Curative Powers: Medicine and Empire in Stalin’s Central Asia (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2003); F. Hirsch, Empire of Nations: Ethnographic Knowledge and the Making of the Soviet Union (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005). 2.  “Нация – это, прежде всего, общность, определенная общность людей. Общность эта не расовая и не племенная. Нынешняя итальянская нация образовалась из римлян, германцев, этрусков, греков, арабов и т.д. Французская нация сложилась из галлов, римлян, бриттов, германцев и т.д. То же самое нужно сказать об англичанах, немцах и прочих, сложившихся в нации из людей различных рас и племен.” I. V. Stalin, “Marksizm i national’nyi vopros” (1913), in Stalin, Sochineniya, ii, 292–293. https://www.marxists.org/russkij/stalin/t2/marx ism_nationalism.htm 3.  For an exploration of the contradictions, see R. G. Suny, The Revenge of the Past: Nationalism, Revolution, and the Collapse of the Soviet Union (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1993). 4.  This was explained less by xenophobia than by Khrushchev’s drive for regional consolidation—cf. his address to the Leningrad Party aktiv on 7 May 1954, four days after the Presidium of the Central Committee of the Communist Party passed a decree rehabilitating the victims of the 1949–1950 Party purge—the “Leningrad Affair.” “Postanovlenie Prezidiuma TsK KPSS ot 3 maya 1954 g. po Leningradskomu delu,” in A. Artizov, Yu. Sigachev, I. Shevchuk, and V. Khlopov (eds.), Reabilitatsiia: kak eto bylo. Mart 1953–fevral’ 1956. Dokumenty (Moscow: Demokratiya, 2000), pp. 115–16, 136–142. 5.  “Stenograficheskii otchet Leningradskogo Otdela Soyuza Arkhitektorov SSSR. Zasedane Arkhitekturno-tekhnicheskogo soveta sovmestno s Pravleniem LO Soyuza Arkhitektorov SSSR.” 8 February 1963. TsGANTD [Tsentral’nyi gosudarstvennyi arkhiv nauchno-tekhnicheskoi dokumentatsii], f. 386, op. 1–6, d. 196, ll. 6, 9. For a detailed discussion of attitudes in the Leningrad metropolis to cultures from outside “Europe,” see K. Kelli, “‘Gosti nashego goroda, Migranti v ‘samom evropeiskom gorode Rossii,’” Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie (2014), No. 3 (127). http://magazines. russ.ru/nlo/2014/3/32k.html

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6

Introduction

6. M. K. Koigeldiev, Stalinizm i repressii v Kazakhstane 1920–1940-kh godov (Almaty: no publisher, 2009), p. 12. Koigeldiev also gives other factors for the relatively undeveloped discussion of the past: that there was no ‘archival revolution’ of the sort that happened in Russia during the 1990s, and the lack of appropriate legislation releasing documents into the public domain since.   7.  This is a customary phenomenon in postcolonial societies. In the first decades of independence, the past was mainly used in Ireland also in order to bolster a sense of defining grievance, with historians who argued for a more complex understanding of history accused of “revisionism.” Now, even such a signal national tragedy as the Potato Famine can be discussed in a global context, as in the work of Cormac Ó Gráda (Famine: A Short History [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009]), or the exhibitions of the National Famine Museum, Strokestown, County Roscommon, Ireland, which aim not just to lay out the facts of the Potato Famine but to examine the persistence of famine in the modern world. http://www.strokestownpark.ie/famine/ national-famine-museum/   8.  For a discussion of this in the context of Central Asia, see e.g. S. Abashin, Natsionalizmy v Srednei Azii: v poiskakh identichnosti (St Petersburg: Aleteiya, 2007).   9.  N. Pianciola, “Ukraine and Kazakhstan: Comparing the Famines,” Roundtable on Soviet Famines, Contemporary European History, vol. 27, no. 3 (2018), p. 441. Pianciola’s article is, regrettably, the only article in this exchange that makes a strong case for this comparative approach, rather than rehearsing the usual debates about intentionalism vs. functionalism in the study of the Stalin era. 10. Exceptions included work by social scientists, e.g. anthropologists such as Caroline Humphrey (Karl Marx Collective: Economy, Society, and Religion on a Soviet Collective Farm [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983]), and Bruce Grant (In the Soviet House of Culture: A Century of Perestroikas [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995]), or sociologists such as Susan Bridger (Women in the Soviet Countryside: Women’s Roles in Rural Development in the Soviet Union [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987]). 11.  S. Cameron, The Hungry Steppe: Famine, Violence, and the Making of Soviet Kazakhstan (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2018); I. Ohayon, La sédentarisation des Kazakhs dans l’URSS de Staline, Collectivisation et changement sociale (1928–1945) (Paris: CNRS, 2006); N. Pianciola, Stalinismo de frontiera: Colonnizazione agricola, sterminio di nomadi i costruzione soziale in Asia centrale, 1905–1936 (Roma: Viella, 2009); R. Kindler, Stalins Nomaden: Herrschaft und Hunger in Kasachstan (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2014). Pianciola has also published extensively in English and Russian (see his academia.edu page), Ohayon in English as well as French, and Kindler’s book has been translated both into Russian (Stalinskie kochevniki: vlast’ i golod v Kazakhstane [Moscow: RossPEN, 2017]), and into English (Stalin’s Nomads: Power and Famine in Kazakhstan [Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2018]). This makes all the odder the comment by a leading US historian on the cover of Cameron’s book that hers is “the first scholarly account of the murderous famine of 1930–33,” even if that description is taken to apply exclusively to work by Western scholars.

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Introduction 7

12. Cameron, The Hungry Steppe, p. 15. Further, “While Stalin initiated the brutal policies that sparked the Kazakh famine, he does not appear to have tracked developments in the republic with the same attention he devoted to major grain-growing regions like Ukraine.” Pianciola, on the other hand, argues that material from RGAE points to a high level of central, if not necessarily personal, control over the process of collectivization, and especially in terms of the exploitation of Kazakhstan as a repository of food for cities in the metropolis: see e.g. his mention of “decisions, taken in Moscow in July 1930, about transforming Kazakhstan into a Soviet strategic reserve of meat, to cushion the food and production crisis triggered by collectivization.” N. Pianchola, “Stalinskaya ‘ierarkhiya potrebelniya’ i velikii golod 1931–1933gg.,” Ab Imperio (2018), No. 2, pp. 80–116 (quotation, p. 83). Whichever way, engagement with the question is itself a positive factor. 13.  See e.g. E. Rutten, J. Fedor, and V. V. Zvereva, Memory, Conflict, and Media: Web Wars in Post-Socialist States (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2013); J. Fedor et al. (eds.), War and Memory in Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2017). 14.  For the “desperation” case, see S. Oushakine, The Patriotism of Despair: Nation, War, and Loss (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009). 15.  S. Heaney, The Redress of Poetry (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990). 16.  I take the phrase from a study by a leading expert on memory politics, Nikolai Koposov, whose book, Pamyat’ strogogo rezhima (Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2011) traces the vexed relationship with the Stalinist past in Russia during the late Soviet and post-Soviet period.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY Artizov A., Yu. Sigachev, I. Shevchuk, and V. Khlopov, eds. Reabilitatsiia: kak eto bylo. Mart 1953–fevral’ 1956. Dokumenty. Moscow: Demokratiya, 2000. Bridger, Susan. Women in the Soviet Countryside: Women’s Roles in Rural Development in the Soviet Union. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987. Cameron, Sarah. The Hungry Steppe: Famine, Violence, and the Making of Soviet Kazakhstan. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2018. Fedor, Julie et al., eds. War and Memory in Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2017. Grant, Bruce. In the Soviet House of Culture: A Century of Perestroikas. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995. Heaney, Seamus. The Redress of Poetry. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990. Hirsch, Francine. Empire of Nations: Ethnographic Knowledge and the Making of the Soviet Union. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005. Humphrey, Caroline. Karl Marx Collective: Economy, Society, and Religion on a Soviet Collective Farm. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. Kelli K., “‘Gosti nashego goroda’: Migranti v ‘samom evropeiskom gorode Rossii.’” Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie (2014), No. 3 (127). http://magazines.russ.ru/ nlo/2014/3/32k.html

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Introduction

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Kindler, Robert. Stalins Nomaden: Herrschaft und Hunger in Kasachstan. Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2014. Koigeldiev, M. K. Stalinizm i repressii v Kazakhstane 1920-1940-kh godov. Almaty: no publisher, 2009. Koposov, N. Pamyat’ strogogo rezhima. Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2011. Martin, Terry. The Affirmative Action Empire: Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1923–1939. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001. Michaels, Paula A. Curative Powers: Medicine and Empire in Stalin’s Central Asia. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2003. Ó Gráda, Cormac. Famine: A Short History. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009. Ohayon, Isabelle. La sédentarisation des Kazakhs dans l’URSS de Staline, Collectivisation et changement sociale (1928–1945). Paris: CNRS, 2006. Oushakine, Serguei. The Patriotism of Despair: Nation, War, and Loss. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009. Pianchola, N. “Stalinskaya ‘ierarkhiya potrebelniya’ i velikii golod 1931–1933gg.” Ab Imperio (2018), No. 2: 80–116. Pianciola, Niccolò. “Ukraine and Kazakhstan: Comparing the Famines.” Contemporary European History, vol. 27, no. 3 (2018): 440–444. Pianciola, Niccolò. Stalinismo de frontiera: Colonnizazione agricola, sterminio di nomadi i costruzione soziale in Asia centrale, 1905–1936. Rome: Viella, 2009. Rutten, Ellen, Julie Fedor, and Vera Zvereva. Memory, Conflict, and Media: Web Wars in Post-Socialist States. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2013. “Stenograficheskii otchet Leningradskogo Otdela Soyuza Arkhitektorov SSSR. Zasedane Arkhitekturno-tekhnicheskogo soveta sovmestno s Pravleniem LO Soyuza Arkhitektorov SSSR.” 8 February 1963. TsGANTD [Tsentral’nyi gosudarstvennyi arkhiv nauchno-tekhnicheskoi dokumentatsii], f. 386, op. 1–6, d. 196, ll. 6, 9. Suny, Ronald G. The Revenge of the Past: Nationalism, Revolution, and the Collapse of the Soviet Union. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1993.

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Section I

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HISTORY

The first section of this book highlights concrete historical features of the Stalinist repression policy in Kazakhstan. The articles demonstrate instances of the implementation of repression, both of large social groups (peasants), and of particular categories of the population (representatives of the national intelligentsia). The section opens with a general methodological article examining the logic of mass terror, which was the result not so much of subjective circumstances or Stalin’s individual criminal will, but rather a malign consequence of the intrinsic nature of any totalitarian regime. It is quite fitting to begin this collection with such an introductory article, as a significant part of society continues to have illusions that the evolution of the history of Soviet society could have taken a completely different route, had it not been Stalin, but Lenin or at least some “true Leninists” at the helm. Mikhail Akulov discusses the correlation between the two totalitarian regimes of Nazism and Stalinism in the context of the dialectical logic of the unity of opposites. As is known, the analysis of parallels, symmetries, and equivalences of these two demonic phenomena has long been widely discussed by historians. Many of their characteristics have been studied, revealing both the external and internal essential similarities of the Third Reich and the Stalinist USSR. In the above article, their “kinship” is exposed in the relationship between Utopia and terror. The author specifically argues that the mass terror exercised by these regimes served the implementation of their corresponding Utopias. In Nazi Germany, the utopian phantom was based on the ideological conception of the ‘Thousand-year Reich’ with almost universal lebensraum (‘living space’), for Aryan Germans, while in the USSR, the ideological goal was “a bright communist future.” 9

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Section I

Demonstrating the correlation “Utopia – Terror” on a conceptual level, the author also discusses its concrete historical manifestations. He reveals the guiding principles and objectives of the regimes’ terror practices that were hidden from mass public consciousness in both Nazi Germany and the Stalinist USSR, as opposed to their propagandistic and ideological declarations. The thoughtful reader will notice that the recurring theme in Akulov’s article is the idea that social utopias, having acquired the status of official state doctrine, the highest truth of the state, the absolute ideal, inevitably plunge into mass terror as they are being put into practice. There is a direct cause-andeffect relationship here, the author argues, because when Utopia had evolved into a sacred idea of the state, the regime usurped it and began to exert total control over all the niches of social existence. Such all-encompassing control was necessary to persecute and eliminate all dissenters, not only the real ones but also those the regime considered potential dissenters and even the imaginary ones, i.e., those who fell under this category either based on self-serving denunciation or mere guesses, explained in terms of “class instinct” or “racial instinct.” Yet the fight against any threat to Utopia (largely imaginary or constructed by propaganda) spread to encompass entire communities—“states with corrupt liberal democracies,” social classes, groups, and strata, religious confessions, ethnicities, etc. Such is the toll taken by the fanatic mass faith in Utopia, its logical and, it should be added, tragic outcome. It is known that in the last period of his “leadership,” Stalin had openly, i.e. without bothering himself with sophisticated ideological casuistry and casting away the propagandistic disguise, laid bare the national-Bolshevist credo of his regime. Its ideological (and therefore practical) orientation towards state ethnocentrism, vulgar nationalist patriotism, and overt anti-Semitism became evident. It is clear that the “new” ideological and propaganda clichés significantly expanded the arsenal for the deployment of the further repressions. Along with the old and tried scarecrows, familiar to the “public ear” (“enemy of the people,” “class enemy,” “socially unfit element,” “Trotskyite,” “spy,” “vermin,” etc.), there were accusations (for example, against cultural workers and scientists of Kazakhstan) of “idealizing the feudal tribal system, glorifying of khans and bais, obscuring the class struggle in the pre-revolutionary Kazakh aul, promotion of bourgeois-nationalistic and anti-Russian views,” and also “concealing of one’s bai origin,” “sympathies and connections with AlashOrda members,” etc. Zauresh Saktaganova, using understudied and as yet unpublished archival documents, examines the episodes in which stigmatization was instrumental in driving the political persecution of Kazakh elite scientists. The author draws particular attention to the fact that these inherently repressive cam-

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History 11

paigns were initiated from within scientific institutions. Simply put, they were instigated by voluntary informants, political opportunists, mediocrities, and malicious enviers, who sought to secure charters of immunity from the regime at the cost of a bargain of Judas. The author identifies them by name, and this is probably the right thing to do, because the public should know not only the heroes but also the antiheroes of those years, in order to learn the lessons of history. It was these people, driven by their unjustified, jealous, and morbid vanity, who tirelessly repeated their evil libel to Moscow, to the Central Committee of the CPSU, instigating political persecution campaigns in the republic. They targeted and directed their “ideological fire” against such prominent scientists as academics A. Zhubanov, S. Kenesbaev, A. Bekturov, I. Galuzo, and A. Margulan. Other well-known scientists were involved in the so-called “Bekmakhanov Case” that was also founded on such denunciation. Kanysh Satpayev, President of the Academy of Sciences of KazSSR, an undisputed and authoritative leader of Kazakhstani scientific community, was a full member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR at that time, which made his persona an obvious target for the accusations from other scientists and his scientific associates (the slanderers and snitches eventually achieved their goal, and Satpayev was removed from the post of President of the Academy of Sciences of the KazSSR as an undesirable). Therefore, Saktaganova mainly discusses the persecution of Kanysh Satpayev and his staunch opposition to the regime’s pressure machine. Zhulduzbek Abylkhozhin traces a series of socio-economic and political actions carried out by the state in the aul and the countryside of Kazakhstan. All of those, in one way or another, essentially amounted to anti-peasant terror. Yet, the author demonstrates that the Stalinist regime’s loud and militant articulation of “socio-class” ideological casuistry could not conceal its utilitarian and pragmatic agenda. Namely, its goal was to eliminate the most massive potential opposition to the regime—embodied in the peasantry—by transforming it into a “subjugated class” of state-directed day labourers (by way of collectivization and dekulakization), while obtaining convenient and conflict-free channels for the regime to siphon the product of the peasants’ labour to cover the needs of forced industrialization (collective farms). Zhulduzbek Abylkhozhin

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Chapter One

Limited Welfare State On Utopia and Terror in the Third Reich and the Soviet Union Mikhail Akulov . . . in revolution the springs of popular government are both virtue and terror: virtue, without which terror is deadly; terror, without which virtue is impotent . . .

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Maximilien Robespierre1

The inherent dynamic logic of dialectical thinking culminates in the unity of opposites. The relation between National Socialist Germany and the Stalinist Soviet Union represents the most vivid 20th-century illustration of this rule, a relation that had a tragic impact on the lives of tens of millions of people and defined the nature and content of the whole era. These two regimes, classified as “totalitarian” while still active (although, unlike Italian fascism, they both demurred from this classification), were sworn enemies not only rhetorically. Their confrontation was bound to escalate into a life and death struggle, since it was the physical destruction of the enemy that both Stalin’s Bolsheviks and the Nazis viewed as the most substantial, concrete objective of the tectonic shifts hidden beneath the surface of their revolutionary slogans. We could elaborate further: both the USSR and, in particular, Germany viewed the enemy as a symbol of that final frontier of history, the crossing of which exemplified the promise of a transition into the promised ahistorical space of Utopia. Offering meaning to the very existence of the Third Reich and the USSR, Utopia should serve as a starting point in comprehending the profound kinship of these regimes. There is no doubt that the versions of Utopia proposed by the Nazis and Bolsheviks were distinct, presenting in certain aspects examples of polar opposites. However, the external differences could hardly mask the regimes’ consensus regarding the critical role of terror as a practice—or “as a technique”2—in the realization of their utopian visions. The 13

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Chapter One

mystery and “mysteriousness” of totalitarian terror consisted precisely in the fact that it could not be comprehensively explained either as an element of struggle against real dissent or as a mechanism of prevention based on the instilment of permanent fear. The violence practiced by Stalinism and Nazism offered a whole set of tools for the social engineering carried out by the regimes: from the sterilization of the “racially inferior” and the expulsion of the “socially harmful elements” from capital cities to deportations, the Gulag, and death camps. Terror was, therefore, the flip side of Utopia, subordinate in theory to the internal mechanics of the latter. In practice, however, given the supra-rational, quasi-religious nature of Utopia, terror was Utopia in its very “empirical,” “practical,” and “lived” form. Terror was its body and soul, although cushioned with foam buffers of meaningful words and exalted slogans. There is no reason, moreover, to see in the instrumentalization of terror Stalin or Hitler’s evil will alone, as a kind of deadly “epiphenomenon” of history that led to a complete distortion of the original idea. Rather, squeezing the real into the mould of the ideal, terror was simultaneously revealing the essence of the totalitarian Utopia as the rationalization of life which had spun out of control and was gravitating towards irrationality. By definition, Utopia is an overcoming of history, not so much a place outside the frontiers of the discovered (as its name suggests), but rather time outside the ordered scale of events. In all fairness, it should be noted that the Nazis and Bolsheviks took different positions with respect to history. Compared to Bolsheviks, the National Socialists represented a cross-section of the whole of German society to a far greater extent, and as such they could no longer trust history, not to mention have faith in it.3 That faith had, in the most recent past, led Germany into the World War, with its disastrous consequences: the country’s attempt to break the “long-standing” hegemony of Franco-Anglo-Saxon civilization ended not with a victory of the German spirit prompted by its advanced science, dynamically developing economy, technical and cultural achievements, but with the loss of the chief attributes of Germany’s imperial status.4 It turned out that the neighbouring states, hitherto judged as worn out by the burden of historical responsibility, were more than capable of fierce resistance and, most importantly, of self-sacrifice so characteristic of youthful nations believing in the future. Worst of all was that the post-war Germans believed they perceived the symptoms of weariness in Germany itself. Thus, it was in this alarmist spirit that German demographers and doctors were interpreting reports on the declining birth rates, the growth of sexually transmitted diseases, and the general moral decay of the Weimar society.5 Intellectuals, those “generalizers” of widespread, though vague, popular sentiment, echoed the opinions of field experts while throwing some apocalyptic colour in the mix. Likening himself to Tacitus, the most promi-

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Limited Welfare State 15

nent among them, Oswald Spengler, announced “The Decline of the West,” meaning primarily Germany and the Germans, who had forgotten the virtues of their ancestors and turned into callous, hedonistic, and sterile inhabitants of the global metropolis. Pessimistic forecasts and the lack of faith in history created the fertile soil from which sprouted the alternative Nazi solution. Inspired by Darwin and Nietzsche—or rather, by vulgarized interpretations of their ideas—the Nazi Utopia entailed a way out of History by the mere fact of supplanting History and its conceptual apparatus with Nature. Necessity superseded Freedom, the universality of humanity was deemed debunked by the never-ending struggle of sundry groups for survival (and domination), and Mankind itself, as an ethical category, was being crowded out by quasi-biological concepts plucked from Linnean taxonomy. At heart of the process of forging Utopia stood the immortal body of the racial community (Volksgemeinschaft).6 It needed “rejuvenating,” “improving,” “consolidating” by excising “Harmful elements,” and simultaneously raising the effectiveness of “racially fit elements.” With carefully selected measures, the National Socialists had to prepare the volk for the inevitable war with hostile forces—potentially, with all the forces situated on the other side of the biological frontier. As a principal component of this process, the confrontation would have two phases. At first, the “racial community” of the renewed Reich would need to survive the blockade expected to be worse than the dire months of the British politics of attrition during World War I. Then, with the siege lifted, it would acquire enough “living space” to lay the foundations for life in the eternal natural cycle of racial production and reproduction. Only the limitless interest-free credit of faith that the Bolshevik Party issued to history was comparable to that pessimism of the Nazis. To be sure, this historical optimism was built upon Marxist teleology, which guaranteed its adherents the inevitable coming of Communism and the victory of the global proletarian revolution. The revolutions and coups of 1917 demonstrated the viability of these predictions and indirectly rehabilitated the world war, dubbed “imperialist” by Bolsheviks. The complex of the vanquished which plagued German society had little place in the newly formed Soviet Union. Moreover, as an essentially conspiratorial and “elitist”/“avant-garde” organization untroubled by the need to justify its right to rule democratically, the Bolshevik Party experienced no compunction interpreting in a positive light the unprecedented economic devastation and archaization of society brought about by the Civil War: clearing space of the remnants of the old world for future gigantic constructions, the war broke the conventional boundary of the morally permissible. The Bolshevik version of Utopia contained a paradox: a direct consequence of the movement of the masses along

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Chapter One

the main highway of History, Utopia should have been at the same time an unparalleled and unprecedented experiment. No longer troubled by conventional ideas of the possible, the means of enforcing such utopian order had to be unprecedented as well. It would be reductionist if one explained the differences between the Nazi and the Bolshevik vision of a post-historical Utopia only through the difference in their relationship to history itself. The racial community that offered mechanisms to overcome class and social estate divisions was a project available only to the Germans, and not to all of them, for that matter. The fundamental postulates of the Nazi Utopia stressed not only the uniqueness and superiority of the Germans, but also their natural destiny to become the dominant race; as such, their universalization was ruled out.7 On the other hand, despite Stalin’s insistence on the need to build socialism in one country, the Soviet model was conceived “with an eye” toward export. Similar factors shaped the vision of the “new man” destined to populate the utopias constructed by the USSR and the Third Reich. Although both the Nazis and Stalinists viewed their “new mаn” as decisively rejecting “liberal-bourgeois” ideals, in the Soviet Union he was extolled as a future standard for the rest of the world—as an embodiment of true, socialist humanism. The man of the “New Order” that the Nazis sought to establish in Germany and abroad mostly resembled a conquistador, a selfless devotee to the cause of the German colonization and defender of the borders of the German colonial Empire. Despite the shared veneration of muscular masculine and emphatically sensual feminine bodies, the two regimes put forward different requirements to the “soul.” Thus, while the Soviet “universalism” stressed the need to conduct relentless “self-improvement,” the Germans were enjoined to set up “limits to compassion” to prevent the latter from interfering with strict adherence to the racial imperative.8 Thus, diverging attitudes to history and, particularly, to modernity as its culmination underlay the differences in the vision of Utopia by the Nazis and Bolsheviks. Nevertheless, those differences touched on details; at their root, the utopian programs advanced by the regimes were guided by a single goal: namely, the goal of creating a specific type of welfare state. Striving to overcoming the sempiternal conflict between the rank and file (“society”) and the leading political class, a welfare state in theory arrogated to itself the task of addressing critical social questions—from initiating public discussions to their final resolution. Paramount among those questions was the question of the rational distribution of essential goods among the broad mass of the population. Given the limited availability of resources, the flipside of distribution was the issue of accessibility, that is, the elaboration and enforcement of the “priority” principle in the consumption of these resources. It had to be deter-

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Limited Welfare State 17

mined who and in what sequence had the right to queue for their share of the “public good,” and who could not be admitted to the queue under any pretext. A few important remarks are in due order. Firstly, although neither the Nazis nor Bolsheviks invented the idea of a welfare state, it still retained an appeal as an attractive innovation both to the former as they came to power, and even more so to the latter when they seized control of their country. In the case of the Soviet Union, the scale of the foundational work for a comprehensive social policy was indeed unprecedented. The Germany of the Weimar Republic, prior to the Nazis, was a self-proclaimed social state; the problem, however, stemmed from the lack of financial resources, which curbed the government’s ability to implement social programs, thereby extending the long list of complaints against the republican system. The idea of the welfare state, however, avoided becoming compromised. Secondly, the transition from design to implementation of a welfare state became possible thanks to the development of technical means used by the state for the mobilization of the populace, as well as to the growth in importance of social sciences in defining society as a unified objective reality. It is difficult to say which came first: was it the increased role of the state in managing social affairs which fuelled scientific research, or did the undeniable success of science create an additional air of legitimacy around the state and governmental measures? It is evident that from the second half of the 19th century, social policy and social sciences became ever more entwined, influencing each other in profound ways. Thirdly and finally, notwithstanding the scientific or science-like language used in describing the social policy, prior to World War I one could hardly speak of generally recognized, thoroughly formulated objectives of a welfare state. Neither could one speak of any consensus regarding the most appropriate means for achieving those objectives: Victorian liberalism still lingered in public consciousness, feeding a robust antipathy to socialist, if not social, programs. As a result, the Bolsheviks and the Nazis enjoyed a certain latitude both in defining the goals of their social Utopia and in devising means for achieving it. On the other hand, the society to be transformed was already caught within the “grid” of social sciences. From the perspective of civil servants (as well as “public figures”), society consisted not so much of individuals, but of social categories with their specific characteristic and defined boundaries. Yet, in contrast to autonomous medieval guilds and estates, their existence could no longer be conceived separate from the social whole, just as the existence of an organ or limb cannot be thought outside of a body. This allowed the semantic link “society-body” to be established no longer as a mere metaphor, but as a reflection of the objective state of the human collective.9 As a result, the general approaches to administering society had to stem from its very “corporeality,” displaying thus features of a therapeutic and prophylactic nature.

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18

Chapter One

The paradigm of the body applied to society allows us to grasp better the “aesthetic” component of Utopias. After a series of interventions and measures, a society, which was to enjoy the benefits of a welfare state, saw itself resembling an ancient statue characterized by a homogenous “material” composition and ideal proportions. In the racist ideology of the Nazis, the aesthetic ideal had been openly proclaimed as one of the leitmotifs of social reformation. Emerging before the Nazis came to power, population categories were declared as either having racial value or as being racially inferior (minderwertige) depending, in many respects, on their contribution to the stylization of reality after a national-socialist fashion. Undeniably “Aryan” qualities, no longer held up to genealogical criteria only, but also to much more tangible formal requirements, had to emanate from faces, bodies, streets, and even landscapes of Germany. Confirming unswerving commitment to their aesthetic ideas, the Nazis created a category outside categories—the so-called “asocials,” a sort of German “untouchables” encompassing all those considered “ugly” (both physically and morally): beggars, vagabonds, homeless people, “psychopaths,” alcoholics, prostitutes, pimps, “sexual perverts,” and others.10 Nazi propaganda used “visual aids” among other methods to justify the absolute biological threat allegedly embodied by the Jews. Educated to think racially, Germans were taught to discern the absolute “anti-aesthetic quality” of the Jewish “type,” all the more pernicious because it might have struck one as attractive.11 On the other hand, with aesthetics trumping “biology,” some representatives of inferior races could be granted the right of further “full-blooded” participation in the racial community (Volksgemeinschaft); thus, thousands of Polish children deemed sufficiently “Aryan” in their appearance were abducted from their parents and handed over to German families for further upbringing.12 Although not so overtly, the Stalinist Utopia was also receptive to aesthetic arguments. Still, while Nazi aesthetics revolved around the notion of form and proportions, in the Soviet Union the aesthetic ideal manifested itself through attachment to symmetry and uniformity.13 In the first place this concerned city planning and urban space as the main arena for building socialism. Planning and the norm were measures of beauty; chaos and deviation from the norm became synonymous with ugliness. The general plan for the reconstruction of Moscow, designed to give the capital the character of a properly functioning mechanism (ridding it of the traces of the systemless past), is a clear illustration of this.14 The raids and purges carried out in large cities against the so-called “socially harmful” elements provides another, no less clear, although not publicized, illustration. The targeted included the socalled “disenfranchised” (lishentsy), dekulakized, individuals “not involved in socially useful work,” and former convicts and their family members.15

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Limited Welfare State 19

Aesthetic considerations seep through the decision to introduce passports in 1932. To be sure, passports gave a tool to control mass migration caused by the shocks of industrialization; of paramount importance was the desire to curb the influx of peasants trying to shield themselves from the famine by fleeing to cities. The exhausted and at times delirious refugees had to be kept outside lest they became a reminder of the disastrous failures of Stalin’s “revolution from above” by desecrating the “great construction sites” with their presence. Walter Benjamin argued that in the age of technological reproducibility of a work of art fascism ends up aestheticizing politics, whereas communism reacts to it by politicizing art.16 In the final analysis, however, the difference between the end and the means turned out not so great: politics and aesthetics were closely intertwined in the utopian plans of totalitarian regimes, producing an amalgam which did not fit into Benjamin’s binary analysis. This could be noted in the fact that any of the groups persecuted for purely “political” reasons (for not being reliable enough) was simultaneously subjected to “deaesthetization”—in other words, dehumanization and demonization. A mere comparison of Nazi anti-Semitic posters or illustrated proclamations against the “racially inferior” (minderwertige) with depictions of “kulaks” in Stalin’s Soviet Union demonstrates the role of the image in mobilizing the population and their sentiments. Looking at such posters, one no longer saw human beings, but rather nonhumans, monsters, humanoid spiders, nightmares that had leapt from the pages of grotesque fantasies, stirring in the viewer nothing but disgust. Not unlike the racist worldview, a class-based perception of reality showed rare efficacy in endowing the “other” with tangible and at the same time repulsive characteristics.17 The Bolsheviks and the Nazis, operating akin to surgeons on the public body, acted upon its separate parts primarily through the aid of available “social categories.” Along with the positive measures of granting certain privileges to specific groups, their policies aimed at political neutralization, legal exclusion, and, later, the physical extermination of other groups. Such approaches justified the use of terror as the main “surgical” tool in the implementation of ambitious social projects by both regimes. Since the Jacobins, political terror had been a widely used tool in the hands of both revolutionaries, who acted under the pretext of protecting the interests of the Revolution, as well as counter-revolutionaries, yearning to retaliate for the “atrocities” of the former. Still, in the nineteenth century, the arsenal of repressive measures used against the civilian population remained scarce. Moreover, terror, whether of a revolutionary or counter-revolutionary “White” nature, was applied within narrow time limits—until the establishment of the revolutionary government or restoration of peace in the country.

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Chapter One

The First World War and the ensuing Russian Civil War (sweeping as it did through the regions of Eastern and Central Europe)18 gave a new powerful impetus to the development of terror. Along with “traditional” shootings and exiles, the list of terror practices extended to include public campaigns to demonize entire classes of the population (“spy mania” against the Galician Ukrainians in Austria-Hungary),19 mass deportations of politically “unreliable” ethnic communities from the contested borderlands into the deep interior (the expulsion of Jews and Germans in the Russian Empire in 1915), and finally the partial or total physical destruction of entire peoples under the pretext of their pacification and struggle against the external enemy (actions of the tsarist troops in Semirechie in 1916; Armenian genocide in the Ottoman Empire). The nature of Terror had changed too; Terror brought the war to the home front, thereby creating the conditions for the adoption, implementation and eventual normalization of radical measures against the populace. Operations to eradicate the so-called “bandit” element in Ukraine and the Tambov province, ethnic cleansing in the Caucasus, anti-Jewish pogroms, and the decossackization campaign in the Don and Kuban regions demonstrated the ever-stronger connection between terror and social transformation.20 The novelty of such “pre-emptive” terror stemmed from the fact that its victims included not only individuals suspected of hostility to one of the warring parties, but entire groups found guilty, figuratively speaking, of the fact of their existence: characteristics ascribed to them automatically turned them into harmful foreign bodies. It is also important to note that during the Civil War in Russia, all warring parties were resorting to “pre-emptive” terror; the Bolsheviks distinguished themselves from their opponents, the White or the Makhnovists, “only” in the consistency and scale of violence and not, as is commonly believed, in some qualitatively different use thereof. The terror of the Civil War preceded the terror of the interwar period, integral to the new world construction. The fact of using terror in relatively peaceful times should not be surprising. Undoubtedly, military threats both internal and external served to justify in 1914 and then in 1918 the use of terror as a method of population management. However, during the years of crisis, terror succeeded in crystallizing into functioning bureaucracies and institutions, primarily in the form of the Cheka (Soviet secret police), and later the OGPU in the USSR. In this manner terror evolved into a practice independent of a wartime emergency. Or, to be precise, having changed, matured in the time of war, terror had changed the war itself. From now on, calm at the borders or absence of internal armed opposition to the regime could no longer count as symptoms of peace. War had become a permanent, if latent, condition underscoring the existence of totalitarianism: it filled every cubic meter of public (and personal) space with alarmist spirit, tense anticipation,

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Limited Welfare State 21

and manic suspicion. Following a peculiar, self-contained logic, terror at once became the alpha and omega of war with no beginning nor end; this was one of its functions. Extraordinary utopian projects called for an extraordinary situation beyond any legal or moral restraint: the state of war provided such a situation better than anything else. There is no need to give a detailed account of the radicalization of the Nazi regime or the evolution of the Soviet Union towards the sanguinary paroxysms of the late 1930s. Yet it should be emphasized once again that in the atmosphere of immanent war, global economic crisis, and autarchy, the Nazis and the Bolsheviks—both planners and builders of social utopias—were turning increasingly towards negative selection. The Nazis began with the sterilization campaign, unprecedented in scale in recent history, of Germans who were considered “genetically unfit” for a future racial paradise; sterilization was followed by forced euthanasia of hospital patients; in its turn, euthanasia, having demonstrated in the words of the historian Peter Fritzsche the “limits of compassion,” became an important milestone on the way to “The Final Solution.”21 In Stalin’s state, “removal” (for this was precisely the term used in secret circulars and reports) of the “hostile” element from the public body was carried out through mass deportations, arrests, executions, and, of course, famine. The National Socialists viewed Jews as the absolute enemy of their racial Utopia. In the Soviet Union the role of the demonized class befell so-called “kulaks.” It is therefore not surprising that their destinies—those of individuals and entire social categories pulverized by the repressive apparatus of the state—were similar in many respects. Both were first stripped of civil rights, becoming at once defenceless outcasts. Between 1930 and 1932, in the wake of Stalin’s injunction to “eliminate the kulaks as a class,” about 1.8 million peasants were deported into the “kulak exile.” In 1932, only “1.3 million people” were registered as living in “special settlements”—the rest had either perished or fled.22 Mass deportations of Jews from territories controlled by the Third Reich began with the invasion of Poland in 1939. To this end, the Germans established the Governor-Generalship in central Poland and western Ukraine, which turned into a massive ghetto for European Jewry. In 1937, after issuing Order No. 00447, the NKVD moved on to the phase of active physical destruction of “former kulaks.” The original quota of 85,000 executions was exceeded by four times by the end of 1938, which accounted for more than half of all death sentences handed down in 1937–1938.23 The transition from deportations to the extermination of Jews roughly corresponded to the outbreak of the Soviet-German War in 1941. Five and a half million people fell victim to the Holocaust. There were other parallels. As already noted, the boundaries of the racial community as the primary beneficiary of Nazi programs were determined

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Chapter One

according to aesthetic and biological parameters. These underscored the rationale of ethnic terror—namely, of the violence directed against groups at the lower rungs of the Nazi racial aesthetic-biological hierarchy. Surprisingly enough, in the state of “victorious internationalism” that the Soviet Union claimed to be, ethnic violence was paramount. As it turned out, the same enemy could have both class and national markers. This became especially clear during the NKVD mass “national” operations in 1937–1938 against the Poles (over 80,000 executed), Germans (about 40,000 executed), Latvians (about 17,000 executed), Finns, and others. Soviet deportations of peoples accused of collaborating with the external enemy were comparable in scope to those of the Nazis. From 1937 to 1944 about three million people were exiled under the “national policy,” of which 900,000 were Germans and half a million Chechens and Ingush.24 Moreover, the methods of resettlement employed especially in the case of the latter, as well as the conditions of exile, allow one to speak of a full-scale genocide.25 No doubt, the differences in terror practices of the Nazis and the Communists were significant and are crucial for understanding the nature of the regimes and their utopian projects. The Nazi violence was to some extent closer to an ideal-typical terror surgically applied to the collective body to create a consummate racial community; save for the last year of the war, persecutions affected the groups excluded from the racial community. In other words, Nazi terror remained “impersonal” and “nameless,” which partly explains why many of the Nazi instigators of massacres followed Eichmann in admitting that they harboured no hatred towards the Jews. Unlike the Nazis, the Bolsheviks practised a terror policy which combined violence against specific individuals with group violence against representatives of specific social categories. Show trials unfolded against the backdrop of secret courts and mass-scale operations, hidden from public view, against the kulaks, socially harmful elements, “mercenaries” from sundry foreign intelligence services, etc. This coexistence of individual terror and group terror, mapped against the mix of publicity and secrecy, requires explanation. For a long time, historians, deluded by Stalin’s stratagem, believed they had discerned in the Moscow trials and their immediate repercussions Stalinism’s main act. However, placed within the overall figure of arrests and executions, bloody purges in the ranks of the Bolshevik’s “old guard” fade in comparison with the scale of the “kulak operation” or the “national operations.” It is more likely that they, rather than “exposures” of various “Trotsky-Zinoviev-Bukharin” centers, constituted the main storyline of Stalin’s Terror. Events publicized on the frontpages of major newspapers complete with ominous confessions of former Leninist comrades-in-arms and popular demands for swift retribution

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Limited Welfare State 23

were part of a sideshow serving to mobilize society and maintain a tense atmosphere of wartime urgency. Show trials provided Stalin and his entourage with leverage to control the upswing in general hatred; in that manner the Bolshevik leadership protected itself from the virtually uncontrolled escalation of violence, which marked the last years of the Nazi regime. For the same reason, the secret mass-scale operations could not become public knowledge, and neither could the short period of relaxation and limited rehabilitation associated with the replacement of Yezhov by Beria.26 The party monopolized the right to plan out the utopia, jealously guarding its exclusive right to Terror as one of the most effective means of achieving it. Arguably, the emergence of the camp system or, as David Rousset put it, an entire Univers concentrationnaire,27 stands for the most concrete result of the implementation of negative selection in building the social Utopia. In theory, camps in Germany and the Soviet Union represented less Utopia’s seamy side than its denial, a space sequestered from the rest of the world, which contained whole strata of the population “removed” from the social body. If Utopia as the overcoming of history was construed in timeless categories, then, following this logic, the camp anti-Utopia was in its essence ephemeral. This became especially clear in the Nazi colonial empire, where “extermination camps” (Vernichtungslagern) were emerging with the radicalization of the plans for annihilation of the “racially inferior”; tellingly enough, these camps were slated to disappear along with their last prisoners, and indeed, some of them (Sobibor, Belzec, Treblinka) had been liquidated long before the arrival of the Red Army regiments. Veritable “death factories,” these camps “produced” nothingness, turning living bodies into the dead, and then the dead into ashes scattered in the vicinity of cremation furnaces. In the imagined future the preservation of material traces of mass murders in the form of bodies or buildings was associated with the risk of history returning, which ran counter to the intention of resolving history once and for all inscribed in the minds of the Nazi builders of Utopia.28 Soviet camps were different from Nazi concentration camps in their relative “longevity.” Established by the decisions of the Council of People’s Commissars in 1930, the Gulag quickly became a major economic institution, a reservoir for an army of millions of slaves. Deprived of freedom and of rights to enjoy the benefits of Soviet society, camp inmates were still beholden to contribute to Stalin’s version of socialism, especially in regions with strategically important resources like nickel, cobalt, gold, and wood.29 Industrialization, which transformed prisons into an “NKVD economic empire,”30 also predetermined the system’s end. Just as its emergence had been, the dismantlement of the Gulag operation was in line with economic calculations demonstrating the system’s increased inefficiency. Like the

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Chapter One

Nazi death camps, which coincided in time with the most radical phase of the racial Utopia, the Gulag, having outlived the Kremlin’s master only by a short while, set the time limits to the period of the intensive construction of Stalin’s new world. This is by no means accidental. The camps exemplified the denial of Utopia, that promised life in an uncertain, transcendental future, but were at the same time, a vivid reflection of immanent reality. They were not simply “products” of the era of radical social experiments, but rather the microcosms of those societies that the Nazis and the Bolsheviks intended to transform so drastically. The work of the Gulag prisoners on projects meant neither to serve the present nor to be economically profitable—does this phrase not capture the life and work of the majority of Soviet citizens on the other side of barbed wire? Determining the ordinal position of camp inmates in the queue for their deaths, the racial hierarchies limned out the boundaries of the right to life and reproduction within the Nazi Volksgemeinschaft.31 The camps and the population outside did not lose the internal connection, and the more vague and distant the outlines of Utopia appeared, the more detailed were the directives for social abscission, the more intense was the work of Stalin’s “troikas,” and the faster was the movement of the trains bringing their cargo to the terminal stations of “the final solution.” The camp world became a synthesis of utopian thinking and terror practices. Nazism and Stalinism were not capable of more than that. On the other hand, what if the camps, contrary to the assertion made above, were, in fact, an embodied Utopia? Formally, they corresponded to descriptions of a new, transcendental reality: bereft of elements of chaos, irrationality and chance, human settlements followed the strictest routine, where even death often came on schedule. Most important was that fact that, in contrast to the societies inherited from the decadent, backward past, the social classification in camp communities—be it a “kulak” element or biologically unfit race—became a means of total control over fundamental aspects of every single life. It can be argued that the Bolsheviks and the Nazis created a camp anti-utopia based on their one-sided ideas about society. It can also be argued, following Hannah Arendt, that totalitarian regimes transformed reality in such a way that it became proof of the fiction they promoted.32 If so, the camp reality was the truth of their utopian fiction. Although this may sound schematic, both Stalinism and Nazism represented an endeavour of “ordering” the world. The very concept of order ​​ as reducing the “real” to the confines of the rational implies selectivity: the regimes held on to some elements that confirmed or reflected the imaginary world order and discarded others that conflicted with their totalitarian vision. This accentuates a necessary connection between future utopian plans and the

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Limited Welfare State 25

negative selection in the present. There is something strange, therefore, in the duality of historical memory in modern Russia capable of separating the positive aspects of Stalin’s social policy from the bloody terror that accompanied it. One simple question then remains: what is it, ignorance or self-deception?

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NOTES   1.  M. Robespierre, ‘Discours du 18 pluviôse an II,’ L’Institut d’Histoire de la Révolution Française, аccessed Oct. 20, 2020, https://ihrf.univ-paris1.fr/enseignement/outils-et-materiaux-pedagogiques/textes-et-sources-sur-la-revolution-francaise/ robespierre-discours-du-18-pluviose-an-ii/. Translation by the author.   2.  Р. Holquist, “State Violence as Technique: The Logic of Violence in Soviet Totalitarianism,” in David L. Hoffmann (ed.), Stalinism: The Essential Readings (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2003), pp. 129–158.   3.  P. Fritzsche and J. Hellbeck, “The New Man in Stalinist Russia and Nazi Germany,” in M. Geyer and S. Fitzpatrick (eds.), Beyond Totalitarianism: Stalinism and Nazism Compared (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), p. 313.   4.  On lost imperial “attributes,” see H. Jones, ‘The German Empire,’ in R. Gerwarth and E. Manela (eds.), Empires at War, 1911–1923 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014).   5.  D. L. Hoffmann and A. F. Timm, “Utopian Biopolitics: Reproductive Policies, Gender Roles, and Sexuality in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union,” in Geyer and Fitzpatrick (eds.), Beyond Totalitarianism, p. 92.   6.  D. Peukert, “The Genesis of the ‘Final Solution’ from the Spirit of Science,” in D. F. Crew (ed.), Nazism and German Society, 1933–1945 (London: Routledge, 1994), p. 284.   7.  In this regard, the absence of National Socialists at the international conference of fascists in Montreux in 1934 is interesting and significant. The organizers, Mussolini in the first place, believed that the racism of the Nazis made them ineligible for the “Fascist International.” See S. Payne, A History of Fascism, 1914–1945 (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1995), p. 232.  8. P. Fritzsche, Life and Death in the Third Reich (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2008), pp. 89–96.   9.  Peukert, “Genesis of the ‘Final Solution,’” р. 293; Holquist, “State Violence as Technique,” р. 135. 10.  C. Gerlach and N. Werth, “State Violence–Violent Societies,” in Geyer and Fitzpatrick (eds.), Beyond Totalitarianism, p. 143. 11.  Hellbeck and Fritzsche, “The New Man,” p. 329. 12.  Hoffmann and Timm, “Utopian Biopolitics,” pр. 109–110. 13.  Holquist, “State Violence as Technique,” р. 136. 14.  On the relation between utopia, terror, and Moscow’s reconstruction, see K. Schlögel, Terror und Traum: Moskau 1937 (Nördlingen: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 2011).

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15.  Gerlach and Werth, “State Violence–Violent Societies,” р. 139. 16.  W. Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” in Illuminations: Essays and Reflections, trans. by H. Zohn, ed. by H. Arendt (New York: Schocken Books, 1968). 17.  Holquist, “State Violence as Technique,” р. 152. 18. This gives historians reasons to speak of the European Civil War. See M. Mazower, Dark Continent: Europe’s Twentieth Century (New York: Vintage Books, 1998), pp. 10–13; and the editors’ introduction in R. Gerwarth and J. Horne (eds.), War in Peace: Paramilitary Violence in Europe after the Great War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). 19.  Spy mania triggered repressions against the civilian population; during the first months of the war, the Austrian authorities sentenced about 30 thousand inhabitants of Galicia and a comparable number of Serbs to death on suspicion of espionage for Russia. See J. Leonhard, Die Büchse der Pandora (Munich: Verlag C. H. Beck, 2014), p. 187. 20.  See F. Schnell, Räume des Schreckens: Gewalt und Gruppenmilitanz in der Ukraine, 1905–1933 (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition Institut für Sozialforschung, 2012); J. Baberowski, Der Feind ist Überall: Stalinismus im Kaukasus (Munich: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 2004); P. Holquist, Making War, Forging Revolution: Russia’s Continuum of Crisis, 1914–1921 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002). 21. Fritzsche, Life and Death in the Third Reich, p. 118. 22.  M. Lewin, The Soviet Century, ed. by G. Elliot (New York: Verso, 2005), p. 125. 23.  Gerlach and Werth, “State Violence-Violent Societies,” p. 142. 24. J. Baberowski and A. Doering-Manteuffel, “The Quest for Order and the Pursuit of Terror: National Socialist Germany and the Stalinist Soviet Union as Multiethnic Empires,” in Geyer and Fitzpatrick (eds.), Beyond Totalitarianism, p. 223. 25.  Gerlach and Werth, “State Violence–Violent Societies,” p. 160; Baberowski and Doering-Manteuffel, “The Quest for Order,” p. 224. 26. Lewin, Soviet Century, р. 112. 27.  See Asel Kadyrkhanova’s chapter in this volume. 28.  Baberowski and Doering-Manteuffel, ‘The Quest for Order,’ pр. 194, 200. 29. Lewin, The Soviet Century, р. 117. 30.  Ibid, рp. 113ff. 31.  Baberowski and Doering-Manteuffel, “The Quest for Order,” р. 220. 32.  H. Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, new edn. with added prefaces (San Diego: Harcourt Brace, 1985), p. 350.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Arendt, Hannah. The Origins of Totalitarianism. New Edition with added prefaces. San Diego: Harcourt Brace, 1985.

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Limited Welfare State 27

Baberowski, Jörg. Der Feind ist Überall Stalinismus im Kaukasus. Munich, Germany: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 2004. Baberowski, Jörg and Anselm Doering-Manteuffel. “The Quest for Order and the Pursuit of Terror: National Socialist Germany and the Stalinist Soviet Union as Multiethnic Empires.” In Beyond Totalitarianism: Stalinism and Nazism Compared, edited by Michael Geyer and Sheila Fitzpatrick, 180–227. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Benjamin, Walter. “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” In Illuminations: Essays and Reflection. Translated by H. Zohn, edited by H. Arendt. New York: Schocken Books, 1968. Fritzsche, Peter. Life and Death in the Third Reich. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2008. Fritzsche, Peter and Jochen Hellbeck. “The New Man in Stalinist Russia and Nazi Germany.” In Beyond Totalitarianism: Stalinism and Nazism Compared, edited by Michael Geyer and Sheila Fitzpatrick, 302–341. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Gerlach, Christian and Nicolas Werth. “State Violence–Violent Societies.” In Beyond Totalitarianism: Stalinism and Nazism Compared, edited by Michael Geyer and Sheila Fitzpatrick, 133–179. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Gerwarth, Robert and John Horne, editors. War in Peace: Paramilitary Violence in Europe after the Great War. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2012. Hoffmann, David L. and Annette F. Timm. “Utopian Biopolitics: Reproductive Policies, Gender Roles, and Sexuality in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.” In Beyond Totalitarianism: Stalinism and Nazism Compared, edited by Michael Geyer and Sheila Fitzpatrick, 87–129. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Holquist, Peter. Making War, Forging Revolution: Russia’s Continuum of Crisis, 1914-1921. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002. Holquist, Peter. “State Violence as Technique: The Logic of Violence in Soviet Totalitarianism.” In Stalinism: The Essential Readings, edited by David L. Hoffmann, 129–156. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2003. Jones, Heather. “The German Empire.” In Empires at War, 1911–1913, edited by Robert Gerwarth and Erez Manela, 52–72. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2014. Leonhard, Jörn. Die Büchse der Pandora. Munich: Verlag C. H. Beck, 2014. Lewin, Moshe. The Soviet Century. Edited by Gregory Elliot. New York: Verso, 2005. Mazower, Mark. Dark Continent: Europe’s Twentieth Century. New York: Vintage Books, 1998. Payne, Stanley, A History of Fascism, 1914–1945. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1995. Peukert, Detlev. “The Genesis of the ‘Final Solution’ from the Spirit of Science.” In Nazism and German Society, 1933–1945, edited by David F. Crew, 274–299. London, New York: Routledge, 1994.

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Robespierre, Maximilian. “Discours du 18 pluviôse an II.” L’Institut de la Révolution Française. Accessed Oct. 20, 2020, https://ihrf.univ-paris1.fr/enseignement/ outils-et-materiaux-pedagogiques/textes-et-sources-sur-la-revolution-francaise/ robespierre-discours-du-18-pluviose-an-ii/ Schlögel, Karl. Terror und Traum: Moskau 1937. Nördlingen: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 2011. Schnell, Felix. Räume des Schreckens: Gewalt und Gruppenmilitanz in der Ukraine, 1905–1933. Hamburg: Hamburger Edition Institut für Sozialforschung, 2012.

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Chapter Two

Stalinist Anti-Peasant Repression Policy and Its Implementation in Kazakhstan (Late 1920s–Early 1930s)

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Zhulduzbek Abylkhozhin

Despite their slogans about the “union of the workers and peasants,” the Bolsheviks regarded the peasantry as an opponent of the proletariat in the class struggle. Stalin openly stated that the class struggle in the village, waged by the proletariat, was far from being directed exclusively against the exploiters. “Wouldn’t it be right to call the general contradictions between the proletariat and peasantry a class struggle? . . . Isn’t it obvious that the proletariat and peasantry are now two major classes in our society, and that there are contradictions . . . , causing the clash between these classes?”1 But was it like that in reality? It is known that any society is a constellation of small and large social groups, extending from families and, for example, production brigades to classes, confessions, or ethnoses. This fact alone suggests that any society represents a multitude of interwoven contradictions arising from material and ideological interests of various social groups. These interests, which are not stable or constant, but subject to variation under different conditions therefore, cannot coincide unfailingly and universally, even in theory. In other words, every society inherently generates potential conflict. However, the existing societal contradictions only create the possibility of conflict; they are far removed from its full expression and are certainly not identical to class struggle, as Stalin interpreted it. The function of power structures is to use an arsenal of socio-economic and political regulatory means to try to prevent these contradictions growing into full-fledged structural conflicts, and especially taking on violent forms. The state is an instrument for balancing diverse public interests as a prerequisite for its equilibrium and stability. Maintaining such equilibrium is an extremely delicate art of state policy. 29

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But Stalin, following his ideological predecessors, saw the state as a machine of suppression. Hence his admiration not for Alexis de Tocqueville or, say, Abraham Lincoln, but for such practitioners of state tyranny as Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great, in whose actions he saw a basis for his “absolution” before the court of future generations, which he hoped would see the justification of his criminal acts in the logic and context of the history of the Russian “troubled” times. (Unfortunately, we can still observe the echo of Stalin’s hopes in occasional manifestations of today’s collective consciousness, when some people continue to condone the acts of “their leader and teacher.”) It should be kept in mind that it was at that time that Stalin made a claim to the theoretical development of Marxism-Leninism, proposing the thesis of “intensification of the class struggle in concert with the development of socialism.”2 On this occasion, the party’s revered theorist Nikolai Bukharin spoke ironically at the joint plenum of the Central Control Commission and the Central Committee of the Communist Party (in April 1929):

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According to this strange theory, the further we progress towards socialism, the more difficulties we will have to overcome, the fiercer the class struggle will become, and at the very gates of socialism we should have to . . . start a civil war. . . . The theory . . . advances a thesis that the sooner the classes die off, the more intense the class struggle will become, and it will flare up when there are no classes left whatsoever!3

This sarcastic remark of Bukharin at the plenum provoked laughter in the hall (according to the transcript). However, it was Bukharin, not Stalin, who proved to be the political amateur in this case. While the “Right Deviationist” continued to think naively within the framework of the abstract ideals of Marxism-Leninism, Stalin based his “theory” on the pragmatic categories of the totalitarian state. And the essence of such a theory is the suppression of all dissent, the prevention of any deviation or divergence from the imposed ideological matrix, in considering the legitimacy of the actions of the authorities. Such prevention was considered the prime condition for the regime’s preservation. To keep up “appearances” of the socialist tradition, the crackdown on dissent (whether it manifested in a different lifestyle, social or ethnocultural stereotypes, or even normal behaviours) was labelled as “class struggle.” This seemed quite practical, as it did not require any sophisticated ideological justifications and labels: “class enemy” was enough. (It was not long before a more categorical and universal stigma appeared— “enemy of the people.”) Bukharin was wrong to ridicule Stalin. It is precisely with the construction of socialism (in the Bolshevik interpretation) that the totalitarian system realizes its final form, and, consequently, practices of violence and control over

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Stalinist Anti-peasant Repression Policy and its Implementation in Kazakhstan 31

individuals and society spread like cancer metastases throughout the entire social body, affecting every single cell.

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COLLECTION OF GRAIN The leader’s theory was implemented during the administrative—in essence, terrorist—anti-peasant repression campaigns of the Stalinist regime in the late 1920s and early 1930s. These began to take shape in the course of emergency grain collection campaigns. Due to the state monopolization of industry, high prices were imposed for industrial goods, while the purchase prices for agricultural products were extremely low. As a result of the emerging price disparity, peasants were significantly overtaxed. The difference in prices for manufactured goods and agricultural products determined the severity of this burden. The money gleaned by this overtaxing, which was nothing short of a tribute paid to the ruler, was to be invested in industrial development. This artificially created “gap” between the prices for industrial and agricultural goods, or “goods famine,” i.e. an acute deficit of consumer goods, and subsequent inflation caused rural producers to refuse to sell their products to the state. Peasants who had stocked grain lost all incentive to trade at giveaway prices. Due to the “goods famine” and the high cost of manufactured products, one could buy almost nothing with the little money earned from selling the grain. Saving money was no option either because of the unrelenting inflation. These factors combined gave rise to the grain collection crisis of 1927–28. In Soviet historiography, it was interpreted unfailingly as the result of a kulak bread strike, incited by well-off and counter-revolutionary elements in the village to starve the dictatorship of the proletariat. In fact, it was a natural economic reaction of peasant producers to the power politics. To avoid outright conflict, the state took advantage of an extensive arsenal of economic measures and levers. Thus, it was possible (as suggested by some members of the opposition) to soften the application of the rigid pricing policy towards the countryside. The government, however, was unwilling to deviate even slightly from the Leninist tenets with regard to procurement prices. As is well known, during War Communism (1918–21) the leader taught: “If we double the prices, they [i.e. well-off peasants and kulaks] will say: they have raised prices, they must be hungry, we should wait for another raise. It is a thorny path of pleasing kulaks and profiteers—easy to travel down, imagining a bright image of the future.”4

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Chapter Two

Stalin followed suit and insisted on precisely the same approach to the conflict with the peasantry: “It is better to push kulaks and squeeze bread surpluses out of them . . . than spend the currency we have saved for the import of equipment for our industry.”5 Thus, the leader thought it was “better” to persecute millions of peasants than to betray the “principles” of the nascent “revolver-camp” administrative policy. It was a natural choice since the regime had a powerful and well-established repressive apparatus, i.e. a far-reaching network of punitive agencies. Soon, the state of “emergency” would come to be employed as a means of accomplishing anything the state required, which resulted in grain collection campaigns in the form of direct expropriation, followed by mass political persecution of the peasantry. Stalin personally opened the “bread front” in Siberia during a visit lasting almost three weeks (January–February 1928). His speeches in Novosibirsk and Omsk (18, 27 and 28 January 1928) emphatically insisted upon the broad application of Article 107 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR.6 Previously, this article carried a punishment for “malicious overpricing as a result of buying up, concealing, or withholding goods from the market” (i.e. it asserted the right of the state to administratively interfere in the operation of the New Economic Policy that was then in effect). The law’s enforcement was radically adjusted in the course of the grain collection crisis. From January 1928, it began to apply mainly to those in possession of grain, “who refused to give up the surplus at state purchase prices, as well as speculators.” Article 107 provided for imprisonment of up to one year with full or partial confiscation of property, and up to three years in prison with full confiscation of property if the perpetrators entered into a conspiracy.7 Thus, to make manifestly illegal actions appear legitimate, the System had to apply the Criminal Code with finesse (Articles 107, 61, 73, 102, 127, 135, 60, etc., of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR and then to Articles 5810, which provide for punishment for counter-revolutionary activity). At the same time, Stalin took on the role of the leading proponent of law and order and, at a meeting of the Moscow organization of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks (April 1928), hypocritically condemned “a few cases of perversions of the policy [grain collection] affecting above all . . . the poor and middling, as well as misuse of Article 107, etc.”8 Whilst cynically advocating for the strict observance of the law, the Central Committee sent out classified directives with demands to increase the pressure. In early January 1928, it circulated a new directive, which ended with a direct threat to the leaders of party organizations “in case they do not achieve in the shortest possible time a decisive improvement in grain collection.”9 As it always was with the System, political actions drew the ideological support of a powerful propaganda machine. Therefore, it was no accident that

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Stalinist Anti-peasant Repression Policy and its Implementation in Kazakhstan 33

newspapers were full of slogans like “Besiege the kulak!,” “Press kulaks once again!,” “Let us push kulak bastards harder!,” “Attack the class enemy!,” “Death to bread hoarders!,” “If you hide bread, you go to prison!,” “Death to kulaks and landowners responsible for the famine!,” etc. At that time, the information reports of the organizational department of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee (VTsIK) showed peasants’ utter disenchantment with government policy, which was increasingly moving away from the ideology of the NEP, which had sought to compromise with farmers. At numerous gatherings, peasants openly stated: “It is necessary to allow free grain trade so that everybody has something to eat, or the Bolsheviks will starve us to death,” “There is no purpose in developing agriculture, because the government will stifle us with taxes,” “Better Lenin than Leninism. The best communists have been killed or died. There are only bastards left,” “The Soviet authorities have reimposed serfdom,” “The average man is ruined, while the poor and lazy get benefits at his expense,” “Workers have become bourgeois, and peasants are the sheep that are being fleeced,” “The Soviet authorities have pressed peasants worse than under the old regime. We should not help such authorities,” etc.10 The most severe administrative terror was unleashed during grain collection campaigns in the Kazakh village—the aul. From the very outset, the cattle procurement campaigns were conducted in the violent mode of the period of War Communism. The procurement targets were determined by the plan, which, as it turned out, was based on falsified data on the number of available cattle, as the more or less reliable figures (the taxation records of the People’s Commissariat of Finance) were marked up each time they were passed from one bureaucratic authority to another (this was justified on the grounds that the financial authorities had not accounted for the purportedly large number of cattle that were concealed to avoid taxation). Such additions and crude voluntarist planning resulted in regional estimates that significantly exceeded the actual number of available livestock. A characteristic example is the Balkhash district, which had 173,000 cattle, but received a procurement plan for almost 300,000.11 Soon the regional authorities were dealing with complaints. Few of them were answered. A rare response would offer nothing more than sophistry. For instance, Zeinolla Toregozhin (Deputy Commissar for Procurements) reported that his balance sheet calculations showed that cattle breeding in the republic would likely collapse due to the existing targets for procurement. The answer immediately followed in the form of a belligerent article in the party’s official magazine, Bolshevik of Kazakhstan: The submitted balance sheet . . . demonstrated the essence of right-wing, opportunist, mechanical methodology, coupled with theoretical helplessness and

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Chapter Two

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complete misinterpretation of Marxist-Leninist dialectics. . . . The author seized on the quantitative decline in the numbers of livestock. The latter is a fact. But the insidious deviationist misses the significant economic and political changes behind this fact. . . . The external, superficial aspects of the events have prevented this short-sighted empiricist from seeing the actual advancement of socialism.”12

“Brainwashing” yielded results. And soon, the slogan “Don’t overreach— don’t miss any cattle!” came to define the campaign. Moreover, 25–30 rams at a farm looked like a mark of the “super-rich,” by the standards of visiting procurement officers. However, given the conditions of the nomadic mode of production, such livestock numbers were just a bare minimum. But this fact was not taken into account, leaving farmers with at best two to three sheep, which pushed them to the brink of survival. Auls suffered similar lawlessness when they were made, under the guise of public interest, to fulfill procurement plans for other kinds of agricultural products. Thus, to carry out “shock” wool procurement, farmers were forced to shear the sheep in the middle of a harsh winter in many places, inevitably leading to massive losses of livestock. There were numerous cases when, in search of grain, procurement officers came unexpectedly to agricultural auls and literally beat it out of farms with minimal crops. Even meagre amounts of grain, which were peasants’ sole means for survival, were seized from them. Contrary to any logic, mandatory grain procurement plans were extended to farms in purely livestock-raising areas. In fear of being labelled saboteurs, these farmers were forced to exchange their cattle for grain and then give it away to keep up with the imposed procurement schedule. For example, cattle breeders of Iliysk and Chokpar districts had to exchange a sheep for 15 pounds of grain, and a horse or an adult camel for 160 pounds. All farms in these same districts were also expected to come up with 1 kg of old felt and provide it to procurement officers; those who did not have it had to buy felt to be able to comply. During the procurement of salvageable waste and wool in Dzhetygarinsky district, representatives of regional authorities made farmers cut horsetails, and Kazakhs who opposed this measure were given pork instead of lamb.13 Here is another procurement campaign case from one of the districts of Southern Kazakhstan, as recounted by an eyewitness: “They [the authorities] summon a citizen and tell him to give up grain. He says he has none. Then they pour water into his high boots and make him stand outside through a freezing winter night. . . . A pregnant woman comes to the headquarters, and they request that she give up grain. She doesn’t have it. They beat her up, and she has a premature birth right there at the headquarters.”14

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Stalinist Anti-peasant Repression Policy and its Implementation in Kazakhstan 35

Thus, procurement campaigns in Kazakhstan turned out to be large-scale anti-peasant repressions. As many as 56,498 villagers were subject to criminal proceedings during this period, of whom 34,121 were convicted. Case files from three districts alone (Akmolinsk, Petropavlovsk, and Semipalatinsk) show that over 23 million rubles in fines and confiscated property were collected in 1928–29 and 1929–30. During these years, authorities expropriated 54,000 head of livestock, 630,000 puds (10,320 tons) of grain, and 258 buildings of various types.15 At the closed session of the bureau of the Kazkraikom (Kazakh Regional Committee) of the Bolshevik Party, which took place on January 2, 1930 party secretary Filipp Goloshchekin reported that in the course of procurement operations from October 1, 1928 to December 1, 1929 125 people were sentenced to death by the courts, and 152 executed by OGPU in the same period.16 On the other hand, the leaders of the republic could report that Kazakhstan provided 33 percent of the Soviet Union’s procurements of wool, 20 percent of animal leather, 17 percent of wheat, and 10 percent of meat (1928–29). Cynically, these boastful reports to high authorities were published in a newspaper column under the heading “Stimulation of the Goods Economy.”17

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DE-NOMADIZATION The significant destruction of the life support system of the Kazakh ethnos was brought about by Stalin’s policy of compulsory conversion of nomads and semi-nomads to settled forms of economy and life. The ideology of sedentarization, as well as the prospects for mass collectivization of the aul, were closely linked with changes to economic activity and lifestyle. In other words, the party saw the progress of the Kazakh peasantry in the state-organized transformation of the cattle-breeding economy into sedentary farming or stationary livestock farming. Ideologically, this campaign was meant “to put nomadic and semi-nomadic Kazakhs on the path to cultural and social progress.” At the same time, authorities ignored the fact that the predominance of nomadic and seminomadic cattle breeding among Kazakhs was in no way a product of “cultural backwardness.” As a matter of fact, this type of economic and cultural activity did not stem from the “inherent conservatism and backwardness of Kazakh people who do not know agriculture,” as ideological newspapers promoting the unfolding campaign often put it, but from the objective historical evolution precisely determined by the specific conditions of the ecosystem. Arid space, which

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covered most of Kazakhstan, was an extreme environment which required particular forms of adaptation. Nomadic livestock breeding was one such form, which turned out to be the only one that could be effectively integrated into the arid ecological niche, which, to emphasize once again, occupied most of the territory of Kazakhstan. Only by the elaboration of a specific, i.e. ecologically adequate, nomadic method of production was it possible to utilize vast desert, semi-desert and steppe lands and thus adapt to them socially. Numerous scientists and skilled workers at the time tried to make clear the absurdity of the government’s planned action to “settle” the stockbreeders. For example, the famous researcher Sergei Shvetsov wrote in his 1926 article “Nature and Daily Life in Kazakhstan”:

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The nomadic life, which is characteristic of most of Kazakhstan, has survived to this day here not because the Kazakhs and the Kazakh economy are primitive or have not yet reached the cultural level of sedentary organization. This ridiculous and harmful prejudice should have been discarded long ago. . . . Only nomadic cattle breeding and economy can be practical in the dry steppes with rare and scarce water sources, because the vegetation in such places is scant, and cattle can feed on it only for a relatively short time, being forced to move from place to place for grazing, sometimes over vast distances. . . . If this periodic movement of cattle goes away, Kazakhs will have nothing to do out there [in the steppe], since no other type of farming is possible, and the steppe, which now provides sustenance to millions of Kazakhs, will turn into a desert. . . . One should not be surprised by the fact that Kazakhs have kept a nomadic way of life to this day. What we should marvel at is how they managed to use nomadism to master the dry waterless steppe and use it consistently for economic purposes.18

However, expert arguments faded in the ruling party offices, whose “occupants” had already launched another “Bolshevik battle” with “ignorant backwardness.” Around 182,600 nomadic and semi-nomadic cattle farms or about one million people had been forced into a “settled” lifestyle in Kazakhstan by 1933.19 Why ignore the opinions of specialists, who opposed the policy of mass sedentarization, and portray them as “striking evidence of bourgeois contempt for the huge potential of the revolutionary energy of the masses,” or “abetting Kazakh landowners,” and so on?20 The reason for this is that the way of thinking and reasoning of “resisting scholars and abstract idealist practitioners” (as they were dubbed in newspapers and at party meetings) did not meet the pragmatic goals of the System. And these goals were (at least at the initial stage) very far from those proclaimed in propaganda, and later mechanically disseminated by Soviet historiography. The latter repeated this refrain: helping nomads to take the road to social and cultural progress in the shortest time was the sole driver of the campaign.

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Stalinist Anti-peasant Repression Policy and its Implementation in Kazakhstan 37

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But was it so? And if not, what was the initial impetus for launching the campaign at the turn of the 1920s and 1930s, and why did the authorities stress its urgency at that particular time and not earlier or later? As already mentioned, the so-called grain problem became critical in the context of the plans for accelerated industrial development. Ensuring essential food supply for the millions of workers and clerks employed in industry, as well as the booming urban population during industrialization, had become a challenge. But most importantly, purchasing technological equipment for industrial modernization (which, from the beginning, was based on importsubstitution) without a significant increase in grain production also became a problem. It had to be paid for in foreign currency, which, given the limited export structure, was chiefly obtained in exchange for grain. Meanwhile, the world economy was entering a crisis, which resulted in a slump in grain prices. Therefore, to obtain the volume of currency required to support industrialization, it was necessary to increase sales of grain across the border. In 1926, the export of grain from the USSR amounted to 0.1 million tons. In 1929, this rose to 1.3 million; in 1930, 4.8 million; and in 1931 (despite the extremely poor harvest), to 5.2 million tons.21 Thus, the demand for grain was continually rising. The regime started pushing for the maximization of crop production areas. Therefore, they even pressed those regions where various possible costs and complications (economic, social, natural, etc.) made the so-called push for grain impractical. Fulfilling the plan was critical, and increasing the acreages was the only option. Therefore, the Stalinist leadership suddenly became interested in the vast lands of the east of the country. Reports were promising. For instance, People’s Commissar of Agriculture Yakov Yakovlev spoke from the rostrum of the XVI Communist Party Congress: According to calculations . . . 50 to 55 million hectares of land in Kazakhstan can be considered suitable for sowing, of which about 36 million hectares are located in the northern oblasts . . . : Aktyubinsk, Kustanaisk, Petropavlovsk, Akmolinsk, Pavlodar, Semipalatinsk. Wheat crops are currently taking only 5% of the total arable area. If we sow 30% of these 36 million hectares with wheat, then we will get additional 8–10 million hectares of wheat, with an average yield of 6–7 hundred kilograms per hectare by the end of the five-year period in Kazakhstan alone.22

Such “rosy prospects,” however, were “overshadowed” by the fact that these “suitable-for-sowing” lands were developed by nomadic and semi-nomadic herders, who had used them as pastures for centuries. In other words, the System’s plans hit an “obstacle” in the form of a traditional nomadic livestock breeding.

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It is well justified to state that at that time (the turn of the 1920s–1930s), the steppe nomads with their specific mode of production came into collision not so much with the logic of industrial development or other objective conditions as with the government policy of the all-out expansion of grain production in the name of the breakneck pace of industrialization. The resolution of the conflict was seen in forcing the nomads and semi-nomads in all “arable areas” into settled forms of agriculture and lifestyle, i.e. the transformation of cattle herders into farmers or “cultured livestock keepers.” Firstly, this would free up new land areas (i.e. pastures) for grain crops, and secondly, it would create economic agents from former herders to cultivate the crops. As it was stated then, the “settling” “would provide state farms with up to three hundred thousand new workers.”23 The decrees adopted by the VII Congress of Soviets of the Kazakh ASSR on the report of the People’s Commissariat of Agriculture are quite revealing. In particular, this resolution: “The development of grain farming in the region is primarily hampered by the problem of “settling” semi-nomadic and nomadic populations in Northern Kazakhstan and some areas of Southern Kazakhstan. The expansion of areas under cultivation should be achieved through . . . de-nomadization of the Kazakh population in all parts of the republic, suitable . . . for the development of grain production.”24 The peak of the anti-peasant repression policy was the mass collectivization of agriculture, which was enforced using administrative and coercive means. By 20 February 1930, there were 6,722 collective farms in Kazakhstan, which comprised 441,931 households, or 35.3% of the total. Cattle-breeding areas were subject to expedited collectivization. The ideological formulation was presented by Goloshchekin as early as the V Plenum of the Kazakh Kraikom (Communist Party Committee) in December 1929. The Resolution of the Plenum read: “By all means . . . to stimulate the collectivization of livestock farms to keep pace with grain farms.”25 The beginning of the kolkhoz (collective farm) movement was not the peasants’ initiative, as propaganda tried to depict it. Direct pressure was evident. Formally declared principles of voluntariness and legality were ubiquitously violated from the very start. There are many documents describing village gatherings where collectivization agents, instead of asking the question, “Who wants to join a collective farm?,” were playing with a revolver as they threateningly inquired: “Well, who here is against collectivization?!” If there was still no “goodwill” among the peasants to part with their “bourgeois” private property, the implementation of other “educational” measures ensued. Deprivation of voting rights, threats of eviction from the district of residence or preventive arrests were typical and widespread.

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Stalinist Anti-peasant Repression Policy and its Implementation in Kazakhstan 39

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There are summary reports describing such sophisticated and sadistic methods of “collectivization” as the execution imitation (a person allegedly sentenced to death was shot several times above the head, which, of course, drove the victim mad), undressing in the cold, convoying barefoot in the snow through the village, being forced into an ice-hole, etc. The peasant resistance movement emerged as a response to forced collectivization. In the autumn of 1929, violence broke out in Bostandyk district of Syrdar’ya okrug, Batbakara and Naurzum districts of Kostanay okrug, Balkhash district of Alma-Ata okrug, and Irgiz district of Aktobe okrug. In the spring of 1930, peasant revolts swept through Ziryanovsk, Ust’-Kamenogorsk, Samara, Shemonaikhinsk, Katon-Karagay districts of East Kazakhstan, Sarysu and Suzaksky districts of Syrdar’ya okrug, etc. According to classified OGPU communiques, more than four hundred armed insurgencies had been recorded in Kazakhstan by that time, and in OGPU reports they were characterized as “kulak-bai armed bandit attacks.”26 OGPU militias conducted brutal executions of the insurgents without trial. They were shot dead on the “grounds” of being local residents, or part of a particular family, or, they said, “the hands smelled of gunpowder.” They even used artillery against peasants. Despite these measures, the protest movement gathered pace. On March 31, 1930, the leadership of Kazkraikom sent Stalin a telegram with the request to allow the engagement of regular army units in punitive operations.27 The authorities were scared, as is evident from the confidential letter of the Central Committee dated April 2, 1930. It said: The information received in February about mass peasant disturbances in the Central Black Earth Region, in Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Siberia, and Moscow oblast revealed a situation that can be characterized as threatening. If we had not taken immediate action then . . . , we would now have a huge wave of peasant demonstrations, the best part of our “grassroots” workers would have been beaten to death by peasants . . . and our internal and external politics would have been compromised. . . . Despite the crucial directives from the Central Committee regarding this issue . . . flagrant mistakes have still not been dealt with . . . This has drawn close attention from the Central Committee . . . to the gravity of the situation. . . . The appearance of rebel movements . . . in several Ukrainian districts, in the mountainous areas of the North Caucasus and in Kazakhstan clearly indicates the dangerous aggravation of the political situation in the village. . . . The thoughtless proposals to engage Red Army units in the fight against mass demonstrations in the village could not only exacerbate the situation but lead to a decline of morale in the army. . . . The cause of collectivization and socialist construction in general is in danger. . . .”28

The harsh tone of the letter threw some cold water on the enthusiasm for collectivization. The looming political crisis forced a slowdown in the collective farm campaign. The peasantry took advantage of this right away.

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649,400 peasant households in Kazakhstan (52% of the total) had been collectivized as of April 1, 1930; by June only 353,900 (28.5%) remained in collective farms. Thus, the percentage of collectivized farms almost halved overnight. About 300,000 peasant households left (or, in other words, escaped). The number of collective farms dropped from 7,019 to 5,701 during this period.29 But soon the “collectivization machine” amped up to overdrive again, rapidly gathering pace. The December (1930) Plenum of the Central Committee and the Central Control Commission of the Communist Party set new tasks for the collectivization campaign for 1931. According to its decisions, no less than 50 percent of peasant farms were to be collectivized in grain-producing areas of the second group, of which Kazakhstan was part. The Plenum also defined the concept of “blanket collectivization.” The criterion was the 80% mark. In September 1931, 96 out of Kazakhstan’s 122 districts met the 50% threshold set by the party, and 72 of them could be formally referred to as “areas of blanket collectivization,” because they achieved the 80% target.30 The level of communization of cattle-breeding collective farms exceeded all reasonable limits. Forceful orders from state administrative bodies, including the Kazkraikom, promoted a broad interpretation of the collectivization process. The decree of one of the plenums reads: “In cattle-breeding and livestock-agrarian areas, we should work towards complete communalization of all commercial stock within collective agricultural enterprises.”31 To work in this direction, for example, the Turgai farmers set the task of “communization of all livestock, not leaving a single goat for individual use.” Others thought this measure not radical enough, and they decided “to transfer the cattle of one collective farm to another to eradicate the small-proprietor mentality of the collective farmer” (from district directives). The “Bolshevik attack on petty-bourgeois property” was soon to bear fruit. By February 1932, 87% of collective farms and 51.8% of sole farmers in Kazakhstan had lost their livestock completely.32 Where did all the livestock go? Being 100 percent communized, it was gathered onto so-called commercial collective farms. More often than not, this grand title was conferred upon a section of the steppe fenced with pickets and lariat ropes. Yet one should remember that, as Kazkraikom would point out, collectivization was aimed at the “creation of large-scale stock-raising farms.” And this was understood as a mechanical merging of several hundred farms within a radius of 200 or more kilometres into a single giant collective farm. In Korday district there were a lot of agricultural artels, uniting 600–800 households; in Keles district the initial 112 collective farms were merged into 35; in Arys district 67 agricultural artels comprised 138 former farms; 300–400 farms of Talas district were driven to the so-called town-

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ships.33 Clearly, in such malformed groupings, there was no possibility of adherence to the main principle of the ecosystem of nomadic production— precise (symmetrical) correlation between the number of livestock and water and grazing resources. Yet new economic officers showed little interest in this. In defiance of local knowledge, they encouraged any type of concentration. However, the destruction of the existing system of production, based on the principles of reasonable concentration and dispersion (spatial scattering to provide for the proportionate use of natural resources), was not replaced by any technologically feasible alternative. The moment of reckoning followed these absurd decisions promptly. Herds that gathered in huge concentration pens on collective farms had insufficient space to graze and so perished. Also, the livestock sequestered as part of the procurement campaign often did not reach the consumer, due to lack of forage and to outbreaks of epizootic diseases related to the overcrowding, which is why gigantic burial grounds appeared along the cattle-driving paths. So it was through collectivization that Stalin’s Leviathan mastered the “brilliant” tool of unhindered and unbridled “siphoning” of goods from the agricultural sector. It was only natural that such plunder would stir resistance among the collective farmers. Many of their leaders at that time had not yet fully realized that the forced introduction of the artel form of agricultural production (on collective farms) was primarily an instrument for the convenient and conflict-free “expropriation” of farm products for the needs of industrialization. Life did not, as Stalin hypocritically phrased it, “become better, [or] . . . become more joyous.” They did not yet come to grips with the idea that public granaries were not to be regarded as a tool for enhancing the collective farm economy or a factor in improving the material well-being of agricultural workers, but rather as a transit depot for grain export sales to raise currency and to feed industrial recruits. Therefore, initially, there were many who naively tried to appeal to reason. For example, the bureau of the Mendygarynsk district Party Committee had long objected to the procurement goals forwarded to them by the Regional Party Committee. When the pressure increased, the secretary of the Regional Committee said: “In this case, I’ll take every last dough trough, strip the collective farms to the bone, and they will run away.” Another district committee (Karabalyk) reported: “These crippling plans have completely disrupted the economy. Collective farmers, both poor and middling, have no prospects of normal life. We pushed away the collective farmers and they are now leaving us.”34 The Regional Committee’s reaction to numerous reports of procurement being conducted by means of terror was unequivocal: “All this is no more

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than subversion and the persistence of individualistic mentality.” Speaking in August 1931 at the Alma-Ata City meeting of party activists, Goloshchekin launched into the following tirade:

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Some regions give lower yields, which presents certain difficulties we will have to deal with. However, the problem is not the reduced yield, but the fact that such a reduction has engendered subversive sentiments, panic, and disorientation. If District Executive Committees, District Committees, and party cells, create panic and start to produce archaic “bread and forage” balance sheets [calculations showing the impracticability of grain procurement plans], then there is an obvious obstacle to the mobilization of collective farms and their ability to perform an essential task . . . fulfilling the grain collection plan.

Then he habitually swapped cause and effect and shifted blame to others, warning the regional party “lobbyists” of severe consequences: “Such district committees, secretaries, and party cells spreading panic must be fought against in a tough, Bolshevik manner, and we will consider every such alarmist to be a disruptor of the construction of socialism.”35 The “Bolshevik Fight” soon led to the removal of one third of collective farm chairmen. Secretaries of Party District Committees were also “purged.” For example, a newly appointed secretary was expelled from the party while still en route to the district he was entrusted with, because he had been reported saying: “I’m not going to collect grain for the state at the expense of collective farmers’ lives.”36 When it became clear that the complaints on the local level were regarded in the halls of power as “manoeuvres of capitulatory opportunism” and were of absolutely no consequence except for adverse reaction, farmers resorted to subterfuge. To hold onto at least some grain for their subsistence, collective farmers purposefully omitted field strips near roads, borderlines and ditches when harvesting, under-cleaned grain containers, let some grain go to waste with chaff, left wheat heads in the fields, used intentionally misadjusted threshers to get wheat heads to mix with the straw, and so on. However, the time-tested method of state terror was reenergized, and such actions were suppressed with even more stringent measures. After the adoption of the law “On the protection of the property of state enterprises, kolkhozy, cooperatives, and public (socialist) property” on August 7, 1932, such acts became punishable by death, or ten years in prison with confiscation of property in case of “mitigating circumstances.” At the January (1933) Plenum of the Central Committee and the Central Control Commission, People’s Commissar of Justice Nikolai Krylenko reported that across the whole country, 54,645 people were convicted, with 2,110 people sentenced to capital punishment, and 1,000 executed within less

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Stalinist Anti-peasant Repression Policy and its Implementation in Kazakhstan 43

than five months of the law’s enforcement. He then demanded that judges who were tired of signing draconian convictions stop being “sentimental” (Krylenko would soon fall victim to political persecution and, as they say, get a taste of his own medicine). In response to this directive, the Kazakh branch of the Supreme Court reprimanded local courts: “The reduction in the number of execution sentences by 44.5% (from 305 to 163 people) in the period from 5 May to 1 August 1933 is abnormal.” The same document stated that “of the 163 sentenced to execution, only 18 were class aliens” (this last remark clearly indicated that social status could be a sufficient ground for depriving a person of their life).37 The most trivial actions could become a reason for severe punishments. There are hundreds of examples. These are just a few of the most typical court cases of that period. Korday People’s Court sentenced a collective farmer to 10 years in prison for a one-time use of “public horses to go on a private trip.” Ust-Kamenogorsk court handed down the same sentence (which was the minimum time to be served) to an unlucky man whose children had stolen 6 kg of millet, and to another middle-class peasant who had stolen 17 kg of grain (apparently, judges categorized this crime as a large-scale theft, while “people’s” judges rarely hesitated to try people for a few hundred grams). The “Stalin” People’s Court (the conjunction is deeply symbolic) sent to camps a group of collective farmers who failed to keep watch over a farm horse—a haystack fell and damaged its eye; the same court condemned to the horrors of the Gulag another fellow villager who had dared to hit a stubborn collective farm camel with a shovel. They tried mothers who attempted to take home a few spikelets or potatoes from the collective farm field so that their children would not starve (sentences under the August 1932 law were dubbed “cases of three spikelets” for a good reason).38 Collectivization laid waste to the Kazakh village like a devastating tornado. Animal husbandry suffered unprecedented damage. In 1928, there were 6,509,000 head of livestock in the republic, and only 965,000 remained by 1932. Even by the eve of the war, in 1941, the pre-kolkhoz level had not been restored (3,335,000 head). The figures for small livestock had even more strikingly dwindled: of 18,566,000 sheep, only 1,386,000 remained by 1932 (by the time of the war the number approached 8 million). The horse stock, which in 1928 amounted to 3,516,000, dropped to 885,000 as of 1941. The tradition of camel breeding in the region practically ceased to exist: by 1935, only 63,000 camels were registered, compared to 1,042,000 in 1928.39 In some stock-raising areas, the figures were even more terrifying. For example, in Zhanaarka district of Karaganda region, there were only 343 horses at the beginning of 1933 (in 1931, after numerous requisitions, the headcount had been 10,666), 453 head of large livestock (down from 9,971), 665 head of small livestock (26,620), and 119 camels (4,364).40

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44

As we remember, many honest workers and practitioners without career ambitions (who later paid with their lives) tried, again and again, to prove to Goloshchekin and his numerous supporters that these actions would bring about the collapse of the village and aul economy. Few listened to these authors of the “idiotic foraging and stock-breeding balance sheets” (as Goloshchekin put it), but they compiled numerous renegade dossiers. The regional authorities appealed to other “balance sheets verified in accordance with Bolshevik science.” These showed that the number of livestock in the republic would reach 53,381,000 head in 1932–33. However, the “tremendousness of [the] plans,”41 as Vladimir Mayakovsky wrote of the first five-year plan, was never to be fulfilled; instead of the wishfully projected dynamics, they were facing a crisis of the livestock industry without precedent in the history of Kazakhstan. The absolute majority of farms had no animals at all. The data for Southern Kazakhstan is typical for most regions. In the first half of 1934, 99.8% of collective farmers and 93.4% of individual farmers had no horses; 74.9% of collective farmers and 82.1% of individual farmers in Tulkubas district had no cows. Table 2.1 shows total numbers of livestock in Chayanovsk district, which contained 100 collective farms, and in Suzak district:42 Table 2.1. Chayanovsk Cattle Horses Sheep

On collective farms

On individual farms

 36  28 163

 7 22 24

On collective farms

On individual farms

 23  29 444

 2 11 89

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Suzak Cattle Horses Sheep

Thus, collectivization dealt a fatal blow to the rural economy, destroying both productive forces in auls and their functional organization. In an article with the pretentious title “The Year of the Great BreakThrough,” published in Pravda in 1929, Stalin’s optimism was contrived: “If the development of collective farms is carried out at an accelerated pace, there is no doubt that in three years our country will become one of the world’s major grain producers, if not the greatest.”43 The three years passed.

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The pace of collectivization ramped up. Yet instead of the abundance that Stalin promised, the country faced mass famine.

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FAMINE OR CLASS GENOCIDE In Soviet historiography, the mass famine of the early 1930s was a strict taboo. The authorities tried to wipe this tragedy out of the people’s memory. The first public discussion of it began only in the late 1980s as part of Gorbachev’s “glasnost” campaign. However, this topic was only examined in detail after the collapse of the Soviet regime and Kazakhstan’s independence. It was then that many previously closed archives began to be declassified and information came to light such as the materials of the so-called “execution census” (the 1937 census revealed a disastrous drop in population, and therefore its findings remained unpublished and tightly sealed in classified archives; the census organizers were repressed and the subsequent 1939 census falsified). Ample material available today shows discrepancies, statistical errors, etc. This is only to be expected—according to eyewitnesses, the corpses of people who had died of starvation were lying in city streets (Alma-Ata, Semipalatinsk, Frunze, etc.), railway stations, and around “Stalin’s great industrial construction sites.” They were loaded onto carts, taken away, and buried in heaps in common graves. The number of the dead was often estimated “by eye” (many reports indicate the “approximate” number of people, who died from hunger in this or that district, etc.). Modern researchers put the number of famine victims at between 1.3 and 2 million people. However, the polemics around this subject continue, and it has not lost its research relevance to this day. In any case, there is no doubt that the scale of the mass hunger of the early 1930s was unprecedented in the history of the Kazakh people. And the memories of it will forever bleed in the people’s memory. Researchers are more or less unanimous on the number of those who left Kazakhstan at that time: over one million people, of whom more than 600,000 never came back. It was no accident that in April 1933 the secretary of the Kazkraikom, Levon Mirzoyan, summing up, as it were, the tragic results of his predecessor Goloshchekin’s activity in Kazakhstan, and, apparently, being so naive as to believe that Stalin was not aware of the plight the Kazakh population was in, wrote to him and Molotov: According to our data, outmigrations affected 71 districts, of which 50 were nomadic and 21 semi-nomadic or sedentary-agricultural. The areas of Southern region, Alma-Ata region, the southern part of Karaganda region, the western part of the Eastern region and the southern part of Aktobe region, as well as

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several districts of the Western region, are particularly affected by nomadic outmigration. . . . The scale of outmigration for all regions (excluding those who left the republic), i.e. the number of those who have left their auls [fleeing from the famine] and moved to other district centres . . . is about 90,000 households, with a total population of 300,000. . . . In Aulie Ata, it is 12,000; it is 8,000 in Turkestan; 6,000 in Kyzylorda; 12,000 in Petropavlovsk; 2,000 in Balkhashstroy; and 2,000 in Karaganda.44

The outright repressive nature of the Stalinist regime’s anti-peasant policy found its clearest expression in the measures taken as part of the state plan to eliminate kulaks and landowners as a class. To lend the planned social and class genocide a touch of Bolshevik-style ordnung and systematic character, the population to be destroyed was split into three categories. The first category (the so-called “counter-revolutionary active core,” the organizers of uprisings and terrorist attacks) was to be sent to concentration camps or executed. The second category (richest kulaks) were to be exiled to remote and uninhabited areas of the USSR. And finally, the third category (the rest of the so-called kulak households) was to be subjected to resettlement within the boundaries of their residential district, but outside the area of collective farms (as collectivization accelerated, the collective “raging sea” was flooding more and more territories, and the “areas beyond collective farms” would soon be dislodged to uninhabited regions of the country, merging the third category with the second for all practical purposes). The number of peasant farms subject to dekulakization was set at between 3-5% of the total. However, according to the Central Statistical Office of the USSR, the share of kulak households in 1929 was just over 2 percent. This left a gap of 3 percent, which had to be filled by 600–700,000 family farms (i.e. about 3.5–5 million people). Liquidation campaigns were so meticulously planned that even specific numbers of peasant families who fell into this or that category were known in advance. According to the top-tier party directive, these were termed “restricted quotas,” although “inclusive” would have been a much more fitting adjective, since the authorized numbers opened the way for unprecedented levels of repression. The first category included 150,000 families—the second, 60,000.45 According to the logic of the document, the “party brain” already knew, by means of some mysterious Marxist clairvoyance, what the number of counter-revolutionaries, terrorists, and collective farm saboteurs in the USSR in the coming reporting years would be, as well as the number of candidates for firing squads, concentration camps, and bleak terra incognita in the taiga and the steppe. However, this was far from being the absurd fantasy of a fevered imagination. There was a well-prepared and detailed plan to eradicate

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Stalinist Anti-peasant Repression Policy and its Implementation in Kazakhstan 47

the peasant opposition en masse, placing farmers between the hammer and the anvil: collectivization and dekulakization. This decree also established directives for Kazakhstan. The target for the first category was 5–6,000 families, for the second it was 10–15,000.46 People from the first category were sentenced under the list procedure at out-of-court sessions of the so-called “troikas,” composed of the chief executives of party bodies, the OGPU, and the prosecutor’s office. The second group often found themselves at the mercy of kolkhoz general meetings involving poor farm labourers, although the lists were pre-approved by local bodies. The campaign was to be waged during February–May 1930, with the OGPU providing operational support. On February 2, OGPU sent out an across-the-board directive demanding the start of immediate operations to eliminate “counter-revolutionary agents,” “active kulak elements of the first category.” Almost immediately, 3,113 people were arrested in Kazakhstan. Mass relocations began soon afterwards. By early May of 1930, 1,421 families, or 7,535 people, were resettled within the region.47 In the second half of March 1931, Goloshchekin sent a telegram to the Centre with a request to allow the eviction of 1,500 farms from the border regions and cotton-growing areas of Kazakhstan. But since the territory of the republic was itself a location of “kulak exile,” it was recommended that the Regional Committee and OGPU Plenipotentiary Representative Office should find “opportunities for the resettlement within the region.” On July 20, 1931, the Politburo of the Central Committee stated at its meeting that the mass deportation of kulak farms was largely completed, and further evictions were recommended on an individual basis. In reality, this resulted in tens of thousands of new victims. During the same meeting, Kazakhstan received permission to resettle kulaks and landowners. In this regard, the OGPU was tasked with establishing the number, time and destination of the deported. This was soon accomplished, and on August 30 the Politburo authorized the relocation of 5,000 farms within the region.48 Mass arrests, imprisonments in concentration camps, and deportations continued through 1930 and 1931. According to the OGPU’s Gulag Special Resettlement Department, 6,765 farms were relocated during this period within Kazakhstan alone. The summary mentioned only farms of the first and second categories, i.e. those deported to special settlements. As for the farms of the third group that were to be expelled from the territory of collective farms, the OGPU seemingly devoted little attention to the statistics (the data on the first two categories was confusing and controversial enough). However, it is reasonable to suppose that they must have been very great in number.

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48

Chapter Two

There were also deportations beyond the Republic’s borders. According to the information available (which requires further clarification), 5,500 families were sent out of Kazakhstan in 1931. It is safe to assume that in 1930 and 1931, 12,265 “kulak” farms were dispossessed in Kazakhstan, and at least 60–70,000 people, including old people, children, and women, were condemned to deportation. For many of them, exile was a death sentence.49 There can be no doubt that the objectives handed down from the center were executed promptly. Let us recall Stalin’s phrase once again: “our plans are not forecasts, or projections, but directives.”50 There was a good reason that it was Goloshchekin who was to implement these plans and chaired both collectivization and dekulakization commissions of the Politburo. It follows that at least six thousand farms of the first category and fifteen thousand of the second were subjected to repressions in Kazakhstan. We also know that the “restricted quotas” overlapped. That fact was acknowledged by the party leadership themselves. The resolution issued by the Central Committee on March 14, 1930, “On struggle against distortions in the party line concerning the collective farm movement,” stated that “. . . some districts are comprised of up to 15 percent dispossessed kulaks and 15–20 percent those deprived of their electoral rights.” (It should be kept in mind that according to the Central Committee directive of January 30, 1930, 3–5 percent of all farms were subjected to dekulakization). Special trains packed with unfortunate victims of the “class struggle” and their escorts were endlessly moving past each other. Some of them took peasants from Kazakhstan, doomed to slave away in labour exile in the mountain adits of the Kola Peninsula, at the mines of Kolyma, and in Siberian logging operations, while others merely dumped people somewhere in the bleak Kazakh steppe. Along with the Northern regions, the Urals, and Siberia, the territory of Kazakhstan was designated as a place of “kulak exile” for tens of thousands of peasants from other parts of the country. The OGPU directive of February 2, 1930 initially ordered the relocation of 5,000 households from the North Caucasus to uninhabited areas of the country. But soon it turned out that the regional authorities were unprepared for the arrival of so many people. The OGPU developed a plan to relocate more than 50,000 families to the Northern areas and the Urals (173). When Stalin read the directive, he wrote a brief instruction on the document: “Kazakhstan and Siberia are omitted as relocation destinations. They must be included as such.”51 By July 6, 1931, only 80 families (281 people) from Central Asia had been relocated to Kazakhstan, but by September 1, 1932, the number registered at the commandant’s offices was 46,091 families, or 180,015 special settlers.

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Stalinist Anti-peasant Repression Policy and its Implementation in Kazakhstan 49

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They were peasants from the Lower and Middle Volga, the Central Black Earth Region and Moscow oblast, the North Caucasian Krai, and Central Asia. Soviet historiography hypocritically referred to peasants’ being dispatched to the Calvary of the “kulak exile” as “re-education through labour.” Thus, one of the many theoretical works that “countered the bourgeois falsifiers of history” made the following pretentious statement: “Step by step, the Soviet state re-educated former exploiters, kulaks, through labor, turning them into hard workers fit for the socialist society. The experience of our country is an exemplary solution to the most challenging social problem—a radical transformation of the economy, consciousness, psychology, and life of former kulaks and their integration into the project of socialist construction.”52 One can hardly argue about its exemplary character, as it actually became a role model for many dictatorial regimes, including Mao and the Khmer Rouge led by Pol Pot. The claims for its educational effects are grimly ironic, because it was the most resourceful, experienced, and diligent workers who were sent for “re-education through labour” in special villages. They were the people who had built their farms by virtue of exhausting, continuous work. They were what was called the “kernel of the peasantry.” In the widely-known Soviet monograph, The Liquidation of the Exploitative Classes in the USSR, there’s this passage: “The Soviet state incurred tremendous expenses providing employment and essential services to immigrants. The costs of the relocations significantly exceeded the value of the expropriated property.” This is unlikely, firstly because, according to incomplete data from the People’s Commissariat of Finance, the value of the confiscated property of “dispossessed” kulaks was estimated at 180 million rubles for the whole country by the summer of 1930 alone. 53 Secondly, for obvious reasons, no Soviet historian attempted to estimate the tremendous extent of former kulaks’ unpaid labor at the “great Stalinist industrialization” construction sites. LABOR FORCE FOR THE KARAGANDA COAL MINES In February 1931, the Politburo of the Central Committee convened for an extraordinary session on deportees. The OGPU was tasked with carrying out operations to prepare territories “for thousands of kulak settlements accommodating 200–300 families each, under the management of appointed commandants, targeting, first of all, areas of Kazakhstan south of Karaganda.” The purpose of this project is clear—to provide cheap labor for the Karaganda coal basin.

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Thirty such settlements were deployed within the Karaganda coal basin, accounting for about one-third of the 100 or so settlements under the control of special commandants’ offices in Kazakhstan. Initially, these Stalinist class ghettos consisted of a cluster of 2 × 2m “pitfalls” (resembling provisional graves, one might think) dug right in the steppe, covered with burlap, sack cloth, or turf. Wooden barracks that could withstand steppe blizzards and freezing cold during winter only appeared some time later. Of course, all workers had to bear the burden of the back-breaking “industrial” physical labor, which had not evolved far past the methods of medieval coal miners and colliers (the only tools in use being a worker’s own strength, a mining pick or pickaxe, shovels, and wheelbarrows). But, unlike special settlers, they enjoyed relatively tolerable living conditions and, although balancing on the verge of survival, were not treated as outcasts suppressed by the propaganda-driven moral terror of the community. Here is just one of numerous recollections about the conditions in the Karaganda mines from I. Timakov:

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. . . I was young, with a wife and little child. We dug a hole one meter deep, made roofing out of rugs and pieces of cloth. Our baby had survived in this pit a month and then died. In 1931–32, all the children and old men died, and by 1933, only the young were still around. Old men were rarely seen. There were about 200 deaths a day. Three crews of grave diggers excavated two meter wide and five meter long pits. In winter, digging was hard and we couldn’t keep pace. The dead were kept in piles the size of a house, 500–700 people each, like logs. I worked at the Kirovskaya mine 8 km away, walking twice a day across the steppe. Inside the mine, ground water poured from the ceiling like rain. You came out all wet, your galoshes full of water, footwraps soaked. You put on a dry jersey and run to the village in the thirty-degree cold. As you run, your icedup clothes cling to the body. Miners died on the way back and their bodies lay on the road all winter. Sometimes, you couldn’t see the road in the blizzard, and the dead were like milestones in the steppe. In the spring, we took the bodies back to the village in carts.54

At the beginning of 1934, 10,397 people worked at the Karaganda coal mines, 5,525 of whom were special settlers. By the middle of 1938, the number of deportees in Karaganda region grew to 91,297, with 19,115 working in the coal industry. Therefore, special settlers formed the most significant labor contingent of the “Third All Union Furnace.” Others worked at the Kazakhstan enterprises of the People’s Commissariat of Heavy Industry (16,822 people), in nonferrous-metals and gold mining, and on the construction of roads (about 170 km of dirt roads were built by special settlers) and railways (for example, 2,567 deportees were assigned to the construction of the Akmolinsk-Karaganda railway), etc. This was the system of “rehabilitating

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Stalinist Anti-peasant Repression Policy and its Implementation in Kazakhstan 51

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former village exploiters through labour” built by Stalin and his OGPU and NKVD police force. The peasants deported to “kulak exile” became a huge component of the industrial labor force. At the beginning of 1932, there were 186,000 so-called special settlers in Kazakhstan (according to the utterly hypocritical terminology of Gulag, this was the name of the dispossessed peasants; without the prefix “special,” it might conjure the image of some free colonists, romantic adventurers who came to explore unknown territories). As of January 1, 1933, the number was 140,383 people; as of January 1, 1938—134,655; a year later in 1940—137,043. The daily life of former kulaks was idealized in Soviet historiography. One such deceitful work claimed that “the former kulaks and their families received all they needed for a prosperous and cultured life,” there were local clubs, where the deportees engaged in amateur art activities, played chess, and so on. Could it be that the life of special settlers was not that tragic but mostly normal? Today, there are reliable accounts of this in Kazakhstan— memoirs of the deportees, surviving members of their families, and their descendants, who have kept the memory of the family stories. But in one of the first selfless efforts to research the history of special settlers in Karaganda, D. T. Chirov carried out a laborious study, recorded numerous witness testimonies, and published them, during—this should be stressed—the Soviet era, in the April 29, 1989 edition of the newspaper Industrial’naya Karaganda (Industrial Karaganda). Excerpts follow from the memories of Karaganda deportees he recorded. From the recollections of M.V. Kopeikina: I was born in 1925 in the village of Rodnik, in the Rasskazovsk district of Tambov region. . . . Collectivization began in 1930. . . . My father and uncle were taken to prison. I was five. They took me and my three-year-old brother in a cart to Platonovka station. . . . It was crowded. Our fathers were released to be reunited with their families, but the guards were still there and we all felt like we were under arrest. . . . They put us in cattle wagons and bolted the doors from the outside so that no one could escape. There was a slop bucket in the wagon that both men and women had to use. In a word, they treated us like prisoners. It was a long road, they brought us to the bleak steppe and told us to get out at the place that is now the village of Kompaneisky. It was September 1931 and the steppe where we found ourselves had already turned yellow. We started to put up makeshift tents: we dug pits about half a meter deep, fixed poles above them and threw rugs or blankets on top of them. We slept in a wooden harrow we brought with us for some reason.

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There was no water source nearby, and people had to walk almost 20 kilometres to get it. What did we eat? In the first days, nothing at all. Then they started to bring flour and hand it out—a cup per person. They kept bringing people, huts and dugouts appeared everywhere. Soon people began to die of hunger and disease. They had dysentery and typhus. I was eight years old at that time, but I remember exhausted, hungry and sick adults who were unable to bury their relatives, and the dead were picked up and driven to a common grave. A lot of people were dying at the time, especially small children and old people. I remember how they used to build barracks out of turf. We moved there later, at the beginning of winter. We suffered that first winter from hunger and cold . . . And in summer they arranged a playground, and my brother and I went there to have lunch. They gave us a piece of bread and a plate of red beet soup, which was hard to eat even though we were starving. I remember once going with my brother back home from this playground, and he was crying, asking me for food, but where would I get any? And my brother kept crying, and I was crying with him. . . .”

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Praskovya Mikhailovna Gorbunova: “In the summer of 1931, my one-yearold daughter died from dysentery, followed by almost all the children aged below five or six.” Praskovya Mikhailovna Ukrainskaya: “My mother and ten-year-old brother died. I was seven at the time. They housed us in Osakarovka, in roofless barracks, 70–80 people living in each. Five or six neighbors from the barracks survived till the spring of 1932.” Vasilii Mikhailovich Sudeikin: “When they brought us to the Ninth settlement from Kuban in December 1932, we were a family of six. By the end of summer 1933, it was only me.”55 The OGPU data support the above testimonies. The reports state that 55,441 people died in Kazakhstan’s special settlements in 1932 and 1933. In 1933, the number of deaths in “kulak exile” was 19 times the number of births in Northern Kazakhstan, and 13 times the number of births number in Southern Kazakhstan.56 This was the truth of the class genocide. NOTES 1.  I. V. Stalin, Voprosy leninizma (Moscow: Partizdat, 1933), p. 156. My emphasis. 2.  I. V. Stalin, Sochineniya (Moscow: Gospolitizdat, 1951), xi, 169. 3. N. I. Bukharin, Problemy teorii i praktiki sotsializma (Moscow: Politizdat, 1989), pp. 263–264. 4. V.I. Lenin, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo politicheskoi literatury, 1969), xxxvi, 411.

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Stalinist Anti-peasant Repression Policy and its Implementation in Kazakhstan 53

 5. Stalin, Sochineniya, xii, 92.  6. Stalin, Sochineniya, ii, 369–370.  7. Ugolovnyi kodeks Rossiiskoi Sotsialisticheskoi Federativnoi Sovetskoi Respubliki (Moscow, 1932), p. 56.  8. Stalin, Sochineniya, ii, 11.   9.  Ibid., p. 48. 10.  Dokumenty svidetel’stvuiut (Moscow: Politizdat, 1989), pp. 236–241. 11.  VI Plenum Kazkraikoma VKP(b) (Alma-Ata, 1936), p. 232. 12.  Bolshevik Kazakhstana (1931), No. 11, p. 40. 13.  Tsentral’nyi Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Respubliki Kazakhstana (Central State Archive of the Republic of Kazakhstan, TsGA RK), f. 5, op. 21, d. 39, ll. 25–26. 14.  TsGA RK, f. 247, op. 2, d. 12, l. 232. 15.  Ves’ Kazakhstan (Alma-Ata, 1931), p. 77. 16.  TsGA RK, f. 44, op. 11, d. 365, l. 5. 17.  Narodnoe khozyaistvo Kazakhstana (1930), No. 3. 18.  S. P. Shvetsov, “Priroda i byt Kazakhstana,” in Shvetsov (ed.), Kazakhskoe khozyaistvo v ego estestvenno-istoricheskikh i bytovykh usloviyakh (Leningrad, 1926), pp. 93–94. 19.  G. F. Dakhshleiger, Marshrutom sotsial’nogo progressa (Alma-ata: Kazakhstan, 1978), pp. 143–144 20.  Kondrat’evshchina v Kazakhstane (Alma-Ata, 1931), p. 98. 21.  L. A. Gordon and E. V. Klopov, Chto eto było? (Moscow, 1988), p. 81. 22.  XVI s’’ezd Vsesoyuznoi Kommunisticheskoi partii (bol’shevikov): Stenograficheskii otchet (Moscow, Leningrad: Gosizdat, 1930), p. 584. 23.  Narodnoe khozyaistvo Kazakhstana (1930), No. 5–6, p. 49. 24.  VII Vsekazakhskii s’’ezd Sovetov. 8–15 yanvarya 1929 g.: Stenograficheskii otchet i postanovleniya (Alma-Ata, 1930), p. 168. 25.  VI Plenum Kazkraikoma VKP(b), p. 49. 26. Zh. B. Abylkhozhin, Traditsionnaya struktura Kazakhstana (Alma-Ata: Nauka, 1991), pp. 148–149. 27. N. A. Ivnitskii, Kollektivizatsiya i raskulachivanie (nachalo 30-kh godov) (Moscow: Interpraks, 1994), p. 147. 28.  Tragediya sovetskoi derevni. Kollektivizatsiya i raskulachivanie: Dokumenty i materialy (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2000), V. 2, pp. 365–370. 29.  TsGA RK, f. 44, op. 44, d. 119, l. 139. 30.  Kollektivizatsiya sel’skogo khozyaistva Kazakhstana. Dokumenty i materialy (Alma-Ata: Kazakhstan, 1967), p. 401. 31.  VI Plenum Kazkraikoma VKP(b), p. 64. 32.  Ibid., p. 147. 33. Abylkhozhin, Traditsionnaya struktura Kazakhstana, p. 189. 34.  Bolshevik Kazakhstana (1931), No. 12, p. 45. 35.  Narodnoe khozyaistvo Kazakhstana (1931), No. 8–9, p. 16. 36.  Bolshevik Kazakhstana (1931), No. 1, p. 3. 37.  M. Zh. Khasanayev, “O posledstviyakh Zakona ot 7 avgusta 1932,” unpublished conference paper (Alma-Ata, 1988).

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38. Ibid. 39.  Kazakhstan za 50 let: Statisticheskii sbornik (Alma-Ata: Statistika, Kazotdel, 1971), pp. 63–82. 40.  Ibid., pp. 82–83. 41.  V. Mayakovsky, Longer poems, trans. by Dorian Rottenberg (Moscow: Raduga, 1986), p. 217. 42.  Yuzhnyi Kazakhstan v tsyfrakh (Chimkent, 1936), pp. 122–25, 131, 132. 43.  Stalin, Sochineniya, xii, 132. 44.  Arkhiv Prezidenta Respubliki Kazakhstan, f. 141, op. 1, d. 5827, ll. 33–34. 45.  N.A. Ivanitskii, Kollektivizatsiya i raskulachivanie, p. 64. 46.  Ibid., p. 103. 47.  Ibid., p. 217. 48.  Ibid., p. 181. 49. Zh. Zh. Zhumabekov, Leninskoi dorogoi (Alma-Ata, Kazakhstan, 1973), p. 155. 50. Stalin, Sochineniya, x, p. 327. 51.  N. A. Ivnitskii, Kollektivizatsiya i raskulachivanie, pp. 123–124. 52.  N. Ya. Gushchin and V. A. Zhdanov, Kritika burzhuaznykh kontseptsii istorii sovetskoi derevni Sibiri (Novosibirsk: Nauka, Sib. ot-nie, 1977), p. 175. 53. I. Ya. Trifonov, Likvidatsiya ekspluatatorskikh klassov v SSSR (Moscow: Politizdat, 1975), p. 382. 54.  S. Masterov, ‘Raskulachennye.” https://proza.ru/ 55.  Voprosy Istorii (1965), No. 3, p. 18. 56.  V. N. Zemskov, “Kulatskaia ssylka,” Sotsiologicheskie issledovaniya (1992), No. 2, pp. 3–26.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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Archives AP RK: Arkhiv Prezidenta Respubliki Kazakhstan (Archive of the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan). TsGA RK: Tsentral’nyi Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Respubliki Kazakhstana (Central State Archive of the Republic of Kazakhstan).

Published Sources Abylkhozhin, Zh. B. Traditsionnaya struktura Kazakhstana: sotsial’no–ekonomicheskie aspekty funktsionirovaniya i transformatsii (1920–1930-e gg.). Alma-Ata: Nauka, 1991. Bolshevik Kazakhstana, No. 1, No. 11–12 (1931). Bukharin, N. I. Problemy teorii i praktiki sotsializma. Moscow: Politizdat, 1989. Dakhshleiger, G. F. Marshrutom sotsial’nogo progressa. Alma-ata: Kazakhstan, 1978.

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Stalinist Anti-peasant Repression Policy and its Implementation in Kazakhstan 55

Dokumenty svidetel’stvuiut. Moscow: Politizdat, 1989. Gordon, L. A. and E. V. Klopov. Chto eto było? Razmyshleniya o predposylkakh i itogakh togo, chto sluchilos’ s nami v 30-40-e gody. Moscow: Politizdat, 1988. Gushchin, N. and V. Zhdanov. Kritika burzhuaznykh kontseptsii istorii sovetskoi derevni Sibiri. Novosibirsk: Nauka, Sib. ot-nie, 1977. Ivnitskii, N. A. Kollektivizatsiya i raskulachivanie (nachalo 30-kh godov). Moscow: Interpraks, 1994. Kazakhstan za 50 let: Statisticheskii sbornik. Alma-Ata: Statistika, Kazotdel, 1971. Khasanayev, M. Zh. “O posledstviyakh Zakona ot 7 avgusta 1932” (Paper presentation). Regional Discussion of the Problems of History of Collectivization in Central Asia. Alma-Ata: 1989. Kollektivizatsiya sel’skogo khozyaistva Kazakhstana. Dokumenty i materialy. AlmaAta: Kazakhstan, 1967. Kondrat’evshchina v Kazakhstane. Alma-Ata, 1931. Lenin, V. I. Polnoe sobranie sochinenii. Moscow: Izdatel’stvo politicheskoi literatury, 1969. Masterov, S. “Raskulachennye.” https://proza.ru/ Narodnoe khozyaistvo Kazakhstana, no. 3, no. 5–6 (1930), no. 8–9 (1931). Problemy sotsial’noi istorii krest’yanstva Azii. No. 2 (1988). Shvetsov, S. P. “Priroda i byt Kazakhstana” in Shvetsov, ed., Kazakhskoe khozyaistvo v ego estestvenno-istoricheskikh i bytovykh usloviyakh. Leningrad, 1926. Stalin, I. V. Sochineniya. Moscow: Gospolitizdat, 1951. Stalin, I. V. Voprosy leninizma. Moscow: Partizdat, 1933. Tragediya sovetskoi derevni. Kollektivizatsiya i raskulachivanie: Dokumenty i materialy. Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2000. Trifonov, I. Ya. Likvidatsiya ekspluatatorskikh klassov v SSSR. Moscow: Politizdat, 1975. Ugolovnyi kodeks Rossiiskoi Sotsialisticheskoi Federativnoi Sovetskoi Respubliki. Moscow, 1932. VI Plenum Kazkraikoma VKP(b). Alma-Ata, 1930. VII Vsekazakhskii s’’ezd Sovetov. 8–15 yanvarya 1929 g.: Stenograficheskii otchet i postanovleniya. Alma-Ata, 1930. XVI s’’ezd Vsesoyuznoi Kommunisticheskoi partii (bol’shevikov): Stenograficheskii otchet. Moscow, Leningrad: Gosizdat, 1930. Ves’ Kazakhstan. Alma-Ata, 1931. Yuzhnyi Kazakhstan v tsyfrakh. Chimkent, 1936. Zemskov, V. N. “Kulatskaia ssylka.” Sotsiologicheskie issledovaniya, no. 2 (1992): 3–26. Zhumabekov, Zh. Zh. Leninskoi dorogoi. Alma-Ata: Kazakhstan, 1973.

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Chapter Three

An Episode in the History of the Academy of Sciences of the Kazakh SSR in the Early 1950s Zauresh Saktaganova

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Researchers take great interest in the history of Stalinist repressions, the period in which a huge swathe of the national elite—creative, scientific, political, and economic—was wiped out. Among thousands of tragic stories of the politically repressed among the ranks of the national intelligentsia, there are some describing the fates of people who came under the grip of Stalin’s totalitarian machine but managed to survive. Such was the story of the president of the Academy of Sciences of the Kazakh SSR, Kanysh Satpayev. Over the past decade, many remarkable documents from the archives have been published, shedding light on a number of subjects that used to be concealed both from historians and from the general public. But the process of “uncovering negatives” is a long one, requiring careful and, above all, impartial research. In The Historian’s Craft, Mark Bloch muses on the role of history and the historian: If they do not take care, there is danger that badly understood history could involve good history in its disrepute. But should we come to this, it would be at the cost of a serious rupture with our most unvarying intellectual traditions. For the present, our discussion has reached only the stage of probing the conscience. And, indeed, whenever our exacting Western society, in the continuing crisis of growth, begins to doubt itself, it asks itself whether it has done well in trying to learn from the past, and whether it has learned rightly.1

Any thinking historian dwells on matters like these at some point: do they “learn from the past” correctly, and is it worthwhile to revisit it with such rigour? It is not only the issue of creating a fuller representation of the past, of vividly reconstructing the details of the events. It is also about the historian’s responsibility before present and future generations. Sooner or later, they 57

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will be held accountable. This (the duty of the historian) will be the subject of the article. Turning to the first post-war decade, we should briefly describe the social and political situation in the country. In the very first year after the war’s end, a wave of politically motivated persecutions of the scientific and creative elites swept the republic. The reasons for these repressions have been repeatedly considered in historical literature, but let us dwell on them in more detail. The victory of the USSR in the Great Patriotic War made the whole Soviet society euphoric: expectations of changes rose, and the hopes for such changes seemed well-grounded. During the war, the regime “allowed” some relaxation in spiritual, religious, and intellectual affairs, and in some other areas of social and political life. As the researcher Nicolas Werth has convincingly argued, “Just as the war curbed voluntarist economic practices, so it also gave rise to looser restrictions over the ideological and political spheres and increased the number of uncontrolled ideological movements, especially among those who had been outside the system’s purview for several years (in occupied areas or in captivity), among nationalities and intellectuals. With a return to peaceful life, the authorities attempted, often resorting to violence, to regain control over minds.”2 The hopes of Soviet society for liberalization of social and political life faded. Many researchers attribute the tightening of the regime in the post-war period to two factors: Stalin’s manic suspiciousness and the beginning of the Cold War. The beginning of this new war was marked by Churchill’s speech, delivered in spring 1946 in Fulton, in which he proposed the idea of creating an alliance of Anglo-Saxon countries to fight communism. In the USSR, the fight against new threats to the regime was declared. “Anglo-American imperialism” represented the major external threat, while “worshipping of the West” was a danger looming within the border.3 This was the primary focus in the ideology and domestic policy of post-war Stalinism. On May 14, 1947, Stalin said at a meeting with writers (as recorded by Konstantin Simonov): Look at our mid-ranking intelligentsia, scientific intelligentsia, professors and doctors. They do not have a properly cultivated sense of Soviet patriotism. They have an unfounded admiration for foreign culture. They feel as if they were immature and underdeveloped, and they are accustomed to the position of eternal students. This is a backward tradition, dating back to Peter the Great. First the Germans, then the French—there has always been this admiration for foreigners. . . . We will need to chip away at this tendency for years, for ten years, if necessary. . . . We must do away with the inferiority complex of many of our intellectuals.4

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The second trend in public and political life defined the party line: Werth calls this policy “rebuffing of nationalities.”5 He writes that the policy of persecuting specific nationalities and the refusal to uphold their national aspirations was continued in Stalin’s “Victory speech,” in which he toasted not the Soviet but the Russian people, calling it a recognised leader, the “foremost nation of all nations that make up the Soviet Union.”6 Stalin’s speech of May 24, 1945, signified a rejection of the previous formulation (“the Russian people as the first among equals”). Stalin reverted to the ideas he had defended in 1922 in his project of autonomization, opposing the federal principle of state building. This concept (stressing the highly progressive nature of accession) led, in the second half of the 1940s, to a revision of the history of the accession of national borderlands to the Russian Empire. Historians were urged to “focus on the truly progressive aspect of the historical contribution of the Russian people to the development of mankind.” There was no other perspective on national history. As a consequence of this policy, the study of national cultures, both material and spiritual, was curtailed. Those with scientific or creative interests in this sphere were crushed by the state’s apparatus of repression. Therefore, the fight against “nationalism” (as had been the case with “national-deviationism” in the 1920s–30s) became one of the party’s priorities. Along with the “rebuffing” of non-Russian peoples in 1946, the authorities put together a campaign to restore control over the intellectual life of the country, which had been somewhat relaxed during the war. The hopes of the intelligentsia that the trends that had emerged during the war would be promoted dissipated quickly. In the summer of 1946, the government launched a broad offensive against any manifestation of intellectual creativity. According to Werth, the main reason why intellectuals “were kept at bay” was the severe economic crisis of the summer of 1946, which led to renewed famine and pushed the authorities to silence intellectuals. He notes that “famine invariably turned the civic awareness of educated circles against the authorities, and the criticism would predictably spread to the overall economic policy of the government.”7 And, of course, the condemnation would have extended to the system as a whole. From 1946, a number of party resolutions were adopted to combat these “pernicious” trends: the resolutions of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of August 14, 1946 “On the Journals Zvezda and Leningrad”; of August 26, 1946 “On the Repertoire of Drama Theatres and Measures for its Improvement”; of 4 September 1946 “On the film A Great Life” and of February 10, 1948 “On the opera The Great Friendship by Vano Muradeli.” In 1946, a new stage of repressions against intellectuals in the USSR (and in the Kazakh SSR in particular) began.

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Working in the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History (RGASPI) with cases from Fond 17 (Files of the CPSU Central Committee), the author studied Case 335, opened in 1950, which was called “Notes and Briefings of the Department and Sector of Science on Internal Reports. . . . Cases of Nationalist Attitudes in the Academy of Sciences and Scientific Institutions of the Kazakh SSR.”8 Some documents from this case were published in the documentary collection Academician K. Satpayev (compiled by B. Zhanaev et al.) under the program of the Committee of Information and Archives of the Ministry of Culture and Information of the Republic of Kazakhstan in 2009.9 But not all the documents drew the attention of the book’s editors. Analysis of events related to the new wave of repressions in the early 1950s raises a number of questions, to which there are as yet no comprehensive answers. What prompted a detailed audit of the KSSR Academy of Sciences in the early 1950s? After all, it was a period in which science became established and developed in the republic, as demonstrated by some major achievements of Kazakhstani scientists. Who initiated this audit? The textbook answer, as noted above, is given in almost all studies on the history of Stalin’s post-war decade: a number of decrees of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, immediately followed by the resolutions of the Party Central Committee of Kazakhstan in 1947 (“On crude political errors in the work of the Institute of Language and Literature of the Academy of Sciences of the KazSSR” and “On the selection, allocation and utilisation of scientific personnel in the Academy of Sciences of the KazSSR”). After 1947, the President of the Academy of Sciences of the KSSR issued a series of reports and letters, defending the organization of academic science of the republic. In these letters, Kanysh Satpayev speaks about the achievements of the Academy of Sciences of the KSSR and its development: whereas in 1941 the Kazakh branch of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR had 100 researchers, of which 14 held doctoral (kandidat) degrees and three were Doctors of Sciences, by 1947, the staff of the Academy of Sciences of the KSSR numbered 1,580 people (including subsidiary institutions), with 83 Doctors of Science and 220 kandidats. Also, Satpayev pays great attention to the rising numbers of national cadres among the scientific staff, of which, by 1950, Kazakhs with academic degrees made up 24.9 percent.10 But these achievements and merits did not protect the President of the Academy of Sciences of KSSR from indiscriminate accusations. All these decrees of the Central Committee “launched a large-scale campaign against the intelligentsia.” Studies of this episode emphasize that the distinguishing feature of the post-war persecutions was the “targeted personalization of political accusations.”11 It should be noted that even in the

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pre-war period, prominent figures of science and culture were persecuted, but the repressions of the 1920s–30s were all-encompassing. The “personalization of political accusations” has a simple explanation—individuals were targeted in anonymous denunciations submitted to the secret police by fellow countrymen, neighbours, colleagues, enemies, and simply envious people. The denunciations appeared as a consequence of the policy: the authorities expected and encouraged denunciations, they “responded” to them or, to be more precise, were eager to react. Denunciations were central to the emergence of some party directives. During numerous purges, a simple procedural model emerged among the numerous party rank and file (and others besides): admission of guilt, repentance, amnesty. They called it “self-criticism.” But the “true Bolshevik” was supposed to be able to accept criticism and criticize his comrades-in-arms. These “duties and rights” were spelled out both in statute and in separate resolutions. “Criticism” took various forms: spoken declarations at party meetings or letters sent to higher administrative authorities, which were, simply put, denunciations. The government had the prerogative to publish critical notes in the periodical press, from which consequences inevitably followed.12 Without removing responsibility from the Stalinist system of repression, nor justifying it, we must note that most studies overlook this important dimension of the controversial history of repression policies. Researchers tend to sidestep this issue in their publications. We believe that if there had not been such a deluge of denunciations in Kazakhstan, the fates of dozens or hundreds of people would have played out differently and less tragically. In our opinion, it is a duty to history, to the memory of the people who died or ended up in Gulag prisons, to make clear the responsibility of these sycophants. It is gratifying to know that in at least one of the largest persecution cases of this period—the epic case of Ermukhan Bekmakhanov— the “antiheroes” have been named (Kh. Aidarova, T. Shoinbaev, A. Yakunin, et al.). Academician Manash Kozybayev came up with a clearly defined assessment of the role of these historians and the consequences of their publications for the Bekmakhanov case, calling them “fatal” for historical scholarship in Kazakhstan.13 In his study, Kozybayev wrote: “taking advantage of the situation, envious people and enemies launched a slander campaign, sending numerous reports with accusations against Satpayev to the highest authorities.” Without discussing the motives for said denunciation (this would be the subject of a separate study), we will try to analyse these documents (letters, reports, etc.) and find out how they helped initiate party inspections and repressive actions that ensued from these inspections and corresponding directives. In the report of June 22, 1950, compiled by the instructors from the department of propaganda and agitation of the Central Committee, P. Apostolov,

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B. Mitreikin, and A. Petrovskii, the auditors wrote that they “were instructed to verify the facts set out in the statements of comrades Chernichenko and Shoinbaev. They report on nationalistic displays in the field of science and culture in Kazakhstan, violation of Bolshevik principles in the selection and allocation of staff for the Academy of Sciences of the Kazakh SSR, and the suppression of criticism.”14 However, the collected book Academician K. Satpayev does not contain these statements, which provoked the inspections of the Academy of Sciences of the KSSR and of Satpayev himself, initiated by multiple authorities (from the Central Party to the security organs). Among the above-mentioned case files in RGASPI, the author of this article did not come across the statements of “comrades Chernichenko and Shoinbaev” written before June 1950. The Central Committee of the Communist Party set up an inspection, which resulted in a report of reviewing officers P. Apostolov, B. Mitreikin, and A. Petrovsky, addressed to the Secretary of the Central Committee G. M. Malenkov, stating that “the above-mentioned facts were mostly corroborated during the inspection.”15 We assume that Chernichenko and Shoinbaev’s earlier reports written before June 1950 concerned the same matter. These excerpts from the report in Case No. 335 (RGASPI) mention some of the facts: The Central Committee of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan has repeatedly noted in its resolutions that some scientists promoted harmful and ideologically defamatory propositions at work, idealising the feudal tribal system, praising khans and landowners, silencing class struggle in the pre-revolutionary Kazakh aul, and promoting bourgeois-nationalistic and anti-Russian views. . . . The Committee has also repeatedly ordered the directorship of the Academy of Sciences to take measures to cleanse the Academy of politically untrustworthy people who were not capable of scientific work. However, all these oversights and distortions are still repeated by many scientific, cultural, and artistic workers of the Kazakh SSR and are not subjected to proper political assessment by the Committee. For instance, Bekmakhanov, the author of the book Kazakhstan in the 1820s– 1840s continues to uphold false views regarding the character and essence of Kenesary Kasymov’s uprising. He doesn’t mention the fact that in the aforesaid book he advocates the works of Alikhan Bukeykhanov, the leader of counterrevolutionary Alash Orda party, as a reliable source on the history of Kazakh people, and that in the preface he expressed “special acknowledgement” to the exiled Trotskyite Varshavskii, who edited Bekmakhanov’s manuscript. . . .16 In 1950, the Academy of Sciences of the Kazakh SSR published The Confiscation of Cattle and Property of Affluent semi-feudal bai Landowners in Kazakhstan, a book by Akisheva. It focuses on the malevolent, anti-Soviet statements of bai landowners and provides numerous negative examples of involve-

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ment by the poor in bai-driven gangsterism. In view of the political harmfulness of the book, it was withdrawn from circulation by order of the Kazakhstan Party Central Committee. In 1950, Pogorelskii’s book The Settlement of Nomads and the Development of Livestock Farming in Kazakhstan was also removed from circulation, because the author states that “the nomadic clan is not like the family as we know it from Marx-Engels but like the one described by Radlov.” The author dismissed the role of the party and the Soviet state in the transition of Kazakhs from the nomadic to sedentary way of life, and quoted from enemy of the people, Baitursynov. . . .17 The ideologically vicious book of Zhubanov, a full member of the Academy of Sciences of the Kazakh SSR, flirts with openly nationalistic ideas. Under the guise of folklore research, the book recounts the “singing,” “resounding” pre-revolutionary history of Kazakh people from an anti-Russian perspective, in song form. . . .18 . . . These facts reveal an ideological failure. Among the causes is the contamination of personnel in scientific, cultural, and educational institutions of Kazakhstan. In accordance with multiple decrees of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan and despite the resistance of the President of the Academy of Sciences Satpayev, more than two hundred and fifty people have been fired from the Academy only in the last three years. However, the inspection has found that the Academy of Sciences staff is still full of politically unreliable and scientifically incapable researchers. . . .19

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The report of the Central Committee then mentions “nationalists,” “Trotskyites,” “enemies of the people” and names the “saboteurs”: Margulan, Bekturov, Stender, Songina, Tartakovskaya, Snopova, Yermekova, Tarabaev, Prof. Rusakov, Letnikov, Kenesarin, Kondybayev, Galitsky, and others. The report also accused the heads of the Academy of Sciences of the Kazakh SSR: . . . Numerous facts of the contamination of the Academy of Sciences of the Kazakh SSR by politically unfit people are not accidental. The leading members of the Presidium of the Academy: vice-president Kenesbaev (son of a bai) and Academician-Secretary Galuzo (brother of a Trotskyite) cannot be trusted politically. . . . President of the Academy of Sciences Satpayev comes from the family of an affluent bai. His two brothers were persecuted as enemies of the Soviet state. Satpayev has concealed from the party that he was an active member of the counter-revolutionary bourgeois-nationalist party “Alash-Orda” in 1918. . . . In view of the forthcoming discussion of the inspection results by the Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan, we propose to replace the directorship of the Academy of Sciences of the Kazakh SSR. . . .20

The mechanism of repression was set into motion. After this inspection, President of the KSSR Academy of Sciences Satpayev was forced to submit

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a report to Zh. Shayakhmetov, the Secretary of the Kazakhstan Party Central Committee, and the Deputy Head of the Propaganda and Agitation Department of the Central Committee in Moscow, V. Kruzhkov. The 67-page “Fact sheet on the implementation of the decisions of the CC CP (b) K 14/II-1950 and on some organisational flaws in the work of the Academy of Sciences of the Kazakh SSR (on their causes, essence, and status)” sought to refute “bitter accusations levelled against the Academy of Sciences.”21 After submitting the fact sheet, the pressure from above boiled down to occasional summons to the Central Committee of the Republic, or to Moscow, as well as submitting detailed written reports on work accomplished. Yet, such a detailed account of the activities of the Academy of Sciences of KSSR did not put an end to the accusations against the Academy and Satpayev. In September 1950, Kruzhkov received a memorandum from a certain A. Mitin, who stated that Comrade Satpayev has tried to denigrate the work of the sectors of the Propaganda and Agitation Department as well as the department of the party, trade union and Komsomol organs of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, comrades V. Apostolov, V. Mitreykin and Petrovsky. Comrade Satpayev believes that the brigade of the CC CP (b) did not provide adequate assistance to the work of the Academy of Sciences of the Kazakh SSR. The task of the brigade was not and could not have been scientific advice to the Academy. Comrades Apostolov, Mitreikin and Petrovsky visited the Kazakh party organisation by order of CC CP (b) to investigate the statements of Chernichenko and Shoinbaev. [My emphasis]. The brigade completed the task and submitted a report to the Central Committee, in which it stated the contamination of the personnel of scientific and cultural-educational institutions of the republic, the suppression of criticism and self-criticism, ideological mistakes and corruption in the work of humanities institutes in Kazakhstan and made a proposal to replace the directorship of the Academy. With a view to improving and strengthening the work of Academy of Sciences of the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic, it would be expedient to speed up the submission to the CC CP (b) of the report filed by comrades Apostolov, Mitreykin and Petrovsky.22

In the autumn of 1950, the repressions against academician Satpayev were well underway. Besides A. Chernichenko—Pravda correspondent for the Kazakh SSR—another figure emerges in the “Satpayev case.” The memorandum of the instructors of the propaganda and agitation department of the CC CP (b) sent to clarify the situation proves the existence of Shoinbaev’s “report.”23 But T. Shoinbaev’s letter was dated earlier than the events of June 1950 (as already noted) and was not part of this case file. Yet, there is another document which explains a new wave of repressions against K. Satpayev launched in the autumn of 1950. We have found a letter, which was

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written for the second time in October 1950 and sent to the Secretary of the Moscow Central Committee M. Suslov, with a copy sent to M. Shkiryatov. Sixty-seven years after the fact, there is not much sense in discussing the motives of this professional historian and doctor (kandidat) of historical sciences for writing such “letters,” but it is no accident that publications about these events usually mentioned “enviers and enemies,” which may explain the reasons for drafting up such “memoranda.” It is important to recognize the likely consequences of such “denunciations,” and that although most of the facts presented turned out to be insinuations, they nevertheless provoked a new round of attacks against Satpayev. Also, the letter does not question the academician’s professional qualities, nor does it voice the informer’s concern about the state of Kazakh science. This letter is a smear; of seven incomplete pages, four are devoted to K. Satpayev’s past involvement with “Alash,” half a page to blaming Satpayev for his support of Bekmakhanov’s conception of the Kenesary movement, and two pages to reflections on Satpayev’s patronage of “anti-Soviet social elements,” and it concludes with a list of matters which, according to Shoinbaev, require special investigation. These key theses of Shoinbaev’s letter are quite revealing (and perhaps typical of such letters) of the Stalinist period: one’s origin and past (participation or nonparticipation in the party struggle, party opposition, “national-deviationism,” etc.) played a decisive role. Moreover, it should be noted that, although the letter was dated October 1950, the facts stated were almost verbatim quotes from the report filed by the instructors of the Propaganda and Agitation Department of the CC CP (b) in June 1950. This leads to the conclusion that the first denunciation from T. Shoinbaev was similar in content. Apparently, dissatisfaction with the results of the check-up of the Academy of Sciences by Party inspectors prompted T. Shoinbaev to “write” again. Here are some fragments of Shoinbaev’s insinuation (October 1950). It begins with the characteristics of “bourgeois-nationalist” party of “Alash”: In July 1917, at the so-called All-Kirghiz Congress in Orenburg, held under the leadership of the national Kadet Bukeykhanov and attended by bai landowners, mullahs, representatives of the bourgeois-nationalist intelligentsia, the counterrevolutionary bourgeois-nationalist party “Alash” with branches in other cities of Kazakhstan was officially established. The “Alash” Party was an agent of the Russian imperialist bourgeoisie, supported the Provisional Government, and it fought against the propagation of revolutionary Bolshevik influences among the indigenous population. “Alash” was the enemy of Soviet power and, consequently, of the Kazakh people. During the years of struggle for the establishment of Soviet power in Kazakhstan, hundreds of Bolsheviks and non-partisan Bolsheviks of Russian,

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Ukrainian and Kazakh descent were killed by Alash-Orda executioners. They also murdered a Bolshevik hero of the civil war and staunch supporter of Soviet power in Kazakhstan, Amangeldy Imanov.24

Evidently, the author of the letter stuck to the same interpretation of the events that had happened many years before: he mechanically reproduced the official version of events of 30 years ago when he wrote the original letter. Returning to the text of the letter:

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The incumbent President of the Academy of Sciences of KazSSR Kanysh Satpayev was one of the active members of the Alash Party. Mukhtar Auezov, the writer, will confirm it. This is also supported by Kazakh and Sary-Arka newspapers—official bodies of “Alash.” Both newspapers list Satpayev among Alash-Orda members. Thus, for example, the article “Agitator” in Issue 19 of Sary-Arka, dated 9 November 1917, said that Kanysh Satpayev and Jusupbek Aymautov were sent by “Alash” to Pavlodar district to conduct anti-Soviet agitation among the Kazakhs. Aymautov was also one of the party’s active members and was subsequently exposed as an enemy of the people. Kanysh Satpayev readily carried out the tasks of the “Alash” party in the struggle against Soviet power and so was praised in a laudatory article in one the issues of Kazakh in 1918. It said that the Alash Party invested great hope in its young member Kanysh Satpayev, an exceptionally devoted adherent of the cause of the party. Satpayev’s devotion to this bourgeois-nationalist party was not a coincidence. He came from a family of affluent landowners. He dreamed of preserving the bai power over the Kazakh people, and the Alash Party defended the interests of the Kazakh landowners. That’s the reason for Satpayev’s joining the party. It is also no accident that his brothers Abikey, Karim, and Nokesh were also functionaries of the party and fought against Soviet power. After the establishment of Soviet power on the territory of Kazakhstan, the Alash Party went underground: Alash Orda members, having failed, were scattered. They changed their tactics and became quiet, humble, tame, and properly “Soviet.”25

The author of the letter is not entirely truthful: as a historian, he knew perfectly well that representatives of the Alash movement were amnestied by the Soviet authorities and were forced to cooperate without exception. He continues: Kanysh Satpayev had no choice but to turn into a discreet “Soviet man.” Saving his own skin, he goes to Tomsk to study. The other Satpayevs—Abikei, Karim, and Nokesh—apparently failed to disguise themselves. They were exposed and persecuted as sworn enemies of the people. Kanysh Satpayev was unlikely ever to forgive the Soviet authorities for this.

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In 1945, the former member of the counter-revolutionary Alash Party, bourgeois nationalist, and enemy of the Bolshevik party Kanysh Satpayev was accepted into the ranks of the Communist Party. He concealed from the party the fact that he was and is a bourgeois nationalist and that he came from a rich feudal family, and admitted only partially that the Satpayevs, young and old, fought against Soviet power. In 1946, he was APPOINTED President of the Academy of Sciences of the Kazakh SSR.26 Later he became a deputy of the Supreme Soviets of the Kazakh SSR and the USSR and an academician. In 1949, this bourgeois nationalist enemy of the Bolshevik Party was elected as a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan. During his nominations for these posts, . . . he pretended to be the son of a well-off livestock breeder. He deceived the people when he was elected a deputy of the Supreme Soviets of the KazSSR and the USSR, pretending to be the son of a nomadic worker oppressed by Tsarism. We should not forget that Satpayev also concealed his age. He was not 50 but about 60 years old at the time. He did it to hide his affiliation with the Alash Party. He took advantage of being a party member as a 16 or 17-year-old boy in 1917 when the party existed. However, he can be found in the archives and the newspapers “Kazakh” and “Sary-Arka”—the official organs of the Alash Party.

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Shoinbaev juggles the definitions of “bai” and “well-off livestock breeder” and accuses the academician of concealing his age, as he knows very well that the recipients of his letter know little of the realities of Kazakh society. It’s hard to say today (after almost seven decades) if Shoinbaev was lying or sincerely believed what he wrote in his denunciation about Satpayev’s age, but as a professional historian, he must have had an understanding of social categories of pre-revolutionary Kazakh society. Then Shoinbaev switches to the accusations against Doctor of Historical Sciences, Professor E. Bekmakhanov: Kanysh Satpayev has remained a bourgeois nationalist to this day. He expressed vehement support of the bourgeois nationalist views of Bekmakhanov, which he laid out in Kazakhstan in the 1820s–1840s. In this book, Bekmakhanov idealised the sworn enemy of the Kazakh people and agent of Central Asian khans and English imperialism, Sultan Kenesary Kasymov. Bekmakhanov’s book advocates the work of national Kadet Alikhan Bukeykhanov. All this, of course, was to Satpayev’s liking, so he defended Bekmakhanov and his bourgeoisnationalist book with great fervour.27

The following charges concern Satpayev’s personnel policy: With Satpayev’s assistance, a number of natives of the bai-landowner families received kandidat degrees or became Doctors of Science, and some even members of the Academy. For example, the daughter of a major bai, wife of

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bourgeois nationalist Tarabaev, became a Doctor of Science due to the favourable conditions created by Satpayev. The brother of another bourgeois nationalist Gabbasov, member of Alash-Orda, became a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the KazSSR. Satpayev’s son-in-law Bekturov, the husband of the daughter of Alash Party member Abikey Satpayev, became a full member of the Academy, and his wife, Raikhan, Satpayev’s sister, daughter of a sworn enemy of the Kazakh people, recieved a kandidat degree. Kenesarin, a descendant of Sultan Kenesary, works at the Academy of Sciences. In 1946, Satpayev’s son-in-law, Alikey Margulan, defended his doctoral thesis on “The Kazakh Epos” with the guidance and help of Satpayev, in which Margulan praised and idealised commander of the Golden Horde Yedige, one of the executioners of the Russian people during the Mongol yoke. This bourgeois nationalist Margulan, with the aid of Satpayev, became a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the Kazakh SSR.28

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The author of the letter goes on baselessly accusing the president of the Academy of Sciences of Kazakh SSR of using “bourgeois-nationalist methods of leadership.”29 Shoinbaev demands that Academician Satpayev be scrutinised on eight counts: The following needs checking: The fact that Satpayev had concealed his family background when joining the party in 1944 and his former membership in the counter-revolutionary Alash Party, as evidenced by the archival materials and newspaper articles. The fact of hiding his past when nominated for positions in Supreme Soviets. Did he mention at the IV Congress of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan in February 1949, when he was elected a member of the Central Committee, that he had served for Alash Orda in the past and that in November 1917, together with sworn enemy of the Soviet power Aymautov, he went to Pavlodar County to conduct anti-Soviet agitation of the Kazakh people? Satpayev’s autobiography. Did he reveal his feudal origin? Margulan’s doctoral dissertation (Satpayev’s son-in-law), written by him from a bourgeois-nationalist perspective, and the circumstances under which this bourgeois nationalist became a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences, as well as the involvement of Satpayev in this. The circumstances in which Bekmakhanov received a doctoral degree in history for his “anti-Marxist work” (Kaftanov) and Satpayev’s role in making it happen. The facts of the persecution by Satpayev of communists whom he found disagreeable. Satpayev’s bai-feudal morals (three wives, close ties with his aul, his protection of Sadykov, a crook from his aul, etc.). The CPSU (b) member T. Shoinbaev.30

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This letter provokes a direct reaction, but it is not only the emotional response that is important. These letters played a ruinous role in the fate of academician Satpayev. The first part of the accusations against Satpayev, concerning his non-proletarian, bai origin and the concealment of these facts is grave. We think that the only thing that saved Satpayev from being convicted under Article 58 of the Criminal Code was that it happened after the war, when the period of mass repressions and executions had come to an end. Had this happened in 1937–1938, extreme measures (25 years of camp imprisonment or shooting) would have been unavoidable. As is well known, no amount of merit was enough to escape the repressive Stalinist machine in the 1930s. However, repressions were still in motion in the 1950s. On November 23, 1951, by the resolution of the Bureau of the Central Committee of Communist Party (b), the following charges were brought against Kanysh Satpayev (Protocol 91, p. 3):

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(a)  concealed his socially unfit origin when joining the party. Comrade Satpayev’s father ran an affluent bai household; (b) [. . .] until recently, he has not made any acknowledgement or condemnation of his nationalist mistakes in the preface to the book Er Edige [. . .]; (c) allowed the contamination of the personnel at the Academy of Sciences of the Kazakh SSR [. . .] by people who were not trustworthy politically and were unqualified in science.31

Eventually, K. I. Satpayev was removed from the post of the President of the Academy of Sciences of the KSSR, with a severe reprimand and warning recorded in his registration card. This was not enough, however. The resolution of the Central Committee of November 23, 1951 decreed “to instruct the Minister of State Security of the Kazakh SSR, Comrade Fitin, to look into the materials on Comrade Satpayev’s engagement by the Semipalatinsk Committee of Alash-Orda as an agitator, then report back with the findings to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan.”32 At the same time, on the submission of the NKVD of the Kazakh SSR, the CC CP(b) K considered opening a criminal case against Academician K. Satpayev, but the party leadership of the republic represented by Zh. Shayakhmetov and I. Omarov stood up for K. Satpayev, which eventually affected their careers, too. Satpayev’s archive, according to his biographer M. Sarsekeev, contains copies of three letters written between January and March 1952: the first, dated January 20, is addressed to Stalin (55 pages); the second, to the Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party G. Malenkov (5 pages); the third, to the head of the Department of Science and Higher Education of the CC CP (b), Yu. Zhdanov.33 In these letters, K. Satpayev categorically objects to his stigmatization during the persistent slander campaign

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against him. In his letter to Stalin, Kanysh Satpayev writes the following: “Not being a natural lover of a ‘quiet’ life and ‘playing it safe’ in my professional work, I knowingly made occasional ‘risky’ moves to resolve critical issues, motivated solely by my awareness of their importance for the state. . . .”34 This was the principled ground for Academician Satpayev’s decisions, and despite the twists and turns of the scientist’s fate, history has put everything in perspective.

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NOTES  1. M. Bloch, The Historian’s Craft, trans. by Peter Putnam (New York: Vintage, 1953) pp. 5–6.  2.  N. Vert (i.e. “N. Werth), Istoriya sovetskogo gosudarstva, 1900–1991 (Moscow: Progress, 1992), p. 208.  3.  I. E. Grinberg, “Ideologicheskie kampanii v poslevoennom SSSR i ikh posledstviya dlya Kazakhstana,” in Kazakhstan: poslevoennoe obshchestvo 1946–1953 gg. Materialy Mezhdunarodnogo nauchno-prakticheskoi konferentsii (Almaty, 20 April 2012), p. 4.  4. “Vyskazyvanie Stalina o preklonenii pered inostrantsami” (online publication), https://politikus.ru/articles/1930-vyska-zyvanie-stalina-o-preklonenii-peredinostrancami.html, 15 August 2012.  5.  Vert, Istoriya, p. 208.   6.  Ibid., p. 209.   7.  Ibid., p. 211.   8.  Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History (Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv sotsial’no-politicheskoi istorii; henceforth: RGASPI), f. 17, p. 132, d. 335.   9.  B. T. Zhanaev et al. (eds.), Akademik K. I. Satpaev: Sbornik dokumentov i materialov (Astana: 1C-Servis, 2009). 10.  Ibid., pp. 370–381. 11.  Istoriya Kazakhstana (s drevneishikh vremen do nashikh dnei). V pyati tomakh (Almaty: Atamura, 2009), iv. 550. 12.  Politicheskie represii v Kazakhstane v 1937–1938 gg.: Sbornik dokumentov (Almaty: Kazakhstan, 1998), pp. 5–9. 13.  Zhanaev et al., Akademik K. I. Satpaev, p. 9. 14.  Ibid., p. 363. 15.  RGASPI, f. 17, op. 132, d. 335, l. 120. 16.  Ibid., l. 120. 17.  Ibid., ll. 121–122. 18.  Ibid., l. 122. 19.  Ibid., l. 123. 20.  Ibid., l. 127. 21.  Ibid., ll. 132–133. 22.  Ibid., l. 128.

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23.  Ibid., l. 120. 24.  Ibid., l. 241. 25.  Ibid., ll. 242–243. 26.  Emphasis in original. 27.  RGASPI, f. 17, op. 132, d. 335, l. 244. 28.  Ibid., l. 245. 29.  Ibid., l. 246. 30.  Ibid., ll. 247–248. 31.  Zhanaev et al., Akademik K. I. Satpaev, pp. 409–410. 32.  Archive of the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan (Arkhiv Prezidenta Respubliki Kazakhstan), f. 708, op. 15, d. 175a, l. 1. 33.  M. Sarseev, Satpaev (Alma-Ata: Oner, 1989), p. 372. 34.  Zhanaev et al., Akademik K. I. Satpaev, p. 413.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY Arkhiv Prezidenta Respubliki Kazakhstan, f. 708, op. 15, d. 175a. Bloch, M. The Historian’s Craft. Translated by Peter Putnam. New York: Vintage, 1953. Grinberg, I. “Ideologicheskie kampanii v poslevoennom SSSR i ikh posledstviya dlya Kazakhstana” in Kazakhstan: poslevoennoe obshchestvo 1946–1953 gg. Materialy Mezhdunarodnogo nauchno-prakticheskoi konferentsii. Almaty, 20 April 2012. Istoriya Kazakhstana (s drevneishikh vremen do nashikh dnei). V pyati tomakh. Almaty: Atamura, 2009. Politicheskie represii v Kazakhstane v 1937–1938 gg.: Sbornik dokumentov. Almaty: Kazakhstan, 1998. Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History (Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv sotsial’no-politicheskoi istorii; henceforth: RGASPI), f. 17, op. 132, d. 335. Vert, N. (i.e. N. Werth). Istoriya sovetskogo gosudarstva, 1900–1991. Moscow: Progress, 1992. “Vyskazyvanie Stalina o preklonenii pered inostrantsami.” 15 August 2012. https:// politikus.ru/articles/1930-vyska-zyvanie-stalina-o-preklonenii-pered-inostrancami. html. Zhanaev, B. T., N. P. Kropivnitskii, et al., eds. Akademik K. I. Satpaev: Sbornik dokumentov i materialov. Astana: 1C-Servis, 2009.

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Section II

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MEMORY

In the most radical interpretation, Memory and History are interconnected, although not through their shared features, but in spite of a fundamental difference. Memory, whether individual or collective, is prone to failure. Indeed, it fails constantly, and this consistent recurrence of faults reflects its fundamental nature, its flexibility, its entirely non-photographic susceptibility to what are seemingly the most insignificant workings of life. In History as a discipline, an error is an indicator of a failure of the interpretive scheme, and at the same time a call to replace the official version with the latest revisionist one. A Historical error, unlike an error of Memory, is neutral, like the impartial perspective offered by History. Between the agents and structures of History—peoples, civilizations, political parties, religious movements—and individual bearers of Memory, there is an epistemological abyss, which can only be bridged by the finest material of metaphorical images and metaphysical reasoning. In part, this very abyss between Memory and History was what Hegel meant by calling to life his spirit of Reason, which does not tarry with myriad individual experiences, but marshals them to advance its unfathomable cosmic agenda. Those who have endured and preserved the memory of their suffering and passions have little knowledge of the path Reason takes them along. Concealed behind the abstract notions of a “classless society” or the “triumph of freedom,” the great cause begins to take shape only when observed on a human scale and only by the onlookers who are capable of blocking the compassion binding them to their long-departed ancestors. What can be said about the self-sufficient role of Memory in the chronicle of humanity’s journey through epochs and events, the significance of which, according to Hegel, remains hidden? 73

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This question informs the subject area of the second section of our book, devoted to the Memory of Stalinism. Each of the authors of this section has their own reference point and, in some ways, a unique approach, but each of them eventually arrives at the same conclusion. The Poles who had, historically, lived in the kresy—the BelarusianUkrainian outskirts of the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth— became one of the first peoples to be deported to the interior regions of the Soviet country. The esteemed Russophone post-Soviet writer, Yuri Serebriansky, himself a descendant of those displaced Poles, has attempted to recreate the experience of people torn from their native land and left in the Kazakh steppe without sufficient means of survival and, most importantly, without any explanation of why they were subjected to such treatment. In his chapter, Serebriansky combines fiction writing with excerpts from the resolutions of the Council of People’s Commissars and testimonies of the survivors of the forced exodus. For all the interviewed witnesses of that era, the deportation took place in their childhood, which explains the author’s choice of the protagonist to create a “collective image” of the settlers. This decision was certainly the correct one. A child’s perception—Genka is a girl’s name (a diminutive and affectionate form of Eugenia)—preserves the memory of the deprivation during their relocation as if in passing, without any intentional focus. However, it is precisely this perspective that permits him to highlight the conditions, unworthy of people and even of livestock, which the Soviet state imposed on tens of thousands. Reading the masterfully written prose of Serebriansky, one cannot shake the feeling that its main message lies in something unsaid, in the transitions from one sentence to another, in the invisible but perceived rhythm of the breathing of people and animals, which is on the verge of breaking down into white noise. This is not some horror on the periphery of vision but a horror so overwhelming and massive that it cannot be surgically separated from the plot and at the same time allows the remainder to preserve the rudiments of reason. In this chapter, Serebriansky turns Stalinism into an ontological condition of consciousness, even (or especially) the consciousness of a child, to which tradition stubbornly ascribes the qualities of purity and innocence. The journalist, researcher, and human rights activist Ekaterina Kuznetsova can be called a witness of the era the authors of this book are trying to comprehend (along with countless academic researchers and “ordinary citizens” unencumbered by academic degrees). Born in China and having moved to Karaganda as an eighteen-year-old girl, Ekaterina Kuznetsova saw the camp gradually grow into a large city. She also saw other things: how state censorship and the accompanying self-censorship long obscured the truth about Karaganda and its tragic origins—the truth about Karlag, this vast island

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Memory 75

of the Gulag archipelago. This imparts to Kuznetsova’s chapter the status of nearly a primary source. She does not so much write about memory as remember herself. The chapter centers not only on what the prisoners of Karlag endured, to the extent that they even managed to endure. Kuznetsova also writes about what was done in order to preserve and disseminate knowledge of the camp and its horrors. She writes about Moscow pensioner Tatyana Nikolskaya, who visited Karlag, the place of her unfortunate birth and childhood, half a century later. She also tells the story of guests from “far abroad”—H. R., a citizen of Finland, and J. G., a native of Transvaal; both were proclaimed enemies of the people and arrested as young men. Both came back to their Calvary in search of the truth. Other heroes of her story are documentary filmmakers who placed the toponym “Dolinka,” “the capital of Karlag,” on the tragic map of the utopian projects of the twentieth century. Kuznetsova keeps questioning whether we have done enough to prevent the memory of the Gulag from slipping out of collective consciousness. Time “erases” many things, Kuznetsova writes, “but the Memory lives on.” On the other hand, will future generations require this memory; will it not become a part of some folklore, a legend of suffering in a mythologized version of the past, capable of stirring reverence in those who address it, but no sense of kinship? The author does not provide a straightforward answer. The chapter written by the cultural anthropologist Alexandra Tsay is perhaps that which most closely adheres to the conventions of academic discourse.1 Using the example of Koreans being deported to Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan in 1937–38, the author, together with the German anthropologist and historian Aleida Assmann, poses a rather Shakespearean question: “To remember or to forget?” If we remember, then what and, most importantly, how? After all, as Tsay reminds us, there is “official” memory, there is “folk” memory, and there is “post-memory,” i.e., the memory of traumatic events, passed on from the generation that had survived the trauma to the generation that followed. Each of these forms of memory end up serving different purposes. They have diverse “therapeutic values” and are subject to different degrees of instrumentalization. The author aptly entwines these theoretical reflections into her personal drama, which she describes and lives through. For Alexandra Tsay, a representative of the very generation that “followed,” the question of memory is a matter of collective self-determination. Who are we, the author asks, postSoviet, Central Asian Koreans, who were dispatched to Kazakhstan by ill fate and found our home here? Severed from the past by the tragic experience of deportation, can we still call Korea and the Far East our homeland? The question of memory is also a personal question. Speaking of trauma, the author

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turns to herself: if the trauma of Stalinism has not been processed, fully recognized, or comprehended, it keeps forming the worldview and behavioural norms of everyone who carries it. The three works presented here vary in their narrative style and content. They represent the general polyphony of this publication, emphasizing, we would hope, its value. Nevertheless, they have something in common that could give an answer to the question posed at the very beginning about the self-sufficient role of Memory in the chronicle of human development. The end of History, temptingly promised by Hegel, Marx, and modern transhumanist positivists, means, among other things, a synchronization in the collective perception and interpretation of time; this is why Utopia beyond the horizon of History carries the deep imprint of dystopia. This Utopia has no room for the often incoherent, fallible memory, and therefore there is no place for individuality, ultimately conditioned by the uniqueness of memory rather than (as yet) a unique body. The authors have first-hand knowledge about this characteristic of Utopia. They encourage us to remember—and do it selflessly, with all our might, remember, in order to be. They encourage each of us to remember our personal story—and to do it for the sake of all. Mikhail Akulov NOTES

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1.  In place of the formal apparatus of conventional academic writing, we have appended to the chapters of E. Kuznetsova and Yu. Serebriansky a short bibliographical list with academic works on Karlag and Polish deportation.

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Chapter Four

Altynshash

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Yuriy Serebriansky

From the very first issue of the magazine of the Polish diaspora in Kazakhstan, Ałmatyński Kurier Polonijny, we have been publishing the stories of Polish families deported to Kazakhstan on Stalin’s orders. I must say that such historical material—recollections of participants of the events or their descendants who have recorded accounts of what took place—must be published. It is one of the reasons for the magazine to exist. Preserving this memory is part of our mission as a publisher. I have been fortunate enough to meet and document the stories of those brought to Kazakhstan as children in cattle wagons. Despite the irrefutable evidence of crimes against the Poles and other peoples, those I spoke to did not seem embittered or angered, which came as a shock to me. Instead, they perceived what had happened to them as a stroke of fate. They were inclined to remember only the good, of which they had so little in childhood. This feature of memory is one proof of people’s capacity for survival. And then, of course, there is their unshakable faith. Over time, I have amassed numerous records, documents, emotional or detailed testimonies, accounting of the similar tragic facts, but at the same providing individual and personal details. After reading them all, I realized that publishing these in a book of memories would do them justice and promote the truth. I took it as a personal responsibility to these people. As I remembered being shocked by the easy-going attitude of my interlocutors towards their fate, I had the idea of crafting a generalised fictional character. That is how the story “Altynshash” came to be written, and it is a great honor that this text is now published alongside documentary evidence from the time. The train would often stop, but there was no telling how long each stop was going to last. Nobody announced anything. On the second day of the journey, 77

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passengers began to wonder whether they should try and make a fire to cook, or find a way to wash baby linen. The cattle wagon in which Genka’s family is travelling is large, wooden, and hardly suited to accommodating people. When they got on, Papa put Genka and Roman, Genka’s younger brother, on the second-tier bunk. The air smells strongly of a cowshed. The bunk is high above the floor. “I can look outside and breathe some air through this crack in the wall,” thought Genka. It is half-dark inside. How long will it take to get where we’re going? The stops at stations last for some time. If the train stops somewhere along the way, no one can say when it will get going again. During a long stop, one can manage to cook some bread soup. Genka is not interested in soup, or even in kielbasa. At long stops, she would run through five cars in two minutes, deftly dodging soldiers in uniforms and people jumping out of the wagon onto the embankment. When she would get to her grandfather, who is travelling with their cow Malina, and look inside their wagon—which looks, on the outside, the same as other the wagons, but where the stench of the cattle is unbearable—her grandfather would say with quiet affection: “Genya.” Grandfather is not himself anymore. Back at home, he put himself in charge of everything there was. He bossed Mom and Dad around, gave orders to the chickens, the cow, neighbours, and the stupid piglet, which folded its ears and squinted. Left alone, the pig used to get very noisy and once disturbed Genka’s sleep. Grandfather went and yelled at it. He also told the piglet in detail what had happened to its mother, the pig. That is how grandfather used to be. Before all this. “Since they let us take the cow, they want us gone for good.” Mom shouted at Grandpa for saying this. She cried. For some reason, she realised that her grandfather was now different, and you could get away with yelling at him, and so she did. Sometimes grandfather sticks his hand through the gap between the boards of the wagon partition, and Genka touches his hand and then looks Malina in the face, the cow’s black eyes disappear in the darkness of the wagon. Then Genka would run back along the rubble embankment, or dust, or grass back to her wagon, watched by the troops, who pay attention but keep silent. It is so good to be out in the fresh air. The smell became different from before, although the train would often stop in woods that looked just like those at home. On the tenth day, when Genka ran to her grandfather again, the train stopped at some station near a brick house resembling a small palace. At the porch, there was a garden with two neat rows of trees, painted as though they were schoolgirls in white leggings who were there to salute the trains. Genka saw Malina’s sad eyes through the gaps and realised that her grandfather had transmigrated into her, so as not to suffer from the hunger and the stench. The cow and grandfather had become one. When everyone climbed down from the wagons onto the embankment to stand by the train, Dad said “we’re in the woods, no station, gonna be a brief stop” and extended his hands to take her off the bunk: Genka jumped onto the floor on her own, then Dad helped her onto the ground, and she looked under

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Altynshash 79

the wagon. On the other side, she could see the feet of soldiers patrolling the train. Their boots. Huge dirty boot-tops. Sometimes they stopped to smoke. She wanted to get under the car, as she sometimes did during long stops so that no one could see her and she could imagine silence. It is quiet there. The only place she feels safe. Noise means anxiety and fear. Even when people in the wagon keep silent, there is no real quiet. It is not only Genka’s family travelling in the wagon. There are a lot of people, and Genka knows many of them. She often pictures quietness, missing the way it had been at home. Their wall clock was left behind to tick in the room. The train has been going through this open space since morning. A crosswind blows through the car and sometimes creates whirls whistling at the openings. From time to time, white muddy spots fly by on both sides. They look like ice fields from a distance. Bridges over some streams and endless identical poles. Everything outside has changed except these poles. Having quietly removed her mother’s folded jacket from the crack, which served as a window during the day, Genka begins counting the poles out of boredom. They resemble giants with one leg set to the side, or dancers waiting for the music to begin. Sometimes the railroad bends, and she can see the front wagons or the tail of the train. During the stops, people come out and look around. Unfamiliar steppe grass smells of wildness and anxiety, like the moment before sunset in the gathering twilight. The steppe comes alive after dark. Bird cries and the buzzing of cicadas resound like songs in a foreign language. The bonfire lit up by soldiers at the very end of the train creates a haze during the day and turns into a cock’s tail as the darkness falls. There is a time when the bonfire and sunset are of the same burgundy colour, and it is not clear, which is the setting sun is and which the fire. Genka stands on the mound next to her mother and feels scared that they may put out the sun. The train better not start right now. She squeezes her mother’s hand as tight as she can. Mom probably feels the same way. The train left late at night, and by the afternoon of the next day, small groves began to appear either on one side or the other. If you imagined that the steppe was the sky, they looked like floating clouds. You could look at them all day long, but the train suddenly stops. It is windless. We are at a small station. A rickety fence. Several buildings. Soldiers signal everyone to get out of the wagons. People install boards for the cattle to come down. The train has come to a stop in a semicircle, it is very long, and you can see people jump out of the wagons, some handing things down, others receiving them, bundles of things, some jars, a baby carriage with white wheels, a crumpled suitcase. Dad says this is it. We have arrived. Voices are buzzing around. Some woman is calling Franz. Children stick to their older relatives. “Why do we have so few things?” Genka examines the neighbours, whose boy is holding on to the handle of a large suitcase. Like everyone else, her parents are piling things up near the barracks. “Does your father have a cigarette?” a man has come up. “Let me check,” Dad replies and unties his grandfather’s duffel bag. There are mirages on the horizon of the steppe. It is dry and hot here. Mom is afraid of snakes and has climbed on the bundles of things lying on the dusty

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ground. There’s not a single cloud in the sky, which is so high and transparent. We’ll have to spend the night outside. At the station. Under the sky. They have promised to take everyone to new villages in the morning. They said we would be living in houses. But who said that? A pot with pork scratchings stayed inside the wagon under a heap of our belongings. Did Mom forget it there on purpose? The taste and smell of our home. It turned very cold in the evening, and mosquitoes were buzzing. One more family could fit in the tractor cart. The parents discussed something briefly with the other adults. Genka sits next to a boy a little younger than her. He looks at her all the time out of the corner of his eye and frowns silently. Genka turned away and saw the train dwindle and turn into a snake on the horizon. The boy is sleeping, his head leaning on Genka’s shoulder, and when the carriage shook, he grabbed onto her elbow, hurting her in his sleep. But she didn’t wake him up. She endured the pain. Father’s tense hand supports her back, giving her warmth and tranquillity. She wants to sleep properly in their new home, which is still one hour away. Why take us here? The same question as yesterday. Why does the village have no borders and one can see so far in all directions? The boy woke up a long time ago and did not even think about why he had been so comfortable. Low grass, both fresh and dry, covered the ground. The wild steppe odour. Soldiers rounded up men to put up tents of white and dark green fabric. White ones are small, and green ones are huge. Genka has never seen tents before. Very funny. One could actually unfold a house. Dad said we needed to go to the white tent over there. A terrible secret has been revealed—these tents are the new homes. People are silently eating their evening stew by small bonfires between the tents. The fabric of the tent lets only the light of the fire through, creating a shadow theatre. There are a few discussions. Hands and caps resemble goose beaks and giraffe necks. There’s a spider right in front of her eyes. “I wish it was the spider who had been hiding in our clothes on the train.” Grandfather did not allow mother to chase them away. He wouldn’t even touch the spider web, which my mother could not accept. It seems that Genka recognized this spider. We brought it from home. Yesterday, she saw the cows taken out to pasture, and that Malina was there with the others. Grandpa was with her. She would go and say hello tomorrow. The air in the tent is warm with breathing. It is warm inside. Roman has been sleeping for a while. Dad is outside.”1

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Document No. 1.13 Resolution of the Council of People’s Commissars No. 776-120сс “On relocation of 15,000 Polish and German families from the Ukrainian SSR to the Karaganda Oblast of Kazakh Autonomous SSR” 28.04.1936 RESOLUTION No. 776-120сс of the Council of People’s Commissars of the USSR Top secret 28 April 1936 Moscow, Kremlin

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On relocation of 15,000 Polish and German families from the Ukrainian SSR to the Karaganda Oblast of Kazakh ASSR The Council of People’s Commissars of the USSR DECREES: 1.  The NKVD is to manage the resettlement to Karaganda Obl. of the Kazakh Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic of Polish and German families from the Ukrainian SSR, amounting to 15,000 households or 45,000 people, to agricultural labour settlements of the type already established by the NKVD. Resettled target groups will not be stripped of their citizenship rights and retain the right to move freely within the boundaries of the administrative district to which they are transferred, but without leaving it. 2.  NKVD GULAG is assigned the task of arranging housing and utilities, as well as the agricultural planning and development for resettled groups using the assistance and resources of the deportees. 3.  Karaganda Regional Executive Committee shall organise township councils in the deportee settlements. 4.  The People’s Commissariat for Collective Farming shall immediately reserve the necessary land resources for the resettled families from the lands of Letovochnyi, Krasnoarmeiskii, and Tarangul’skii meat farms of the collective farm system in Karaganda Oblast. It shall organize on-farm land management, immediately dispatching the required number of land surveyors to Kazakhstan for this purpose. 5.  The People’s Commissariat for Collective Farming is authorized to transfer cattle from Letovochnyi dairy and meat collective farm to Kras-

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noarmeiskii and Tarangul’skii collective farms and NKVD GULAG is obliged to reimburse the Commissariat for livestock buildings and housing that will remain at the Letovochnyi collective farm. 6.  The People’s Commissariat for Agriculture is authorized to erect industrial and housing buildings at the Krasnoarmeiskii and Tarangul’skii dairy and meat collective farms in 1936, using the reimbursed amount in addition to the allotted investments for 1936. 7.  The People’s Commissariat for Agriculture shall organise three MTSs (machine-tractor stations) on the territory of the new settlements no later than the third quarter of 1936. Allocate 4,500,000 rubles for the organisation of these MTSs, including 2,170,000 rubles through the capital investment plan of the People’s Commissariat for Agriculture for 1936, and 2,330,000 rubles from the reserve fund of the Council of the People’s Commissars of the USSR. 8.  The People’s Commissariat of Heavy Industry shall deliver 30 tractors from Chelyabinsk Tractor Factory, 60 tractors from Stalingrad Tractor Factory, 12 trucks from Stalin Car-Making Plant, two tank trucks, three pickups, three passenger cars, six portable engines with the capacity of 75 and 57 HP, complete with trailer implements and equipment for machine and tractor workshops. 9.  The People’s Commissariat of Health and the People’s Commissariat of Education of the RSFSR, in accordance with specialization, are assigned the task of arranging and maintaining the healthcare network and cultural and educational institutions in these settlements. Therefore, the People’s Commissariat of Health and the People’s Commissariat of Education of the RSFSR shall provide these establishments with medical staff and teachers and the necessary equipment, manuals, and medicines not later than May-June of 1936. 10.  The Council of People’s Commissars of the Ukrainian SSR shall send the livestock, which were in individual possession of the deportees, to Kazakhstan along with the evicted families. Collective farms shall provide horses to the resettled members of the collective farms in proportion to their share. The crops of the resettled sole farmers must be transferred to local collective farms according to the regional land department assessment with the immediate payment of the estimated cost to the owners. Collective farms shall pay resettled farmers in kind and money for all completed workdays in full. 11.  The State Planning Committee of the USSR, the People’s Commissariat of Timber Industry, the People’s Commissariat of Heavy Industry and

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the People’s Commissariat of Local Industry of the RSFSR shall allocate and ship within the 2nd and 3rd quarters of 1936 to the People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs the following building materials and equipment in equal parts:

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Roundwood Sawn timber Poles Nails Glass Roof steel Structural steel Wire Wood glue Dry oil Ready-mixed paints White mineral pigment Tar coating Cement Plywood Iron piping Tie sawing-machines Saws for tie sawing-machines Tools Stove fittings Hemp fibre Felt

55,000 cu. m. 62,000 cu. m. 9,000 cu. m. 250 tons 117,000 sq. m. 19 tons 190 tons 13 tons 14 tons 103 tons 47 tons 22 tons 128,000 sq. m. 300 tons 5,490 sq. m. 7 tons 10 pcs 30 pcs to the value of 100,000 rubles 560 tons 87 tons 34 tons

12.  Implementing the community construction programme, the NKVD Gulag shall particularly encourage the construction of houses and outbuildings by the resettled workers themselves, and use the allocated funds— both cash payments and long-term loans of up to eight years—to provide construction materials and tools to the builders. 13.  In 1936, the Agricultural Procurement Committee of the People’s Commissariat shall provide the following to the NKVD Gulag at the state procurement prices: (a) Grain seeds for loan (b) Feed grain for loan

3,600 tons 5,000 tons

Seed and feed grain loans shall be provided to the settlers for a period of 3 years, to be returned in equal shares, starting from 1937 onwards; the seeds and feed grain is to be provided from that to be shipped to the

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State by NKVD and MTS labour settlements in Karaganda region of Kazakh ASSR. 14.  The Central Union of Consumer Cooperatives is assigned the task of organizing the trade network in the new settlements and procuring them with everything required to commence trading operations (food items, manufactured goods, shoes, implements, etc.) starting from 1937. 15.  The Interior trade Commissariat the USSR is to allocate to the Central Union in the second, third, and fourth quarters of 1936 the following items for sale to the resettled:

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Vegetable oil Fish Meat Sugar Manufactured goods Enamel cookware Galvanized cookware

150 tons 1,000 tons 200 tons 630 tons to the value of 5,000,000 rubles, to include 150,000 rubles 50,000 rubles

16.  The People’s Commissariat of Internal Trade of the USSR shall immediately issue 250 large tents to the NKVD GULAG for temporary settlement of the deportees. 17.  Houses and outbuildings built by the NKVD GULAG shall be handed over to agricultural cooperatives of resettlers in the form of a long-term loan for eight years. Put Selkhozbank (Agricultural Bank) in charge of issuing all loans to agricultural cooperatives and individual resettlers. 18.  Under this resolution, agricultural cooperatives made up of resettlers, and individual relocated farms shall be exempt from all taxes, fees and of grain, potatoes and livestock products for three years from 1937. 19.  Advise the People’s Commissariat of Railways, at the request of the NKVD, to transport the resettled families and their property at a preferential military tariff, ensuring the provision of rolling stock according to the plan submitted by the NKVD. The People’s Commissariat of Railways will be reimbursed for these transportations in a centralised manner, using funds allocated for these purposes. 20.  Determine the costs of the resettlement and economic arrangement provided for by this resolution in the amount of 23,000,000 rubles, at the expense of: a) the reserve fund of the Council of People’s Commissars of the USSR in the amount of 19,000,000 rubles; b) estimate of the All-Union Resettlement Committee under the Council of People’s Commissars of the USSR in the amount of 1,830,000 rubles;

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c) the investment plan of the People’s Commissariat for Agriculture of the USSR for 1936 in the amount of 2,170,000 rubles. Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars of the USSR V. MOLOTOV Deputy executive secretary of the Council of People’s Commissars of the USSR B. MEZHLAUK2

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MARINA REZONTOVA Adelina Frantsevna was born on September 3, 1947, in what was then Kokchetavskaya oblast’, in the village of Podol’skoe of Chkalovskii district. Her father, Franz Grigoryevich (Franciszek Gszegowich) Dvoretskii, a Pole and a Catholic, was born in 1916 in the village of Sofievka in the Kyiv region of Ukraine, on the border with Poland. Ukrainians, Poles, and Germans populated the village. In 2001, he moved to live with his daughter Rosaliya in the Ivano-Frankivsk region in Nadvornyanskii district, to the settlement of Pasechnaya, where he died in March of 2009. Franciszek came from a large well-to-do family (seven children), had studied at a Polish school for four years and, as a teenager, came back home to work in the fields, shepherding cows and pigs, and did heavy household chores. He remembered that their ancestral house was small, with whitewashed walls and a thatched roof. In the main room in the far-right corner was the “Icon Corner,” where The Virgin Mary with the Infant Christ and The Crucifix of Jesus Christ hung on the wall. The corner was decorated with embroidered towels. Nearby on a table covered with a white tablecloth burned a candle and lay a book—książka. Adelina’s mother, Tofilya Mikhailovna Dvoretskaya (née Zhelezko) (1922–1977), was born in the neighbouring village of Yablonevka, Kyiv region. Born into a Polish Catholic family, she dropped out after four years at the Polish school and began to help her mother, like all girls of her generation. In early childhood, Tofilya learned to sew and do cross-stitching and crochet lacing. Polish families in those days were profoundly religious. Each member of the family wore a kshyszyk—a pectoral wooden cross on linen lace; everyone knew and read The Lord’s Prayer. On Sundays, everyone went to the Church for Mass. After Mass, little girls greeted the elderly with the words: Niech będzie pochwalony Jezus Chrystus (“Praise be to Jesus Christ”), bowed and kissed their hand. In the tumultuous year of 1936, in early spring, many families in the villages of Sofievka and surrounding villages were dispossessed as kulaks and sent in freight trains to faraway Kazakhstan. After a

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lengthy and exhausting trip, men drove a peg into the ground of the endless Kazakh steppe and called this new place of residence the “fourth point.” Then they put up a large cloth tent where we had to live all together. Soon followed disease, death, and hunger. These were the initial inhumane conditions for the new life of dekulakized peasants. By 1940, the dugouts of the “fourth point” turned into the village of Podol’skoe. The survivors adapted to the conditions, settled down, and began to arrange weddings. It was then that Adelina’s parents got married, and soon their first son was born. There were altogether ten children in the family. The Great Patriotic War began in 1941, and in 1942 my father ended up in the labor army in the town in Nizhnii Tagil. Labor army soldiers guarded captured Germans and built factories. Adelina’s mother and son lived with their parents in Podol’skoe at the time, since the young family had not had time to build their own house. In 1946, Franz Grigorievich returned from Nizhnii Tagil and was immediately sent to work on a dairy farm under construction 70 kilometres away from the village of Podol’skoe. At first, he was a clerk, then a veterinarian, and in his last years, until 1955, he worked as the farm manager until it was closed. Returning to Podol’skoe in 1955, the Dvoretskiis finally built a small house for two families. They shared a wall but had separate entrances. Adelina Frantsevna remembered that they smeared the floor in their little dugout with red clay and whitewashed the walls with white clay as decoration. They stitched together pieces of cloth and hung them on the walls instead of carpets. Made of satin or calico, bright and multicoloured, they were called radyushki. Tables were decorated with hand-sewn napkins, adorned by cross-stitching with cotton or mouliné thread. In the beginning, they put tamped down straw on improvised wooden plank beds and used folded vests as pillows. Straw mattresses appeared only in the early fifties. They mostly used clay dishes. Mugs and spoons were wooden. Later on, people could afford to buy aluminium and earthenware dishes. We used a makeshift wooden trough called nuchyovka for dishwashing, and carried water home in a wooden bucket, tsyberko. Adelina Frantsevna remembered an unusual moment—making a glass cup from a glass bottle. They took the thread (dratva), folded it many times, coated it with tar and rubbed it in the right place, heating the glass, then poured water onto the hot part, and the unnecessary part of the bottle broke off. The sharp edges of the cup were carefully polished. All the children wanted to drink from such cups. It was chic. In those times, there were no separators, and the Poles made sour cream as follows. They drilled a small hole near the bottom of a clay pot or three-liter jar and plugged it with a wooden cork, poured in milk and left it to turn sour for a while. Then they took out the cork and slowly drained the whey. Thick sour cream remained in the container. Such an implement was called a sloik. Adelina Frantsevna still loves to make the food her mother used to cook. She told us of some. The pytravka soup recipe: potatoes (diced) are

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Altynshash 87

cooked in chicken or pork broth, then flour burned to a golden colour (several tablespoons) is added and poured over with cold water. The soup is seasoned with sautéed onions. To make lyzanki you knead the dough like for noodles, roll and cut it into diamonds or squares, then boil them in salted water and lay in a colander. These pieces of dough are seasoned with sautéed onions in pork fat. Khrustiki resemble twiglets and are made from dough kneaded in homemade sour milk with soda, salt, sugar, and eggs. Leave the dough in a sealed container for about an hour, then roll it out and cut into diamonds with slots in the centre. Pull one end through the slot to make it into a small twisted bun, which is then deep-fried in lots of fat. Khrustiki are served with milk or tea. All the tea at that time was homemade, from the leaves of currants, raspberries, cherries, or strawberries. In 1956, all family members were rehabilitated and could change their place of residence. But only in 1961 did the Dvoretskiis move to the Dzhambul region, to the Chu station. Father received a construction loan, and by the mid-sixties, the family began a comfortable life in a beautiful, large house with a glazed veranda and curtains on the windows called firanki. Father started to work as an irrigator of sugar beets on the collective farm. In 1965, after finishing school, Adelina went to train as a cook in the city of Ust’-Kamenogorsk. She lived in an apartment, got a scholarship of 18 rubles and enjoyed her life. After graduation, she remained in Ust’-Kamenogorsk and worked in a canteen. In 1970, she married Yuri Alexandrovich Zaichenko (1944–1998). His father was a Pole, and his mother came from Ukraine. In 1977, they had a son, Andrei. In 1972, she became a social welfare worker. From 1987, she had worked as a plastic and rubber presser, and later as a caster at the Instrument-Making Plant until she was made redundant one year before retirement in December of 1996. Since 1997, she received a retirement benefit for hazardous working conditions, and since 2002 an additional rehabilitation allowance. Today, Adelina Frantsevna looks after her two grandchildren: the eldest, Danil, born in 2002, and granddaughter Sofia, born in 2008. She knits children’s clothes and sews cross-stitched napkins and tablecloths. Two brothers and a sister from the large Dvoretskii family now live in the North Kazakhstan region; one sister is in Germany, another in Ukraine. Adelina Frantsevna and the younger sister Valentina stayed in Ust’-Kamenogorsk. Both must have remembered similar events from childhood, and perhaps also something more, personal and resonant. ELENA PORSEVA I was born in Ukraine, in the Kyiv region of Emelchinskii district, in the village of Ul’yashevka in 1923. My maiden name is Kotwicka. We lived in small villages at the time. My parents, Pyotr and Liszbeta, owned a land

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plot with a forest and a meadow. We lived in peace and friendship—father, mother, grandfather, me, and my younger brother Boleslav. My parents were peasants. They cultivated the land and managed their livestock: a cow, horses, chickens. In 1927, my father, Pyotr Stanislavovich, went to Poland to look for a good place to relocate his family. But perhaps something happened to him along the way, and he never came back. . . . And in 1929, the military arrested grandfather Stanislav Kotwicka for non-payment of taxes in kind. I was terrified and hid behind a barn, but my grandfather found me and said goodbye. After his arrest, we never saw him again. No one knows where he ended up. . . . Then they took our house and everything that was in it. They seized our cattle too. They sent Mom beyond the 100 km zone. She worked near Kyiv at a glass factory. My brother-in-law took my brother and me to live in their house. When Mother came to see her children, she had an hour before she had to go back. We missed our mother a lot. I remember I didn’t want to live when I was seven. . . . In 1933 we lived with my grandfather Yan Tsalkovskii. We ate what we could find in the forest: berries, mushrooms. We managed to exchange mushrooms for products from time to time. Our godmother Pavlina Drapikovskaya brought us milk that she had to carry for 5 km. I went to school in Taiki, on the other side of the forest. In the first grade, they taught us in Polish, and then in Ukrainian. To somehow make ends meet, mother sent me to tend grazing cattle and look after other people’s children. In 1936, during the repression, 20 Polish families were sent to Kazakhstan from our village Khmirin, without the right to correspondence. We secretly brought icons, a crucifix, a prayer book, and handwritten songbooks in Polish. My mother and brother had travelled in freight cars for almost a month to get to Ushtobe. We ended up in the village of Gavrilovka on the collective farm called “New Life.” The locals greeted the new settlers warmly, helping us with what they could. All the men were registered in the commandant’s office and had to report regularly. We lived in dugouts when the war began. Everyone, young and old, toiled on the collective farms to fulfil the compulsory minimum of labor days. We ploughed fields with bulls instead of horses. I craved bread, but we were not allowed any, sending all we had to the front. I remember how we manually cleared the barley field, pulling out spikelets. . . . In 1943, I married Anton Ivanovich Baginskii. His family was also evicted from the village of Khmirin in 1936. From the age of 14, he worked on the collective farm “New Life.” His younger brother Konstantin, born in 1924, was taken to a labor camp. First, he worked in Tekeli, then transferred to mines in Karaganda, where he disappeared. The elder brother Valerian was arrested and executed for political crimes in 1937, despite the fact he was illiterate and didn’t know how to write. My husband and I worked on the collective farm throughout the war. Anton worked in a brigade on a mountain farm, and I was down in the field. We toiled seven days a week, from dawn

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Altynshash 89

to dusk: used bulls for ploughing, sowed, weeded, harvested with sickles and pulled out spikelets, then threshed. I still remember the cloud of dust from the thresher—it was hard to breathe. . . . We tended beet crops, 1 hectare each, then harvested it in the fall until the first snow. We used manual rooters, loaded cars with special forks, got on top and rode along to unload at the sugar factory. And what songs we sang! With such joy and enthusiasm! At night we looked after our garden. After the war in 1947, my mother and brother moved to live in Ukraine. My husband and I stayed in Taldykorgan. In 1947, we had a son, Boleslav, then in 1951 two twin daughters, Nina and Elena, and in 1954 another daughter, Alvina. We had a friendly family of believers. All children received higher education. Six grandchildren also graduated with diplomas. And now I also have 11 great-grandchildren. But at 50, I became seriously ill, and had to switch to a low-paid, easier job, where I worked until retirement. I want to tell you about my son. I am very proud of him. Boleslav went to school as a six-year-old. Teachers immediately noticed his extraordinary gift for science and mathematics. He was top of the class, the head of the council of people’s guard, then the secretary of the Komsomol organisation. . . . The school was extremely proud of him. Every year they awarded him a letter of recognition for excellence in his studies and active participation in the life of the school and the city. When he was 11, the town sent him to the Exhibition of Economic Achievements Moscow as the best student. After graduating from school with a gold medal, Boleslav went to Tomsk to enter the Polytechnic Institute, wearing tarpaulin boots and a sweatshirt. He was accepted and graduated with honours. He stayed to work at the same university in the department of industrial and medical electronics. He completed postgraduate studies there. In the last 12 years of his life, he was the head of the department. A professor and corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences, Boleslav accomplished a lot: he established a new scientific area in high-current electronics, had his scientific followers, published 88 papers and three monographs, and filed 76 copyright certificates and patents. He was awarded the titles “Honorary Worker of Higher Education in Russia” and “Honorary Inventor of the USSR.” He has a beautiful, friendly family in Tomsk. While he was working in the university, he would come to his hometown of Taldykorgan with the selection committee to pick future students for the Tomsk Polytechnic Institute. He would also call on my father’s house and try to do something for us. And what a clever pair of hands he had! He could do anything: build a bathhouse, do the tiling, install the lighting, fix a TV set. . . . On August 3, 2001, he died in an accident. He was only 54. We miss him a lot. . . . I have kind and caring daughters. Nina and Alvina live in Russia with their families, and Elena is with me. I taught my daughters everything that I can do myself: sew, cross-stitch, crochet, knit, and cook. My daughters and their families come to visit us every year. I thank God for my life, for

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the good husband with whom I lived for 64 years, for beautiful children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, and I wish you all long, happy, and prosperous lives! FURTHER READING Bugay, N., “40-50-e gody: posledstviia deportatsii narodov (svidetel’stvuiut arkhivy NKVD-MVD SSSR),” Otechestvennaia istoriia, 1 (1992): 122–143. Ciesielski S., and A. Kuczyński, eds. Polacy w Kazachstanie. Historia i współczesność. Wrocław: UWr, 1996. Degitayeva L., and E. Gribanova, eds. Iz istorii poliakov v Kazakhstane: 1936–1956. Sbornik Dokumentov. Almaty: “Kazakhstan” Publishing House, 2000. Lebedeva, N., “The deportation of the polish population to the USSR, 1939–41,” Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics, 16, Issue 1–2: Forced Migration in Central and Eastern Europe, 1939–1950 (2000): 28–45. Mashimbayev S., and L. Isova. Problema istorii pol’skih pereselentsev v Kazakhstane (1936–1946). Almaty, 2000. Musial, B., “The ‘Polish Operations’ of the NKVD: The climax of the terror against the Polish Minority in the Soviet Union,” Journal of Contemporary History, 48 (2013): 98–124. Naimark, Norman. Stalin’s Genocides. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010. Panto, Dmitriy. Deportacje Polaków i obywateli polskich do Kazachstanu w latach 1936–1941. Gdansk: Muzeum II Wojny Światowej, 2019. Polian, P. Against Their Will: The History and Geography of Forced Migrations in the USSR. Translated by Anna Yastrzhembska. Budapest: Central European University Press, 2003. Poujol, C., “Les Polonais du Kazakhstan entre l’intégration et la Patrie rêvée,” Espace, populations, sociétés, 1 (2007): 91–100.

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NOTES 1.  Yuriy Serebriansky, “Altynshash,” Druzhba narodov, No. 11–12 (2018). 2. Degitayeva, L. D. (ed.) Postanovleniye SNK SSSR No 776-120 SS “O vyselenii iz USSR i khozyaistvennom ustroistve v Karagandinskoi oblasti Kazakhskoi ASSR 15 000 pol’skikh i nemetskikh khozyaistv” ot 28 aprelya 1936 g. [Decree of the Council of People’s Commissars of the USSR No. 776–120 SS “On the eviction of 15,000 Polish and German households from the Ukrainian SSR and the economic structure in the Karaganda region of the Kazakh Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic” dated April 28, 1936]. Iz istorii polyakov v Kazakhstane (1936–1956 gg.). Sb. dokumentov: Arkhiv Prezidenta Respubliki Kazakhstan, (Almaty: Izd. dom “Kazakhstan,”2000), pp. 18–21.

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Chapter Five

The Winds of Time Dry Out the Grass of Oblivion

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Ekaterina Kuznetsova

The history of Karaganda of the 1930s is the history of the establishment of a celebrated centerpiece of Stalin’s Five-Year Plan, the “Third Furnace” of the country, the Karaganda Coal Basin, and of the simultaneous emergence and development of the massive Soviet “correctional labor” camp, Karlag OGPU-NKVD. These two milestones in the annals of the world’s first socialist state are welded together. It is impossible to understand the formation of Karaganda as the most important economic center without considering the largest Stalinist concentration camp in Central Kazakhstan. Among the first builders of the mines, who turned the city into a regional center, were “dekulakized” peasants from the central and western regions of the country, the so-called special settlers, exiled and deported Poles, Western Ukrainians, Germans, and Finns, those from the central and western regions of the USSR, and, of course, the Karlag prisoners. The intelligentsia of this region emerged from these “enemies of the people” who had been mostly relocated from the central cities of the European USSR. Relentless political repressions, initiated throughout the country by Stalin personally, caused great pain and losses—political, scientific, and cultural— but their effects were particularly harsh in Kazakhstan, where a third of the population was decimated by the famine ushered in by the “dear communist party” at the beginning of the thirties when the stratum of the intelligentsia was only taking shape. Faced with forced expropriations, part of the population trickled away across near and distant borders, while a huge part died during the famine. The intellectual and moral-ethical losses have undoubtedly affected and will continue to affect the memory and mindset of the population for a long time to come. The recovery of both is a slow and often painful process, whereas destruction happens instantaneously and its ruinous potential is enormous. For many years, all these components of the unvarnished 91

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biography of the steppe region were shrouded in official lies and silence, but secrets always come out. The subject of this essay will not be the “heroic deeds” of the first builders of this “Third Furnace.” Nor will it discuss those poor Kazakhs, exhausted by the famine, trudging to Karaganda in the hope of finding shelter and a job at one of the mines, which would guarantee a ration of sticky brown bread and a bowl of swill with just enough nutrients to survive. We will not address the fate of miners from Donbas, exhausted by the Ukrainian Holodomor that was brought about by the same party, brought by trains to our steppe to build coal mines and other large industrial plants. Although there have been lies on this subject, too. . . . Eyewitnesses have preserved the memory of this time. Still, the passing years have ruthlessly taken more of them from us, and the shroud of Time has become denser and less penetrable, the memories increasingly blurred and fragmented, and fewer and fewer of them have survived, resulting in the growing doubt of whether the memories are noteworthy or even necessary. . . . We will take a different route and focus on different people. Convicted without proper investigation or trial, thrown behind the barbed wire of Soviet concentration camps, these people had been carrying the humiliating stigma of “enemies of the people” for decades, dying of excruciating labor and hunger in their stuffy camp confines. Our focus is those who managed to survive, endure, persevere; those who built the cities and factories, who laid railways, extracted coal in mine bottoms, who panned gold amid the Magadan nightmare. They deserve Remembrance, Respect, Justice, and Truth. We must act quickly to be able to hear, record, preserve, and convey those grains of priceless evidence from the eyewitnesses of that terrible time, which is History itself. It is not the History composed in dusty archives by scholars thumbing through endless volumes of musty documents in dead silence, but one seen and experienced directly, with the intrinsic suffering and joy, losses and gains of those who were destined to endure all this. To be able to hear, preserve, and communicate their memory to us today is of paramount importance. And a Duty. . . . B. G., the son of a Donetsk miner, shuddered as he was telling me about the years spent with his family as a boy. His unique childhood experience included everything—the long road from the starving Ukraine to the starving Kazakhstan, his first realization of the official lies of the state, and his acquaintance with the country of the Gulag. When he was seven, his father was arrested and he was sent along with him to the Atbasarsk department of Karlag. However, it is not only this fact—although it is, in a way, unique— that makes his memories noteworthy. His family was among those Donetsk miner-volunteers who were brought in special trains to the Karaganda steppes to set up new mines and restore the old ones built by British colonizers.

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In the early thirties, when the construction of Karaganda as a major industrial centre began under the First Stalin’s Five-Year Plan, qualified engineering and mining personnel were in dire shortage. Thus, miners and engineers from the famine-ridden Ukrainian Donbas were dispatched to Kazakhstan for the “strengthening” operation, as newspapers used to word it in those years. The Soviet authorities were keen on wrapping mass relocations of the population in graceful ideas of “bottomless enthusiasm.” Donetsk miners and engineers were named volunteers, following this propagandistic logic. However, there could have been actual volunteers as, the day before the departure, as B. G. recollected, they had been shown a propaganda documentary: in warm and sunny Kazakh steppes, the miracle city of Karaganda rises by the second, and welcomes passionate and skillful young men to build and develop Kazakh coal mines, an untapped natural bounty. Over half a century afterwards (a whole life had passed!), B. G. bitterly recalls the documentary film (if only they had found what they had seen!), shown to the miners back then: stone walls (red brick burned before the revolution!), nice and comfortable houses with tiled roofs, wide-branching trees, a purest steppe lake and a duck brood sliding over its surface, a small river with willow shrubs overgrowing its shores. . . . What a happy and generous fairyland! The voice of the Motherland was not only heard but also taken at face value, and the eyes of the hungry Donbas miners blazed with hope as they stood in line to be enlisted to settle these new territories. And here they were. . . . Left in the bleak grey steppe, they saw a mud-walled station building surrounded by decrepit yurts. There was a two-story red building nearby—the only one made of brick! Must be the offices. Three wilted acacias were planted by the building. So much for the promised land! Needless to say, B. G., a seven-year-old at the time, was taught the first lesson of the Soviet government’s universal lie, which would accompany him throughout his life. Was he the only one? The isolated country blinkered the vision of the people and was victoriously boasting and endlessly glorifying its successes and achievements. The stupefied and overworked population, bent by poverty, hunger, and fear, had to plough, sow, toil away at construction sites, live in dull, miserable dwellings, wear whatever turned up, eat anything they could get, and dream of the universal happiness promised by the Bolsheviks, which loomed on the horizon but never came. People had to live one day at a time. And wait. And endure. And survive. The new settlers built a long, mud-walled barracks for themselves to have a roof over their heads. Each family was given a nook with a dirty-rag partition separating them from neighbours. On dark steppe nights and grey mornings, the long, damp barracks moaned, coughed, cursed, sighed, and suffered. In

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the dining room, poorly washed dented aluminium bowls were used to eke out a meagre lunch and a slice of damp brown bread, which he, as a boy, thought of as a great delicacy and undreamed-of happiness. He crumbled it into small pieces and did not eat it all at once, but sucked it like candy to alleviate the relentless hunger. He and his father were taken from one such damp, dark barracks at night by men in uniform caps. But that is a different story. It came much later; meanwhile. . . . Karaganda met the first specialists with all it had to offer: a piece of bread and a place to sleep. It was better than nothing. Along with miners’ trains, there was a constant flow of other special settlers, peasants robbed by the Russian government and dubbed kulakbloodsuckers, taken across the wide country and the uniform vastness of the steppe to the small station of Karaganda-ugol’naya. These trains, made up of cattle wagons, stopped short of Karaganda, at the Karabas station. Later this station would be called “Karlag Gate.” Soldiers with sheepdogs met the new arrivals. Then these silent, gloomy people, in grey columns (five in a row!), scattered about the boundless Kazakh steppe and filled low adobe barracks that sat behind barbed wire, inside camp departments with watchtowers at the corners. Thus, the Soviet “correctional labour” concentration camp of the OGPU-NKVD—Karlag—began its long miserable history, simultaneously with the establishment of socialist Karaganda. Dolinka was the “capital” of the future camp. It was a small steppe village 40 kilometres from the city. Long before the establishment of the Soviet regime, almost from the beginning of the century, Russian and German peasants, who had moved here at the time of the Stolypin reforms, and the local Kazakh population had lived here peacefully side by side. The “Stolypin peasants” planted vegetable gardens, sowed grain, and let their fattened livestock graze on the steppe grass. Kazakhs tended countless sheep and horses. Life in Dolinka had been measured and calm until the “historic upheaval.” Surprisingly, Dolinka passed through this upheaval peacefully and without any great ordeal. . . . But the new times crashed upon it with a sudden order: the population must be removed from the land, which had been chosen for the building of a concentration camp. Then soldiers appeared, and quiet Dolinka lost its cosiness overnight, as spirals of barbed wire cut through the steppe, watchtowers sprung up here and there, the grey ribbons of prisoners meandered, and finally mud-walled barracks appeared. . . . *** Early spring in Dolinka is unappealing. Grey and sad. Lonely. But then the southern winds blew, the clouds swirled faster in the boundless blue of the

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spring, the first green leaves unfolded, and sunlight poured down and washed away the bleak slumber. Dolinka was again new and fresh as if it had washed its face. And then summer would come, hot, and the streets would be lulled by its heat and fall asleep in the haze of summertime tranquillity. Somewhere a bucket would clang in a well, and the voices would become louder, and sounds of young laughter would ripple. . . . And in the age-old park, in front of the former Central Administration of the former NKVD Karlag, under the wide trees by the dried-up fountain, the heat-withered grass would crackle audibly under the feet. Is that the grass of oblivion? Autumn would bring peace to Dolinka. Golden and scarlet trees planted in the early 1920s and 1930s (or maybe even earlier!), clean air, blue smoke from the gardens, lethargic silence and stillness would spread around. And then, winter would come. And then. . . . And then the past would come alive in Dolinka. Adobe barracks buried in the snow up to the roofs, barbed wire fences, towers with black figures of the guards—popkas, dogs barking at night. And voices. They are humming, whispering, moaning, laughing, sighing—this winter wind is twirling the memory of those distant years. And then spring again. . . . The circle of time is closed. Dolinka was not selected at random. It is the former capital of the former Karlag. One of the largest islands of the Gulag Archipelago. Karaganda is an hour and a half drive from here. The city of the destitute, exiled, dispossessed, the city of convicts, the city of broken lives. That is what the Karaganda of the mid-1930s was like. It was then, in the dark years of political terror in the USSR, that it became the centre of the vast camp region, part of the Soviet empire of barbed wire. HISTORICAL NOTE The Karaganda OGPU-NKVD-MVD correctional labor camp (Karlag) was established on December 19, 1931 on the basis of the OGPU KazITlag, set up in 1930, referred to in documents as the collective farm Gigant. The first branch of KazITlag was reorganized into a separate correctional labour camp in Karaganda, abbreviated as Karlag OGPU-NKVD-MVD. In documents, when communicating with other agencies, Karaganda camp was called Karaganda NKVD collective farm. The territory of Karlag (at the time of its establishment) was divided into eight departments totalling 17,129 square kilometres.1

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Karlag had functioned for 28 years when on July 27, 1959 it was reorganized into the Penal Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Karaganda region. The territory of the camp stretched in a straight line for 260 km north to south (Bereznyaki–Kzyl-Tau), and for more than 100 km north to northwest (Bereznyaki-Esengel’dy). Another department of Karlag territory was set out along the Karaganda-Mointy railway. Separate sites were also located far beyond these borders (Akmolinsk, Ruzaevka, along the Chu River, in Balkhash, around Zhezkazgan). The Karabas railway station was the “gate” of Karlag, which was the main camp transit point. Columns of prisoners, escorted by guards with dogs, came mainly on foot. Those who made it ended up in the camp system. Those who didn’t succeed remained out in the steppe forever. . . . A year after the camp’s establishment, the contingent reached 10,400, of whom 8,400 were engaged in agricultural production. As of January 1, 1934, the number of prisoners was 24,148; by January 1, 1937 it was 27,504; and by October 1, 1938 it reached 40,109. It rapidly increased during the war years in particular. As of July 1, 1941, the number of prisoners was 39,513; by January 1, 1942, it was 42,582; and by January 1, 1943, 45,798. From December 1932 to January 1, 1959, a total of 990,852 people, doomed to slave labour, hunger, cold, and humiliation, passed through Karlag. Most of them were convicted by the Troikas and by the Special Council of the NKVD, under Article 58 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR, as “enemies of the people,” citizens of the USSR.2

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*** In 1930–31, forced relocations began of residents from the territory of the future camp to other areas of the region. Together with the indigenous population, Russians, Germans, and Ukrainians, who had migrated from central Russia, were evicted to Osakarovka, Voroshilovka, and Nura districts. Forced displacement is always a tragedy for the people. But the fate of the displaced Kazakhs is particularly tragic in this respect. In a short time and with extraordinary cruelty, they were evicted from their centuries-old habitats, from small steppe auls scattered all over the territory of the future camp without being permitted to take essential belongings, and had their livestock ruthlessly expropriated. NKVD forces took part in this operation. The resettlement coincided with forced collectivization, the dekulakization of livestock farms, the destruction of auls, and the confiscation of a huge number of cattle. The cattle, however, could not be sustained in the collective farms, and most perished due to a lack of fodder. In addition, the zhut had hit and mutilated the top layer of soil, as if a giant had trampled the longsuffering land, turning the fertile layer into a lifeless crust.

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Famine broke out in the steppe, and thousands of hungry, dying, homeless people rushed to Karaganda. . . . All this occurred against the backdrop of countless arrests and shootings by the NKVD authorities, mostly directed against the indigenous people, who were expected to disobey, and with good reason. The flares of resistance that broke out in the steppe were brutally subdued. . . .

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HISTORICAL NOTE Karlag OGPU-NKVD (like other similar Stalinist concentration camps) was conceived and existed as a state inside the state, with an autonomous infrastructure to provide basic necessities, relatively developed agriculture, industry, and construction. Building offices, design bureaus, and agricultural breeding stations were established, along with an educational facility to train the required specialists. An agricultural science station (SHOS) for crop production and a research station (NIS) for livestock rearing functioned under the camp management. Both stations ran experimental facilities. There were special grazing expeditions for fattening cattle and sheep. The prisoners built the Dolinka industrial complex, where they prepared leather, sewed sheepskin jackets, and made felt boots—valenki. They built glass factories, sugar factories, an oil factory, a meat processing plant, a repair plant, various mills, sewing workshops, and vegetable dryers. In 1940, the camp had 12 mills, nine peeling mills, 13 butter factories, one oil-pressing factory, two cheese factories, nine brinsen cheese factories, 11 vegetable salting stations, and one slaughterhouse. There was extensive industrial production in Karlag. By the beginning of the war, there was a coal mine producing 60,000 tons of coal, 10 brick factories with a capacity of two million units, six lime quarries generating 2,800 tons of lime, a woodworking workshop making 1,005 rubles worth of products. The camp had 18 power plants with a total capacity of 537.5 kWh. In the Spassk department (from 1948, a Steplag department), the spinning and weaving mill, with an output of up to two million pairs of mittens per year, was prepared for commissioning in 1941. The Balkhash camp department was contracted to construct a copper smelter. The construction site employed 650 prisoners. The Akmola Branch of the camp (ALZHIR) housed over 5,000 women from “families of traitors to the country.” They were the wives, sisters, and mothers of “enemies of the people” who had been arrested and most of whom had been shot. A sewing and embroidery factory and several enterprises processing agricultural products were set up there. The sewing and embroidery

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factory employed 1,100 imprisoned women, yielding an output worth 17,014 rubles per year. Dolinka came to function as the capital of this slave state. The Camp Central Administration, a secondary school, two hospitals, a club, a library, a post office, a camp court, a prosecutor’s office, a prison, and a State Bank branch were located there, as well as the ominous Executive Chekist Department (OCHO). . . . The camp lived autonomously, separated from the rest of the country. And at the same time, it was an integral part of this vast country, surrounded by barbed wire and isolated from the rest of the world. A country in which almost every family had had someone arrested, exiled, or shot.

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*** Beyond the watershed in the steppe, on a vast swathe of land between the Dolinka oil plant and the road turning to Shakhtinsk, there is a former camp cemetery. It has been long overgrown with steppe grass, and the graves can no longer be discerned. There are no boundaries, due to the expanse. Here are the graves of hundreds of thousands of those who were shamefully referred to as “enemies of the people,” who had been part of the people, and who were severed from it by death. . . . The Kazakh steppe is boundless. A mournful shroud of silence has descended onto the anonymous graves; only the wind stirs the sun-dried grass that encases these islands of grief and memory. People who still care about the past come here, from time to time. The Memory is disturbing. Relatives of former camp prisoners, journalists, documentary filmmakers, and historians from Russia, Ukraine, Poland, USA, England, and Germany have visited Dolinka to see. They came to honour the memory of those who drained the bitter cup, those who are forever buried in the Kazakh land. . . . Winds are driving golden spheres of tumble-weed across the old camp cemetery. They bounce on barely visible hills, get caught for a second by the grey islets, and roll on. What are they taking from us? Might it be memory? *** This documentary was shot in Dolinka by Marina Razbezhkina’s film crew for the Russian channel Kultura. Today, the name of Razbezhkina is wellknown in Russia—her feature film Yar was nominated for an award at one of the Moscow film festivals. In those days, the heroine of the future film, the narrator, Farida DavletKil’di, a spectrograph engineer from Kazan, happened to be in Dolinka and encountered the film crew.

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The story of her hard life is closely tied to Dolinka. Farida was born in a Novosibirsk transit prison. Together with her mother, she was transferred here. Farida’s mother, Rukiya, was arrested in China, in the city of Mukden (now Shenyang), by the Soviet counterintelligence agency SMERSH and taken to the USSR as a “relocated person,” and then convicted without investigation or trial. She was sentenced under Article 58 as an “enemy of the people” when she was already in prison. Ibragim, the future father of Farida Davlet-Kil’di, a public figure, journalist, and publisher of the émigré Tatar newspaper Milli Bairak, was also arrested in Mukden. Ibragim was sent to the Mordovian camps, where he served his entire term as an “enemy of the people and Tatar nationalist,” and after the camp imprisonment, he was exiled to the Krasnoyarsk region. Ten long years elapsed in separation before the family could reunite after Stalin’s death. . . . And then half a century later, Farida returned to Dolinka. The same Dolinka where her mother had brought her as a baby in a transit prisoners’ trailer, the same Dolinka where she had spent her bitter childhood behind barbed wire. The time had stopped for her. . . . A girl from the “mommy’s town”—a nursery for the youngest inmates— located at the Karlag Central Agronomic Department, she is a woman now, walking along the same streets, looking up at the same sky, remembering and not being able to recollect her past. She had been through countless orphanages, a long search for her relatives and, finally, the long-awaited meeting and reunion with her mother and father. A remote Krasnoyarsk taiga village. It had been her entire life. And the Kazakh steppe town of Dolinka has its place in this life. It was here that her innocent mother had served her time in the labour camp. And together with her mother, the new-born Farida served her sentence here too. . . . This meeting with the past was hard for Farida. Together with the film crew, she drove to places where her parents’ life had passed. She recreated the path step by step more than half a century later. Camps. Prisons. Exile. . . . Marina Razbezhkina’s documentary, The Story of One Family, was broadcast on the Kul’tura channel in the late 90s and early 2000s for four evenings in a row. It was not so much the story of a family, but the story of a people. . . . And in the middle of the 2000s, in early spring, one more Moscow film crew headed by Svetlana Bychenko came to the Kazakh steppe and shot a documentary about the life history of her relatives. And the film turned out to be about Dolinka. It was here that the paths of the two documentary films by Russian filmmakers of the last post-perestroika generation had crossed. Evidently, an interest in history still burns in honest and curious Russian minds.

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This is how the past came back to Dolinka. . . . The Golgotha of Dolinka has remained in the spotlight.

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*** There is not much here today that is reminiscent of the past. The adobe barracks of the Executive Chekist Department, the club built by the prisoners’ hands, the old school in another one-story clay-walled barracks for the children of the supervising staff, and those of “enemies of the people,” who had served their time and but had to stay in the camp “until further notice”—those buildings are all gone. The once-tended park in front of the Camp Central Administration has been cut down. The building of the Administration itself does not look as it did in the old days, when it was a gleaming white among the greenery of the park. Now, the Museum of the Memory of Victims of Political Repression is housed here. The barracks where the prisoners spent their brief lives were rebuilt long ago. They now have porches and European gable roofs instead of flat clay ones, and new plastic frames in the window openings. . . . Time is ruthless. It erases things. But the Memory lives on. One cannot hide from it. . . . This Memory attracts people from all over the world—Russians, Germans, Americans, Israelis, French, Finns, Poles, Koreans, Japanese. Many came here during the years of glasnost, when the perestroika impulse of General Secretary of the CPSU Mikhail Gorbachev suddenly revealed to the world the true history of the USSR. The history not only of great construction projects, achievements, and victories, of patriotism and enthusiasm of the people, of its unparalleled heroism and patience, but also the mournful history of the vast Gulag empire enclosed by barbed wire. Some are looking for traces of their relatives, others remember their youth spent around these parts, still others are driven here by curiosity or compassion. . . . *** I met a guest from Moscow, T. N., who came here for the opening of the museum. She and her twin brother were born in 1941 in Dolinka, according to her birth certificate, in the same “mommy’s house”—the camp maternity hospital, which was separated by a wall from the camp nursery. Her brother did not live long, and his grave was lost among the others, now anonymous, marked with crooked crosses welded from scrap metal corners at the “mommy’s cemetery” on the turn from Dolinka to the former Agronomic Depart-

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ment. This children’s cemetery is now a place visited by those who come here looking for Memory. . . . T. N. remembers how she felt as a child in Dolinka: “I was always hungry, and it was very cold. . . .” More than half a century later, a retired woman, a former employee of the State Bank of the USSR, came from Moscow to the Kazakh steppe, drawn by the desire to see these places which she did not remember clearly, covered by the haze of what she had experienced and lived through. My guest’s mother, K. N., was arrested in Moscow as a member of a traitor’s family; her husband was shot in 1937 in the Soviet capital as an “enemy of the people.” In the camp, in 1941, K. N. gave birth to twins, a boy and a girl. . . . T. N., having dared to make a difficult trip to Dolinka, became one of many hundreds of people who come here from all over the former USSR.

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*** Returning to the memories of B. G., who was mentioned above. It was he who was brought here along with his family from Donbass at the dawn of the establishment of the Third Furnace. Those people, miners, were tricked, promised a “paradise” but instead made to witness History for the rest of their lives. The very History from which Soviet propaganda had been shamefully hiding for so long, the History that finally exposed its bitter face to the world. The face of the Truth one cannot escape, just as one cannot escape Time. . . . Somebody might have fancied B. G.’s shabby apartment, or there may have been another reason, but A. G., the father of seven-year-old B. G., became ensnared in the wheels of Stalin’s repression apparatus. But these people did not know anything about politics—they never had time to care, as they were busy surviving. . . . And on that memorable night, little B. G. and his father were snatched and taken in a Stolypin wagon to the north. They trudged along to the Atbasar station. It was a camp. Or rather, a camp department. Watchtowers. Fierce dogs resembling wolves. Soldiers with rifles. Obscene talk. And suddenly it turned out that A. G. had brought a boy! What was to be done with the boy? The father was going to the zone, and the boy was to be set free. But they wouldn’t let him go. They punished him too. The exiled child(!) was assigned to the care of a free hired laborer. His first year in school happened to be in Atbasar. The small deportee or prisoner, call him what you will, would never see his father again; at dawn, still under darkness, the convicts marched in columns to the quarry, accompanied by growling dogs and shouting convoy guards, and in the evening, they hiked back to the barracks, also after dark. His father had served two years behind the barbed wire, and then they let him go

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home to Karaganda for his exemplary work at the camp. In 1935, NKVD in Kazakhstan was less barbaric than it would become in 1937. In the autumn of 1937, A. G. was arrested again. He was taken to the greenroofed prison near the red house in the Old Town. In the afternoon, women and children would cling to the openings in the prison board fence, looking for their fathers and husbands. In the morning, the convoy transported the convicts—the arrested walked irregularly, stirring dust with their soles. Nobody could predict the outcome (there was no information about where they were taken, or if they were taken away for good!). The boys picked up crumpled scraps of paper in the dust—notes with addresses: the miserable prisoners threw these papers in the dust in the hope that somebody would pass the news to their relatives. Few would go and pass on the news—people were afraid. On a gloomy September morning, A. G. was part of one such prisoner’s column. Taken away for good. . . .

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HISTORICAL NOTE A. G., born in 1902, received an incomplete higher education, a Belarusian, native of the Mogilev district, a technical instructor at Karaganda mine No. 2, sentenced by the Troika of the UNKVD on September 20, 1937 under Art. 58-10 to capital punishment by shooting. The sentence was carried out in Karaganda a few days later, which is recorded in the volume Book of Grief: Execution Lists, published in 1997.3 Karaganda Regional Court rehabilitated A. G. on February 26, 1957 “due to lack of evidence.” And what happened to the family? The family was kicked out of the dormitory and onto the street. They were sheltered by a miner who worked with A. G. in the mine, a Kazakh T. K., who had many children (today, one of the largest mines of the Karaganda basin bears his name). He took them in at risk to his life—T. K. would have been punished had any of the neighbours reported him. But they kept silent, which saved the family of the executed “enemy of the people” A. G. That was how that Russian boy and his sister survived. Their mother had long since passed away, and Karaganda had bidden final farewell to the noble miner T. K. B. G. got old. And, looking back at what he had lived through, he can still find no answer to the question: What was their crime? *** . . . The truth caught up with Dolinka in the mid-1980s. H. R., a Canadian Finn who served his time here as an “enemy of the people” and was com-

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pletely rehabilitated as an innocent victim in the late 80s, was our guide to the preserved areas of the former Karlag. Like J. G., another foreign prisoner of the Steplag, a native of Transvaal, brought into the USSR by his communist father in the early postrevolutionary years and arrested in 1937 as an “enemy of the people,” about whom BBC journalists made a piercing documentary (Te kto vyidut otsyuda, naveki rodnye), H. R. was also brought into the country by his father, a simple worker, the owner of a small blacksmith’s shop in Canada, who sympathized with Communists and decided to move to the USSR to see the “new world” for himself. And he did see it. In the mid-30s, the Canadian worker who supported the Communists was arrested by the NKVD as a “spy and saboteur,” soon to be followed by his son H. R., who had grown old enough by 1942. Like his father, he was sentenced under Art. 58-10 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR, subjecting the convict to a lifetime stigma as an “enemy of the people.” H. R.’s time behind bars turned out to be long, and he had to suffer a lot. Just when his legs gave out and he turned into a shadow from eating prison swill, they sent him to the Korum camp department to die with pellagra patients. He managed to drag his feet with his column all the way to Korum. Two barracks, a kitchen, a storage room for dead bodies, and a well—all of it has disappeared without a trace. There is a steppe cemetery not far from the present day Shakhtinsk. Young H. R. dug graves there for other “enemies of the people.” He was “rehabilitating himself through labour,” as the Karlag administrators wrote in their reports, using this cynical euphemism to refer to slave labour. And then, half a century later, he found this cemetery and took me and a Latvian documentary filmmaker to the steppe that had just begun revealing its terrible past. . . . H. R. survived. He lived, against all odds, owing to his young age, Finnish endurance, and Canadian belief in ultimate justice. We drove around various departments of the former Karlag complex as we listened to his bitter story. *** There were many who wanted to know and cared to remember. Wanted to see. Wanted to think and make sense of it all. . . . In those years, mostly ex-prisoners and their children went to Dolinka. Among them were G.O., an artist of Moscow’s Sovremennnik theatre, and F. P., a famous geographer from Moscow, member of the USSR Geographical Society, and author of many books on different countries.

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They were brought here by memories of their youth. They both had mothers serving terms as members of a traitor’s family. The mothers’ sentences ended in 1946, but they were not released from the camp by order of Beria “pending a special order.” However, their sons were allowed to come and live next to their mothers in barracks and study at the well-known Dolinka school. F. P. came to Karaganda several times, and it was he who shared with me the memories of his mother and a copy of her “Arrestee file” from the archive of the former Gulag in Moscow. I met G. O. again (20 years after our first meeting!) at the opening of the Memorial to the Victims of Stalinist Repression in Astana, in the former ALZHIR. Back then, in 1989, we travelled together to Dolinka, which was still recognizable, vividly memorable, and he said: “The school was there, and this is the club, there was a great library, and here was the prisoner hospital, where the professor of cardiology, former Minister of Health of the RSFSR, and ‘enemy of the people’ Sergei Kolesnikov used to treat patients. . . .” After August 1991, foreign correspondents started coming here, and the word Dolinka flashed across cinema and TV screens, and in newspapers all over the world. Miranda Ingram from Daily Mail and Robin Knight, a correspondent for U.S. News, both from London, came here stoked by their interest in the fate of H. R. They went straight to Dolinka. Mikael Jordan from Slovakia, Professor Adam Dobronski from Poland (Warsaw), Anna Petraczek, a journalist from Polish TV, and Bruno Max Williams from the Chronicle of Higher Education were among those who visited the former camp. We accompanied countless visitors to Dolinka in those years, so many photographers took pictures of the former building of the Central Administration of Karlag, stomped on the floorboards in its corridors, trampled the grass in the overgrown front park. . . . This is just a small fraction of those who came here not only out of curiosity, but also driven by a professional desire to let the voices of the tragedy that befell the Soviet people be heard in order to prevent history from repeating itself. Many of those I have mentioned have been involved in some fascinating stories, meetings, and curiosities. German journalist C. L. made a documentary about two young Germans, whose husbands, Comintern workers, had found shelter in the Soviet Union at the beginning of the 1930s, when Hitler had come to power in Germany. They were first arrested in Moscow by the NKVD, and then extradited by the Soviet authorities to Hitler’s Germany, where they were later executed. Their wives, who remained in Moscow in the famous House on the Embankment, were arrested and sent to Karlag to serve eight years as wives of the traitors.

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Both women, G. P. and F. S., one in her eighties, and the other a little younger, travelled all over the Kazakh steppe, first visiting Malinovka, which was part of Akmolinsk Region at the time (formerly ALZHIR). They then visited Dolinka; they flew over the territory by helicopter, hiked fearlessly, disregarding the summer heat, along former prisoner routes, impressing me and the film producer, the young Muscovite Z. (I have already forgotten his surname), with their endurance and excellent memory. We even managed to find the house in Maikuduk, where our guests rented a room after their release from Karlag but before their departure to Germany in the 1960s. And C. L, the German journalist, without a moment’s hesitation, burst into the KGB building on Sovetsky (now Bukhar-Zhyrau) Avenue, where, ignoring the desperate shouting of the “receptionist,” despising all conventions and rules of those years, she filmed the “shining image” of the founder of the Cheka, whose bust decorated the lobby at the time. However, the manoeuvre turned out to be a success; there were (as always!) smart people. The directors happened to have been politically correct and even cordial (it was in the 80s, the end of perestroika!). They came to an understanding with the uninvited guests. The workers of the KGB of the new formation and former prisoners of the famous ALZHIR said goodbye to each other on the threshold, as if they had been old friends, which was quite a shock for Z. and me. . . .

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*** An interest in this closed—but not forgotten—chapter of our common history is still there, drawing not only local and Western researchers, but also Russian ones. G. L., a former prisoner of Karlag, was arrested in 1934 as an “enemy of the people,” served his term in full, survived all the hardships, and after rehabilitation, remained in Karaganda. He lived here for many years. Transported here from the Moscow Butyrka prison, he saw Dolinka as a blooming oasis in the desert, which was being built before his eyes by the convicts, Soviet slaves, deprived of all civil rights, “enemies of the people,” who were part of this same people. G. L. related that those rustling poplar groves were planted and grown with the help of a giant irrigation system, made up of multiple mains and irrigation canals, fed by the Dzhartassk water reservoir with a high artificial dam. All the facilities were designed, built, and maintained by hundreds and thousands of prisoners. Construction of this hydro-technical complex was carried out in the harshest conditions. One could say that it rests on the bones of the prisoners. Prior to his arrest, G. L. was a cartographer, and it was he who had created the first map of Karlag. G. L. told me that his first map of Karlag had been

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painted on the wall in the office of the then camp director, senior lieutenant Otto Linin. It is still there in one of the halls of the Dolinka Museum. What did Dolinka look like at the time? According to G. L., a double row of barbed wire cut through the whole southern part and all three parallel streets. This was 19-DKO (Dolinka Commandant’s Department), which was home to a bus depot, an industrial complex, a training plant, and other facilities. At the exit from the town, on what is now Shakhtinsk-Karaganda road, there was another extensive residential area—DKO-2. In the western part of the settlement, over the Churubai-Nurа River, there was a third zone—the residential and industrial zone—RMZ (mechanical repair plant). The administrative housing, the only one without barbed wire, occupied a small area in Dolinka. Almost opposite the Camp Central Administration building, next to the former town canteen, behind the adobe wall and barbed wire over it, was the “OCHO quarter” (Executive Chekist Department). It had its own small prison and a long, barrack-type building, where investigators and other department workers had their lodgings. Prisoners were brought here from all Karlag’s departments for additional investigations, “closed court” proceedings, and subsequent convictions. Those sentenced to death (according to these updated convictions!) were taken to the above-mentioned camp cemetery, stretching all the way to Shakhtinsk, and executed there on arrival. . . . There was a club in Dolinka. The “top” administrators of the camp attended the club to see performances of artists from the “enemies of the people” who were kept in DKO-19. The wonderful A. I., who would later disappear into thin air, performed Russian folk songs on the club’s stage. The pitch of her voice and the style of performance were reminiscent of those of Lidia Ruslanova, which might have given birth to the legend about Ruslanova who, allegedly, “served her time in Karlag and refused to sing, saying that a captive nightingale does not sing.” It is nothing but a legend, though. There are many legends about Karlag which have recently been replaced by tall tales, because history steers us away from the truth, just as Soviet propaganda used to hide the truth from us. Nina Pereshkolnik (who later married a Soviet scientist Alexander Chizhevsky) sang Gypsy romances to the accompaniment of the Gypsy ensemble she created. The camp scene saw many celebrities, and a lot was written about this. There was a small mud-walled club in the prisoners’ area, where artists rehearsed their performances for the town club, occasionally performing for the area’s residents. . . .

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This is how the Dolinka of the mid-30s was remembered by G. L., a former “enemy of the people,” an engineer and an honest man, who was innocent before the people and motherland, just like the parents of Farida Davlet-Kil’di and thousands and millions of others.

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*** In my memory, Karaganda citizens loved the Dolinka of the 1960–70s for its excellent berry fields and fruit and vegetable gardens. City dwellers came here for local treats, such as cucumbers “right off the vine” that were at the top of all cucumber “ratings” at the time. During these years, geologists came to make surveys in Dolinka, and then a huge modern mine emerged a few kilometres away. In a word, Dolinka was always in plain sight. There were never any “cordons” and “special passes,” anybody could freely come here for business or for no reason at all, when they wished, and buy excellent agricultural products, milk, sour cream, or cottage cheese from private farmsteads. Karlag left behind agricultural production facilities, a dairy plant, a cheese factory, and an experimental farm flawlessly organized by “enemies of the people” with the highest qualifications, former academicians, and specialists from Askania-Nova and Abrau-Durso wildlife reserves, sentenced to long terms in the camp under Article 58 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR. The local agricultural produce was in great demand. Dozens of high-class specialists, who treated patients, taught at schools, and grew and processed crops, lived here during the first decade after the sad story of Karlag came to an end. In short, in the sixties and seventies, Dolinka was not a place with restricted access. Sometimes the citizens went to Dolinka just to rest and breathe some fresh air. Many so-called Obkom dachas were built on the fertile lands between the Karagandinsk collective farm (former Karlag Central Field Department) and Dolinka, full of orchards and berry fields. And the cadets of the Higher Police School came to their summer camps located here. Karaganda schoolchildren also came to Dolinka and its outskirts (former camp departments and later collective farms) for a summer in beautiful pioneer camps. *** I wonder if the world would have remembered Dolinka, if. . . . By the way, “the world” is no exaggeration. Today, Dolinka is widely known as the capital of the notorious “island of the Gulag Archipelago”— Karlag—one of the major Stalinist concentration camps, shamefully referred to in the documents of those years as “correctional labour camps,” where hunger, hard work, and death were the key methods.

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Today’s Dolinka still holds secrets we have not revealed yet, and no one knows if they will ever come to light. But what we already know is more than enough. And the winds of time are drying out the grass of oblivion, over and over. FURTHER READING Applebaum, A. Gulag: A History. New York: Anchor, 2003. Applebaum, A. ed. Gulag Voices: An Anthology. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012. Barnes, S. Death and Redemption: The Gulag and the Shaping of Soviet Society. Princeton: Princeton U Press, 2011. Cohen, S. F. The Victims Return: Survivors of the Gulag After Stalin. New York: I.B. Tauris, 2011. Dil’manov, S., and E. Kuznetsova. Karlag. Almaty: Vek, 1997. Hedeler, W., and M. Stark. “Das Grab in der Steppe: Das Straflager Karaganda in den 1930er Jahren,” Osteuropa, 57 (2007): 589–604. Kovalskaya, S., and T. Sadykov. “Muzei zhertv politicheskikh repressii poselkov Dolinka i Akmol: k voprosu izucheniya antropologii nasiliya.” Kuznetsova, E. Karlag: po obe storony “koliuchki.” Surgut: Defis, 2001. Kuznetsova, E. Karlag: mechenye odnoi metoi. 2010.

NOTES

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1.  “Materialy k ocherkam po istorii Karlaga NKVD SSSR” (1934). 2.  Gulag, 1918–1960: Dokumenty (Moscow, 2002). 3.  Kniga skorbi–Azaly Kitap. Rasstrel’nye spiski (Alma-Ata: Adilet, 1996).

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Chapter Six

Between Oblivion and Remembrance Alexandra Tsay

What can I remember? I was three years old. I remember that we came to a settlement near Petropavlovsk, and it was a cold winter. I recall going on foot to the town, to school, a few years later; sometimes, my sister and I bought candy, “ranetki,” and they were delicious. On our way back, we were chewing them and fooling around. Zinaida Ogai In 1937, I was three years old, so I don’t remember much. The train? Yes, it was a long journey. I remember stopping at stations, sometimes waiting for a long while, but there was always warm water, we ran out and drank the warm water, or it may have been tea.

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Gerasim Shegai

When I first came to Seoul, my friends took me to see the local sights, one of which was a traditional Korean village weirdly preserved in the middle of the metropolis full of futuristic high-rises. As I later learned, the village had not been preserved, but recreated and rebuilt in the second half of the twentieth century, after the Japanese occupation, after the division of North and South Korea. It was not a regular village, but an amusement site, one of dozens that were built across country to preserve aspects of cultural identity that had been lost during the colonial period. We passed through a low wooden gate and entered the courtyards. There were small houses with low tables at which you could sit with your legs tucked beneath you, miniature cabinets, and large ovens in the yards. The more I walked about the village, the more overwhelmed I became with a strange feeling that arises on the fine line between dream and reality when you are not quite awake yet, and the retreating dream starts to melt against the outlines of real objects, leaving behind nothing but 109

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vague memories. The houses in this tourist Korean village, the arrangement of courtyards, especially the oven with a large boiler, awakened my childhood memories, reminded me of my grandmother’s house with a similar clay oven and cast-iron cauldron. That house looked like the houses in the traditional Korean village in downtown Seoul, but it was also somehow different. “When you lose your home, you want to rebuild it somewhere else, and your memories are the building blocks,” I thought, and I kept roaming the streets of the village for a long time, looking for familiar features.

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HISTORICAL BACKGROUND The Soviet Koreans were among the first groups in the Soviet Union to be subjected to mass deportation on ethnic grounds, followed by the Volga Germans, Poles, Crimean Tatars, Kurds, and Chechens. Koreans migrated to the Russian Empire at the end of the nineteenth century; military occupation of Korea by Japan in the early twentieth century caused an increase in numbers of Korean refugees and anti-Japanese guerilla fighters arriving on Russian territory. By the time of the October Revolution and transition of power to a Soviet government in 1917, there were nearly 100,000 Koreans in the Russian Far East; the number of people reached 172,000 by 1937. In the autumn of 1937, after the 21 August 1937 decree of the Council of People’s Commissars of the USSR and the Central Committee of the Communist Party “On the eviction of the Korean population from the border areas of the Far Eastern Krai,” signed by Molotov and Stalin, more than 172,000 people were forcibly relocated to Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, with 98,000 ending up in Kazakhstan, a vast steppe territory that had lost a large proportion of its inhabitants due to mass famine. The decree stated that the deportation had been chosen as a measure to prevent espionage from Japan. The relocation was to be carried out expeditiously, with all Koreans to be resettled from the Far East by the winter of 1938. People were given a few days to get ready. Nobody explained the reasons for the eviction, the final destination was not announced, the “journey” in the freight wagons lasted for months. None had known where they were going, what station, city, or country was their final destination. The freight trains were overcrowded; men, women, and children had to live all together. Sometimes people hung curtains to divide the space between families. Usually the journey took around two months; trains had delays and stayed at stations for weeks, though no explanations for this were given to people. The Soviet authorities did not discuss their actions: from the reason for the sudden displacement and deportation to Central Asia to the specifics of their travel

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details, destinations, and areas of settlement. During the months in trains and on railroads, people experienced harsh physical conditions that were multiplied by fear and deep anxiety about their unknown destination and unknown future.1 Uncertainty and fear were vivid parts of that journey. There is still no consensus among researchers on the number of people who died during “railroad journey” to Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan—estimates vary from several thousand to nearly 25,000 people.2 Usually those who died were buried along railroads without plaques or identification, piles of fresh soil along the railroads—those images can be found in the stories of people from various ethnic groups who were deported to Central Asia. After their arrival in Central Asia, Koreans were scattered across rural areas in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. Local authorities provided them with temporary accommodation in whatever buildings were available, including abandoned administration buildings such as hospitals, former prisons, warehouses, etc. Most Korean families were placed within three large areas: the tributary of the Shieli river, where 2,500 households were allocated; the tributary of the Cherke River; or Kzyl-Orda district and Dzhusalinsk. Some people had to live in dugouts during their first winter in Kazakhstan. Although official decrees required compensation for deportees of at least part of the value of the property they had had to leave, local authorities did not have sufficient resources to provide this.3 Archival documents and official reports show that the initial living conditions of deportees were severe: there was insufficient housing and a lack of food, clothing, and other essential items. For example, one of the settlements where Koreans presumably spent their first winter in Kazakhstan is located 7 kilometres from Ushtobe, a small railway station at that time. It is a deserted area with traces of the dugouts where families of the deportees from the Far East lived through the first winter. There is a monument in memory of that winter and a cemetery on Mount Bastob. “There wasn’t a single family that hadn’t lost a child, not one,” recalls a woman from Ushtobe. “Parents told us about the early years in Kazakhstan, and there were tears in their eyes. It was hard for them to remember.”4 After people endured the first winter in dugouts, then they began to build houses in the newly formed collective farms. Archive Transcript (1)5 Decree of the USSR Council of People’s Commissars and the Central Committee of the Communist Party No. 1428-326cc, “On the eviction of the Korean population from the border areas of the Far Eastern Krai.” 21.08.1937 Top Secret (Special Folder)

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DECREE No. 1428-326 of the Council of People’s Commissars of the USSR and the Central Committee of the Communist Party August 21, 1937 Moscow, Kremlin

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On the eviction of the Korean population from the border areas of the Far Eastern Krai The Council of People’s Commissars of the USSR and the CC of CP (b) ISSUES A DECREE: In order to prevent Japanese espionage in the Far East region, the following measures are to be taken:   1. To order the Far Eastern Regional Communist Party, Regional Executive Committee, and Department of Internal Affairs of the Far Eastern Krai to evict the Korean population of the Far Eastern Krai border areas: Posyet, Molotovsk, Grodekovsk, Khankaisk, Khorolsk, Chernigov, Spassk, Shmakovsk, Postyshevsk, Bikinsk, Vyazemsk, Khabarovsk, Sui-funsk, Kirovsk, Kalininsk, Lazo, Svobodnensk, Blagoveshchensk, Tambov, Mikhailovsk, Arkharinsk, Stalinsk, and Blucherovo and relocate it to the South Kazakhstan region, to the Aral Sea and Balkhash districts, and the Uzbek SSR. To begin evictions with the Posyet district and the districts adjacent to Grodekovo.   2.  Evictions must start immediately and be completed by 1 January 1938.   3. Koreans subject to relocation are allowed to take their property, household equipment, and livestock with them for resettlement.   4. The value of the movable and immovable property and crops left behind by the relocated is to be reimbursed.   5. Koreans are not to be prevented from exiting across the border; a simplified border crossing procedure must be provided for.   6. The NKVD is to take measures to prevent possible outbreaks of disorder and unrest in connection with the evictions of Koreans.   7. The Councils of People’s Commissars of the Kazakh SSR and the Uzbek SSR is to immediately determine areas and new settlement locations and outline measures to ensure suitable economic conditions at these locations, providing the necessary assistance.   8. The People’s Commissariat of Railways is to ensure the timely submission of rolling stock at the request of the Dalkrai Executive Committee for the transportation of resettled Koreans and their property from the Far East to the Kazakh SSR and Uzbek SSR.   9. The Dalkraikom of the CP and Dalkrai Executive Committee is to inform within three days about the number of farms and people to be evicted. 10. The number of border troops is to be increased by 3,000 to heighten the border security in areas from which Koreans are being resettled. 11. The People’s Commissariat of the USSR is to place border guards in the buildings vacated by Koreans.

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Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party J. STALIN Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars of the USSR V. MOLOTOV

Archive Transcript (2)6 A letter from the relocated Koreans to Molotov, Chairman of the Council of the People’s Commissars, on the intolerable situation at the new place of residence.

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Karmakchinsk district, February 25, 1938. We collective farmers from Korean resettlers who lived for decades in the Far East Region and without the slightest resistance and in good mood moved over to Kazakhstan, because this was the decision of our native Soviet government, and we learned from the explanation of the leaders of party and Soviet bodies of the Kirov district of the Ussuri oblast of the Far East Region that our resettlement was of importance to the issue of defence ability of the Soviet Union in the east and the improvement of national culture and everyday life, which was difficult for Far East, because of the fact that it was not possible to find a place for the resettlement. Therefore, we were deeply convinced that when we arrive in Kazakhstan, we should find housing and work. But as of today, we have a different condition, which we want to report to you. We from Far East already live for half a year in the Karmakchinsk district of Kzyl-Orda oblast of the Kazakhstan Soviet Socialist Republic and where a huge rice plantation is supposed to be built. We collective farmers of “Krasny Oktyabr’” have united 10 farms with 800 souls, during the departure from the Far East we gave all the bread production to the state in quantity according to the [preliminary] allocation of 2,500 centners, plough cattle of 79 horses and three cars and others, in total 102,500 rubles in bread and 105,200 roubles in property, which according to the obligation of the leaders of the party Soviet bodies we should get in kind upon arrival to destination, but till the last day it was absolutely the other way. We have been living on reed fields in Karmakchinsk district for 5 months already, we have not received any draught animals yet: neither livestock, nor cars, and that is why we have to do all kinds of hard work to transport firewood for fuel and even school firewood is transported on the back of the collective farmers, and we have not received any material aid until today: neither money, nor bread, so we began to live absolutely without means and it is extremely hard. This situation is created for us despite dozens of promises of the head of the Karmakchinsk district who would get three centners of flour and 300 rubles of loans for the purchase of household equipment for the collective farmers. Especially for us, the situation is intolerable [because] it is February 25 of this year, and we have not yet been allocated land, especially no preparation is possible for spring sowing, which is why some collective farmers begin to worry.

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Therefore, if we appeal to the Chairman of the Executive committee and the Secretary of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan of the Karmakchinsk district, they tell us that “we do not know, this is up to the head of the resettlement station” and the head of the resettlement station has been away for 20 days. That is why we are facing the danger of sowing failure, which for hard-working Korean farmers is the basis to improve life. We are working Korean collective farmers, according to the Constitutions of the USSR and the Kazakhstani Constitution, are considered to be a full-fledged citizen, hoping that you told the Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Government that you had ordered before our district head to change the attitude towards us, and especially to ensure our preparation for spring sowing. And we expect from you an answer to our request in the shortest possible time to Dzhalagash Station in the South Kazakhstan region. Karmakchinsk district, 19 aul, board of the collective farm “Krasny Oktyabr.’” Signed on behalf of the general assembly.

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Administrators: Liang Seyur, Quiu Ken-su, Park Inbom, Ogai Kenho, Hegai Gireen, Lee Snookhi, Pak Sen-ner. Manuscript

It is easy to guess that this letter and the issues raised in it were left unanswered. The Soviet authorities seldom gave explanations. People were not allowed to ask for explanations, and this prolonged silence and lack of sources to learn about what caused the violence, as well as the inability to seek justice or to publicly discuss what happened, were tools of the totalitarian regime. Silencing and censorship were counterparts of other forms of violence. The state took away freedom of movement, the right to control one’s life. It demonstrated that being given, or being denied, occupation of a home was also a prerogative of the state, which sought to suppress the will and forge loyal Soviet citizens. It also censored the voices that sought justice. Whereas the discussion of the deportation, its causes, and its justification were prohibited during Soviet times, after the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s, academic and non-fiction books and monographs began to appear. Historians, researchers, and members of the diaspora reconstructed the historical narrative as they worked with archival documents to reveal previously concealed facts and investigate the violent Stalinist deportations. They collected testimonies and recorded stories. Yet, it is not only the reconstruction of the historical narrative and the description of the historical events that require research and discussions, but also the impact of the events and the collective traumatic experience on the social group. The collective trauma that the deportees went through has several layers. First, Koreans were subjected to violence by the state apparatus, relocated, and deprived of their homes and property. People were sent to distant areas,

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exiled to uninhabited territories of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. For several years, they had no opportunity or right to leave the collective farms to which they had been assigned and were prohibited from moving or choosing their place of residence. People were thrown into harsh conditions in which they had to survive on their own and fight for the survival of their families. They faced cold winters in the hastily built dugouts and barracks, lack of sustenance, unfamiliar terrain, and a new climate. But hand in hand with these physical hardships came collective psychological wounds. People had to suffer the punishment of the state apparatus, knowing they had committed no crime. They only heard rumors that the government considered them potential traitors and had therefore resorted to these measures. At the same time, the regime offered a way to “exonerate” oneself through labor, through partaking in the construction of a socialist utopia, which required workers in the agricultural and industrial sectors. People were told they could cleanse themselves of their “dubious past” by building the socialist future. People were invited to accept their fate and toil away at some large socialist construction site. At that time, the deported Koreans had no choice—their survival required oblivion. However, years and generations later, in different circumstances, the memory of the deportations and the emergence of Koreans in Central Asia continues to live on.

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IS KAZAKHSTAN A SPACE OF MEMORY? HOW TO REMEMBER? Modern Kazakhstan is a space of collective trauma and memory. The collective memory of historical traumas exists in the physical space in the form of memorials, such as the memorial to the Korean settlers who died in the winter of 1937–38, as well as in museums, such as the Alzhir Museum (the Akmolinsk Camp for Wives of Traitors of the Motherland), or the KarLag Museum, both of which are located on the sites of former concentration camps. Collective memory is also manifested in the conscious and unconscious life of society, and sometimes it bursts through in public discussions, debates, or artistic practices. The term “collective memory” was coined by French sociologist Maurice Halbwachs in the 1920s. Halbwachs used sociological methods to analyze social frameworks that shape the memory of the past shared by a societal group, social frameworks that can also change individual memories and perceptions of personal experiences in certain situations. People live in a society, and they also “remember” socially. Halbwachs argued that the influence of public memory could change an individual’s personal memories of events.7

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In the 1980s, with the “memory boom” in Western academia, the French sociologist’s research on collective memory was back on the academic agenda. Researchers and scholars from different academic fields, ranging from cultural sociology to literary studies, developed, criticized, and tried to deny the notion of “collective memory.” The most radical position was put forward by German historian Reinhart Koselleck, who debunked the very concept of collective memory, arguing that one could only remember what one had experienced. At the same time, social scientists and researchers who emerged in the 1980s studied group collective consciousness—memory and imagination, the role of symbols and symbolic capital in the formation of communities. The social imaginary of Jacques Lacan, Benedict Anderson’s imagined communities, and “collective memory” as a memory shared by a particular group and manifested in memory practices, rituals, stories, and symbols—all these concepts describe the formation of communities and their boundaries not only in the physical but also in the imagined, symbolic space. The boundaries of communities and nations delineate not only the boundaries of the territory they inhabit, but also an imaginary, symbolic space which includes the history of a community’s creation or emergence, the legends and myths at the basis of any country, city, or community, the collective victories and failures of the past, the tragedies endured, and the crimes buried in silence. Jan Assmann, the German Egyptologist and memory scholar, calls Halbwachs’ concept “bonding memory” that can instrumentalize the past for the current political agenda and can use history to mobilize support for common political goals. Jan Assmann and Aleida Assmann, a German historian and cultural anthropologist, suggest that memory exists not only on a social basis, but also on a cultural one. They develop concepts of “communicative” and “cultural” memory. Communicative memory includes those varieties of collective memory that are based on everyday communication and it thus has a limited temporal horizon of 80–100 years, or three to four generations. Cultural memory is distanced from the everyday; its horizon has a fixed point: “these points are fateful events of the past, whose memory is maintained through cultural formation (text, rites, monuments) and institutional communication (recitation, practice, observance).”8 Moreover, Assmann sees cultural memory as the further emancipation of what Hegel called “the free life of the spirit,” a basis of overcoming the limits of group identity for an overarching identity of humanity and human spirit. Assmann notes that the direction of cultural memory can lean toward the utopian remembrance of the violence made by “us” as a group and of the pain of others, the pain on the other side, remembering that can create a basis for common human values,

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shared beliefs and universal norms. While collective memory can be instrumentalized to serve a political agenda and thus limit individual freedoms, cultural memory is more amorphous, more ancient and liberated, less susceptible to political slogans and, at the same time, more utopian, directed towards an unlimited future and an ideal of humanity beyond national boundaries. Aleida Assmann writes that “Remember or Forget?” is one of the key questions for dealing with the traumatic past. Remember or forget civil wars, massacres, state crimes? According to Assmann, there are several ways to deal with such events: dialogical oblivion, remembering to never forget, remembering to overcome, and dialogical remembrance.9 Proponents of oblivion say that remembrance, for example, in the post-Civil War situation, can ignite hatred, while oblivion pacifies the opposing parties and serves as a basis for reunification. In turn, Aleida Assmann cites other voices, namely Hannah Arendt’s, who wrote in The Origins of Totalitarianism about the need for ethically motivated memory as a form of human rights protection in the face of the emergence of the totalitarian state as an “absolute form of evil.”10 According to Arendt, the traumatic past inherited from a century of mass violence cannot fade from memory on its own; on the contrary, such a past requires much greater retrospective attention: a conscious acceptance of the burden that our century has imposed on us.11 Ethically motivated memory preserves knowledge about the evils of the past, about pain, violence, and death. The remembrance of victims and crimes is necessary for the therapeutic effect of “dealing with” the past and for ethical duty, which is the foundation for future integration and can become a condition for the upholding of human rights: to remember to never forget. Research on collective and individual memory raises another question: “Who remembers?” Marianne Hirsch, Professor of Comparative Literature at Columbia University, introduced the term “post-memory” into the academic literature in the early 1990s in connection with her work analyzing “memories” and the memory of the children of Holocaust survivors. “Post-memory” is characteristic of the “post-generation,” the children of parents who went through a historical trauma, through a gruelling collective experience that the post-generation “remembers” vicariously through the stories told by their relatives. “Post-memory” is passed down not only through memories and stories but also through that which has been silenced in the family, through habits and behavioural patterns, reactions to danger. Hirsch wrote about “memory appropriation,” about the fact that traumatic experiences and memories were transmitted to the post-generation in such an emotional form and penetrated so deeply into the consciousness that, in a way, they turned into their memories.12 One of the key aspects of “post-memory” is that the memories are

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shared in the family. The emotional and spiritual connection with family members is so profound that a person appropriates some of the memories of the group to which they belong. In many respects, the memory space in Kazakhstan is a post-memory space, family stories told by parents and grandparents, stories about how the family ended up in Kazakhstan, thousands of stories of forced relocation, dekulakization, political persecutions, and so on.

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Memory after Forgetting: Art and Nostalgia The space of collective memory in Kazakhstan is a space reclaimed from imposed silence and oblivion. The silence that accompanied the crimes of the Stalinist regime, state censorship, the impossibility of any public discussion of the resettlement of peoples and ethnic groups, the rethinking of political persecution, the victims of the Gulag and Karlag, and the human sacrifices that were caused by politicians who promoted collectivization and industrialization—such state policy was aimed at oblivion for years, seeking to wipe out names, faces, and stories of peoples. The official narrative of displacement did not allow interpretations and it did not include the tragic stories of people who went through repressions. The official narrative belonged to the state and was controlled by the state. To overcome past state violence, memory should emerge from below, from outside the official culture. Ethically motivated memory requires us to bring back the names, recreate the stories, bring back the memory of people and their stories, remember not to forget and remember to understand, through remembrance, what caused those events, and create conditions for them not to reoccur. After a long spell of silence and forgetfulness, bringing back memory is a form of activism, a political statement, an attempt, in the manner of Walter Benjamin, to tear things and phenomena out from the flow of history in order to change history and the future. Vernacular memory or multivocal memory represents heterogeneous voices; it resides outside the official culture that attempted to control the official narrative and official memory. The stories about the deportation from people who came to Kazakhstan as children, audio recordings of these memories, contain optimistic moments, in which recollections of death and illness are interspersed with bright and “happy” moments of drinking warm tea or enjoying a beautiful view from the train window. A child’s consciousness protects itself and “expels” the experiences it is unable to cope with. But the inability to talk about the difficulties of deportation, about the pain suffered by people who had lost their homes, is due not only to psychological defense mechanisms. The social system was not permissive of mourning for the dead and wallowing in the pain of loss.

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Survival required loyalty, submission to the logic of the regime, a utopian logic of moving forward to the socialist ideal. Sadness and regret were not allowed into official culture. People were told to forget their abandoned homes and lost relatives and direct their gaze, will, and thought toward the creation of a new world. After several decades of imposed silence and then restoration of the historical narrative of deportation, the removal of censorship on research, and the opening of the archives, the memory of displacement and state repression for the second and third generations takes different forms, and nostalgia is one of them. Svetlana Boym, a scientist, writer, and artist, wrote that the twentieth century began with a futuristic utopia and ended with nostalgia.13 The forwardthinking utopia lacked any nostalgia, any mourning for those who had been lost. Boym describes nostalgia as homesickness for a place that no longer exists or has never existed. She notes that “nostalgia is a sentiment of loss and displacement, but it is also a romance with one’s own fantasy.” Nostalgia is ambivalent: past and present, here and there, fantasy and reality. Boym elegantly combines the concepts of restorative and reflective nostalgia, explaining restorative nostalgia as an effort to reconstruct a lost home historically. “Reflective nostalgia thrives in . . . the longing itself and delays the homecoming.” It “dwells on the ambivalences of human longing and belonging and does not shy away from the contradictions of modernity.”14 It is a feeling of lost time, a longing for something that has passed and no longer exists or that never existed at all. It is a sense of loss that goes beyond time, and the feeling itself is often more real than the actual loss. Nostalgia, postponed mourning for the lost, a side effect of hardships and radical transformations, is a necessary practice following a period of silence, a spell of oblivion. The restoration of memory after forgetting takes different forms, and art can function as a medium for multivocal memories. Art can become a therapeutic tool for the society to open its old wounds, revisit the sore spots, mourn the victims. I would like to discuss the works of photographer Viktor An, who depicted the life of Korean villages in Central Asia, as a case of art being a medium for memory. Viktor An, a photographer, born in Uzbekistan in the late 1940s, has been working since the 1990s on the series of photographs The Vanishing Village. An extensively photographed the life of Korean collective farms in Uzbekistan for newspaper articles during the Soviet period and after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Then life in villages and collective farms, kolkhozes, began to change rapidly. In the 1990s, the development of urban life and the large-scale relocation of people from the countryside to the cities led to the slow destruction of the countryside and changed the way of life there. The specific location of houses, family traditions and ritu-

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als, recipes brought in by the first generation of Soviet Koreans, etc.—all of them changed over time, and An has been capturing the metaphysics of these changes. He basically works as an ethnographer describing the people, objects, and customs of the Central Asian Koreans, to whom he belongs. And this sense of belonging imbues his photographs with lyricism, adding another lens to his camera, a lens of nostalgia in a search for that physical and spiritual place that was once home but was lost or disappeared. An mostly works with black and white images, the black and white palette being the messenger of the past, as it increases the distance between reality and the depicted scenes, showing what is still there and what is gone, what is real and what no longer exists. In his works “Old Club” and “Lost Korean Technologies,” there are notes of a sadness that is deeper than the sadness of a momentary loss. This is the familiar feeling of nostalgia for one’s home, which people sought to preserve in furniture, in amulets, and in traditional cuisine. The wind of change, however, carries history forward, and photography becomes not just a document of the era, but an instrument to fight the oblivion. The photographs of Viktor An transmit nostalgia—reflective nostalgia, the sentiment of loss. After displacement and a break with their traditional culture, people tried to restore and recreate its rituals to some extent in a new place, a place that is vanishing under new developments. And the nostalgia for those Korean villages in Uzbekistan undergoing transformation is itself a deferred mourning for the loss of home and the violent break with traditional culture. The famous Hungarian-French photographer Brassaï wrote in Proust in the Power of Photography that “photography was born of an age-old longing to halt the moment to wrest it from the flux of ‘dure’ in order to ‘fix’ it forever in a semblance of eternity.”15 To capture a fleeting moment, to win the battle against time, to remember the moment that is inevitably fading away—that is the purpose of photography. Brassaï sees the image—not a motion picture but a frame—as evidence of the changes that take place, of the bygone era, of aging. Walter Benjamin defines photography as images that describe the nature of history, images that capture the moment between the “catastrophe” of the past and the desire to “awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise and has got caught in his wings; it is so strong that the angel can no longer close them. This storm drives him irresistibly into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows toward the sky. What we call progress is this storm.”16 The photograph is a document of change, a destroyer of continuity, capable of capturing the battle of two opposing forces: the past, which still requires attention, and the future, which is inevitable.

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I began my essay with my visit to the amusement site in Seoul, a recreated Korean village, many of which were destroyed during Japanese occupation in the first half of twentieth century. I conclude with a notion of nostalgia found in a body of artworks by a diaspora photographer, who for decades depicted the Korean villages and daily life of their residents. The artist creates a symbolic home, a realm of vanishing practices and objects that represented a space of his belonging. To remember a place of belonging is to remember the story of its loss, to remember the story of deportation and displacement. To remember after a period of silencing is a critical position, an act of will, a gesture of social and cultural significance. Looking back is both a moral and ethical act: to remember not to forget the innocent victims, those who were wrongfully accused, those who fell victim to the system and the regime. It is also an intellectual gesture: to remember to understand the regime’s logic, its ideology, and the consequences of its policies. Looking back, in this case, is an ethical choice for the future that requires us to be critically sensitive to evil, a future in which we can choose to remember our own story, even if it overwhelms us with nostalgia.

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NOTES  1. V. Kim, Pravda cherez polveka. Sobranie istorii (Tashkent: Uzbekiston, 1999), 27.  2. K. Songmoo, Koreans in Soviet Central Asia (Helsinki: Finnish Oriental Society, 1987), 17.  3. Ibid.   4.  Kim Nelly, interview with author, October 29, 2018.   5.  GARF, f. R-5446, op. 1v, d. 497, ll. 27–28. First published (paras. 1 and 2 only) in Rodina, No. 10, (1992), p. 58. GUIPP “KURSK,” 1999, pp. 237–238. First published in full in G. F. Vesnovskaya (ed.), Sbornik zakonodatel’nykh i normativnykh aktov o repressiyakh i reabilitatsii zhertv politicheskikh repressii, v 2 ch. (Kursk: GUIPP “Kursk,” 1999), i: 237–238.   6.  TsGA RK, f. 1987, op. 1, d. 8, ll. 210–212. Published in: Iz istorii deportatsii v Kazakhstan 1935–1939: sbornik dokumentov (Almaty: LEM, 2015), pp. 279–280. The broken grammar of the original text has been preserved in this translation.   7.  М. Halbwachs, On Collective Memory, trans. by L. Coser (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992).   8.  J. Assmann, “Collective Memory and Cultural Identity,” New German Critique, No. 65 (1995), pp. 125–133.  9. A. Assman, Novoe nedovol’stvo memorial’noi kul’turoi, trans. by B. Khlebnikov (Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2016). 10. Ibid.

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11.  120 Ibid. 12.  М. Hirsch, The Generation of Postmemory: Writing and Visual Culture after the Holocaust (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012). 13. S. Boym, “Nostalgia and Its Discontents,” Hedgehog Review, vol. 9, no. 2 (2007), p. 7. 14.  S. Boym, The Future of Nostalgia (New York: Basic Books, 2001), p. xviii. 15. Brassaï, Proust in the Power of Photography, trans. by R. Howard (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), p. 9. 16.  W. Benjamin, “On the Concept of History,” in Benjamin, Selected Writings 1938-1940, trans. by E. Jephcott (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996), p. 6.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY Abylkhozhin, Zhulduzbek. Kollektivizatsiya v Kazakhstane: Tragediya krestyanstva Almaty: Daik Press, 1992. Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso Books, 2006. Assmann, Aleida. Novoe nedovol’stvo memorialnoi kulturoi. Translated by Boris Khlebnikov. Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2016. Assmann, Jan. Religion and Cultural Memory: Ten Studies. Translated by Rodney Livingstone. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006. Assmann, Jan. “Collective Memory and Cultural Identity.” New German Critique, No. 65 (1995): 125–133. Barthes, Roland. Camera Lucida. New York: The Noonday Press, 1980. Benjamin, Walter. “On the Concept of History.” Selected Writings, 1938–1940. Translated by Edmund Jephcott. Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2003. Boym, Svetlana. “Nostalgia and Its Discontents.” Hedgehog Review, vol. 9, no. 2 (2007): 7–19. Brassaï.. Proust in the Power of Photography. Translated by Richard Howard. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001. Caruth, Cathy. Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and History. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1996. Halbwachs, Maurice. On Collective Memory. Translated by Louis Coser. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992. Hirsch, Marianne. The Generation of Postmemory: Writing and Visual Culture after the Holocaust. New York: Columbia University Press, 2012. Kho, Songmoo. Koreans in Soviet Central Asia. Helsinki: Finnish Oriental Society, 1987. Kim, German. Istoriya Immigratsii Koreitsev. Kniga Pervaya. Vtoraya Polovina XIX v. Almaty: Daik-Press, 1999. Kim, Vladimir. Pravda cherez polveka. Sobranie istorii. Tashkent: Uzbekiston, 1999. Iz istorii deportatsii v Kazakhstan 1935–1939: sbornik dokumentov. Almaty: LEM, 2015.

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Nora, Pierre. “Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Memoire.” Representations, no. 26 (1989): 7–24. Snyder, Timothy. Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin. New York: Basic Books, 2010. Sontag, Susan. On Photography. New York: Rossetta Books, 1973.

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Section III

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REPRESENTATION

Art preserves memory. Art also helps to deal with pain. Names, human stories and destinies could fall into the river of oblivion and be gone for good, but art prevents that from happening. Theodor Adorno wrote that after Auschwitz, poetry was impossible, and that after the collapse of the humanist idea, after absolute evil had taken place, art was impossible. However, we may reply to Adorno: after Auschwitz, there is a still greater need for poetry. Writing, creating, enquiring should be even more passionate and angry, deep and thoughtful, so as to avoid history repeating itself, of which there is always a grave danger, but instead make sense of it, complete the mourning, and, having overcome the evil and pain, continue on. The Igor Savitsky Museum in Nukus, known as “The Louvre in the Desert,” is an example of how the passion and faith of a single man, its creator, helped to salvage a vast heritage of the Russian avant-garde, the legacy that has become the expression of the Zeitgeist of the era, and whose tragic fate also represents one of the major trends of that era. Igor Savitsky devoted his life to the preservation of the paintings of the undesirables and the persecuted as well as to the creation of a museum in the sands of Kyzylkum. Marinika Babanazarova, his student and successor, had taken up his cause and worked as the museum director until recently. In her essay “Reclaimed Names,” Babanazarova tells the story of the origins of “Savitsky’s collection” and then that of the museum. From the mid-1930s, the criticism of formalist artists who disregarded the building of a new socialist world in their work became increasingly harsh. Many cultural figures were arrested on political charges. Museums discarded their paintings. Some artists destroyed their works. Babanazarova recounts the stories of the three artists whose works have become jewels of the Nukus collection today. Their destinies were eerily similar to hundreds of thousands of others. Boisterously creative, talented, and singular 125

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artists, they were arrested, spent years in concentration camps, fell ill, and perished. The works saved in the Uzbek desert give us a faltering hope that there is at least something capable of surviving suffering and death. Karaganda art historian Guldana Safarova writes about the work of the repressed Karlag artists, about those who started the history of fine arts in the region. In the first part of her essay, “Art amidst Suppression,” she presents her study of the art of labor camp prisoners. Safarova points out that the work of many artists who had passed through the camps was devoid of drama and lacked any representation of prison experiences, as the authorities prohibited references to camp life, suffering, and deprivation. Yet, there were those like Hulot Sooster, who made drawings of the zone and smuggled them out, or Lev Premirov, who created sketches of camp life after his release. Safarova quotes him as saying, “I know that my writings, my drawings, all my works are dying, people in power loathe them, they are also unbearable for people who have no choice but to put up with them.” These frightening and apt words describe hardened indifference after years of repression, labor camps, suffering, and deprivation of millions of prisoners. The authorities forbade talking about this aspect of Soviet society, while for society, for the people, it turned out to be incredibly hard to face the truth about the archipelago of camps, prisons, and special settlements. An essential part of Safarova’s research is also the stories of the Karlag artists who stayed in Karaganda after they had been freed. Among them were Vladimir Eifert and Pavel Frizen, who changed the artistic life of the region through their teaching and educational activities, leaving behind an artistic legacy and a plethora of students. Art research brings small discoveries that help to better understand and embrace that difficult period and its extensive impact on modern life. Post-Soviet memory and trauma as reflected through art is the main theme of the essay by Asel Kadyrkhanova, a doctoral student at the University of Leeds. Kadyrkhanova discusses the theories of post-memory and trauma, explaining why the consequences of trauma—an extreme event or an atrocity—can, in theory, reproduce endlessly. Symptoms of trauma are belated because consciousness is unable to grasp what has happened at the moment of an accident. But then the trauma returns in the form of compulsive repetitions and allusions. Referencing trauma researcher Cathy Caruth, Kadyrkhanova writes that the individual who has survived trauma seeks not to forget it but to remember. Stalin’s terror as a collective trauma has become one of the subjects of Kadyrkhanova’s artistic practice and research. She is the bearer of her own family memory, and, as an artist, she is active in the shaping of collective memory and a creator of cultural memory. As a medium of memory, art makes it possible to preserve memory and at the same time raises questions about the fabrication and manipulation of memory. Overcoming the

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consequences of trauma is the central subject of Kadyrkhanova’s research. Art preserves memory, but it is also one of the few areas of human activity capable of self-inquiry, which complicates the task both for viewers and creators, but also reveals the intricacy and versatility of such phenomena as memory, trauma, frozen pain, and justice.

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Alexandra Tsay

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Chapter Seven

Reclaimed Names

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Marinika Babanazarova

In recent decades, the Igor Savitsky State Art Museum of Karakalpakstan in Nukus has become a Mecca for the international art community and those with an eye for beauty. The Nukus Museum ranks among the world’s top extraordinary tourist destinations, according to some authoritative media. The museum is often called “The Louvre in the Desert,” drawing this analogy not only from the nature and scale of the collection but also from its popularity. Experts agree that the museum in Karakalpakstan holds the most extensive art collection in Central Asia, and the widespread acclaim for the collection of early 20th century avant-garde art demonstrates the exceptional interest it has garnered around the world. According to statistics, the museum has made Nukus the fourth most-visited tourist destination in Uzbekistan (after Bukhara, Samarkand, and Khiva). It should be noted that the collection of archaeological finds of ancient and medieval art of Ancient Khorezm, or “the Central Asian Egypt,” as it was dubbed by explorer and world-renowned scientist, Professor S. P. Tolstov, is also of considerable interest. And the vast collection of Karakalpak folk art and crafts, which was the basis of the museum at the time of its opening in 1966, is a rich cultural repository of a small, formerly semi-nomadic people living now in the southern Aral Sea region. The sea is notorious for the world’s most dramatic ecological disaster of the 20th century. The Nukus Museum’s boom years have shown that visitors are most intrigued by the fine arts section of the 1920s–30s. Forbidden fruit is always appealing, and this collection has proven to be beguiling to most art admirers. It is an objective, unreserved perspective on the artistic life of the country. These figures were either rejected by the official art establishment, or simply dropped off the radar and remained in oblivion for decades. It is no coincidence that one of the high-profile exhibitions of the Museum took place 129

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in France in 1998. The title Les Survivants des Sables Rouges has a double meaning: “Survivors in Kyzyl Kumakh” and “Survivors in the red sands.” Over the past 30 years, much has been said and published about political repressions and the fate of the intelligentsia, which suffered the heaviest blow as not only were their entire families wiped out but their works destroyed. Yet to this day, there has been no official reevaluation of the history of the fine arts in Uzbekistan in the early twentieth century—namely, the period of its inception in the 1920s, as well as the history of the local school of painters in the 1930s. No comprehensive and objective assessment has been made of the historical Resolution of the Council of People’s Commissars of the Uzbek SSR (1933) on the development of fine arts in Uzbekistan. This document had an impact on the alignment of style and themes with the principles of socialist realism, which was then the only accepted movement in art. Although some publications on the subject have appeared, there is still no official summary opinion on the subject. Art universities and colleges continue to use textbooks from the 1950s–1980s and a small selection of articles from popular scientific journals. Professors probably share some additional facts with their students during lectures and seminars, but there are no fundamental publications in wide circulation. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, during the perestroika era, art history teachers in Soviet Uzbekistan deviated from the established methodology, concepts, and university curricula and began to discuss the unstable social and political situation at the turn of the 1920s–30s, as they were witnesses and participants of many events in the cultural life of the country. Thoughtful students took detailed notes on the lectures, since the textbooks were not helpful in this respect. And if 30 years ago this situation seemed unavoidable and quite explicable, the fact that the official art history is still non-existent today is abnormal. Of course, this is not to require a rewriting of history but rather an objective revision of it. Yet there are some obstacles, including the classified status of the archives associated with the two post-revolutionary decades of Soviet rule, the period of collectivization and dekulakization, marked by such great bloodletting and persecution. All of this necessarily had its effects on the cultural sphere. The publication of the Resolution of the Central Committee of the AllUnion Communist Party of April 23, 1932, “On restructuring of literary and artistic organizations” marked the imposition of strict control over the country’s cultural life by the party and government. In June 1933, the relevant Resolution of the Council of People’s Commissars of the UzSSR on the development of the fine art in Uzbekistan was adopted. While there were shows in Moscow and Philadelphia (USA) in 1934 which went down in the history of the country’s fine art as successful and even triumphant, and were,

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according to the critic V. Nadezhdin, “in many ways instructive for Moscow artists,”1 the situation began to change for the worse in the following years. From 1935, there was increasing criticism of artists who reflected socialist transformations “unfaithfully” or ignored them, having “locked themselves in ivory towers.” They were accused of the sins of decadence and bourgeois corruption, of pseudo-art and open dissent. Moral pressure and banishment from the artistic and public sphere were followed by official elimination through trumped-up criminal cases, often built on slander and false denunciation. Under the banner of socialist realism, the authorities ruled out any possibility of free creativity in the public sphere. This brought about a division between those who embraced the new cultural policies and portrayed socialist transformations sincerely and those who were forced to do so. A. Volkov, V. Ufimtsev, A. Nikolaev, M. Kurzin, N. Karakhan, N. Kashina, U. Tansykbaev—all of them had to cope with such pressure. Even the manner and style of depicting politically correct themes often became the subjects of heated debates and official condemnation. Subsequently, both artists and their critics described this process of departure from their vivid individuality in flexible terms of “overcoming the disease of ‘leftism’ and formalistic experimentation.” Thus, the machinery of repression affected everyone, even those not convicted or openly persecuted. The Soviet bureaucracy often used the dictates of ideology to settle personal scores with undesirables. The mediocre destroyed the more talented out of jealousy, pinning all kinds of labels on them. The darkest atmosphere prevailed in discussions of art shows from the mid-1930s onwards. The tone of newspaper and magazine reviews, both anonymous and signed by the authors, was unbearable. Articles, such as the one headlined “Against Gimmickry in Painting” signed “Artist” in the leading party newspaper Pravda Vostoka of March 22, 1936, became typical. They were attempting to crush the “buffoonery” and formalism of A. Volkov, as well as his colleagues V. Markova, N. Kashina, and others. Some artists, succumbing to moral pressure, destroyed their works. Criticism of creativity transformed into political accusations. Among the victims of political persecution were M. Kurzin, V. Lysenko, A. Nikolaev, M. Gaidukevich, V. Kaidalov, V. Gulyaev, F. Kravchenko, V. Konobeev, and others. Those who came out relatively successful claimed that they had been mistaken in their youth, influenced by formalistic and bourgeois Western art and that now they had realized that socialist realism was the only true art. Having accepted the rules of the new game, later, already during the thaw, they felt pangs of nostalgia about their creative youth. Thus, the rise of the art of the mid-1930s came to a halt. In view of all of the above, this article will draw on the collection and archives of the Nukus Museum in order to assess the creative biographies

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of artists in this period and this context. As has been repeatedly stated, the museum’s collection provides an accurate picture of how the art school was established in Uzbekistan. It took form outside the political sphere but at the same time it reflected, indirectly and, occasionally, directly, the social and political situation in the whole country and in Central Asia in particular. The atmosphere of building a new world, romantic appeal of revolution, delight in the contemplation of oriental exotics, and profound studies of ancient culture in its immediate presence fit perfectly into the existing cultural experience and knowledge of artists who worked in Uzbekistan. The period of the 1920s and early 1930s is characterized by vividness, diversity, powerful dynamics, and outreach to all spheres of life, from science and the conservation of ancient monuments to participation in so-called agitation campaigns and educational projects like “Rasm Maqtab” for the general public. An examination of the museum’s archives with the personal files of the artists represented in the collection of the Fine Arts Department leads the researcher to very controversial reflections. Of course, these thoughts are once again associated with claims that the fate of any brilliant artist, with rare exceptions, is a tragedy. This archive is unusual in that it was built up amidst an almost total absence of publications and without the formation of an official objective perspective on the creative work and activities of the majority of artists. The museum painstakingly collected evidence of artistic activity in the country. Correspondence, memoirs, references from various departments, catalogues, photographs, personal records of Savitsky and his staff along with surveys of artists’ relatives and friends, owners of their paintings, diaries—all represent the living memory of the era. Some of the testimonies are stunning. They may even come as a shock to an unprepared researcher. Some facts have already been covered in our publications and documentary films.2 All of them have provoked a strong public reaction and interest in the museum and its history and, remarkably enough, popularized the museum, creating a continuous stream of visitors. The collection of artwork by deportees has played a major part in shaping the brand of the Nukus Museum. It is fair to say that neither the museum nor its creator, Igor Savitsky, focused on political repressions of the 1920s–30s. The founder of the museum defined its mission as saving the dying and forgotten art that was outside the scope of art connoisseurs and researchers of the first three decades of the twentieth century. He was disturbed by the fact that even after the condemnation of Stalinism and the cult of personality, which had destroyed the best of the best, even after a period of thaw, there was still an atmosphere of rejection of genuine contemporary art. Therefore Savitsky, guided not only by the enthusiasm and avidity of a collector, but also by the

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desire to spot and save talent, attempted to acquire works by dissidents, representatives of the Moscow underground of the 1960s and 70s. In Nukus, there are paintings by M. Shemyakin, registered as “u.a.” (a museological term to denote unknown artists), S. Rubashkin (his cult painting about the “bulldozer exhibition” of 1974 was registered under the name “Walk in the Park”), K. Suryaev, A. Slepyshev, M. Nedbailo, and others. He also managed to purchase camp drawings by N. Borovaya, who was persecuted as the family member of an enemy of the people. She made them in Mordovia in a female penal colony, and Savitsky bought them as genre drawings of a prisoner of Nazi concentration camps two years before perestroika, in 1983. IGOR SAVITSKY

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Igor Savitsky did not follow his relatives into emigration, despite having at least two political repression victims in his family. He chose to stay in the USSR and actively participated in the socialist transformation of the country. He was engaged in the rehabilitation of the art of the 1920s and 30s, almost 20 years ahead of the ideological challenges of perestroika! Preserving cultural and spiritual values, he made a massive contribution to the development of art. He had deep faith in his mission of overcoming bureaucracy, corrup-

Figure 7-1.   Igor Savitsky, 1950–1956 (period of his work for Khorezm expedition.)

Georgiy Argiropulo, courtesy of Babanazarova Marinika

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tion, and cultural dysfunction. It was this very cultural dysfunction that, in his opinion, obstructed the realization of his plans. For him, it was the primary cause of the tragedies that took place in the country, which consigned expressions of authentic culture into oblivion and humiliation. He seemed to echo Mikhail Kurzin, the brightest artist in Uzbekistan, who was borne down by totalitarianism and who designated the situation in the Stalin era as a complete lack of culture not only among the masses but also on the part of the cultural officials. In any case, this was how Savitsky tried to explain what was happening.3 Unfortunately, Igor Savitsky did not live to see perestroika, when his mission of saving and preserving hundreds of brilliant names and masterpieces came to be officially recognized in the country. The aim of the present study is to illustrate the eternal dispute between the authorities and the artist by describing the lives of three outstanding personalities in the history of the fine art of the 20th century. Their fates are typical for the time but also have some individual traits—a description applicable to the whole of this renowned collection.

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VASILY LYSENKO (1899–1970s) One of the best-known paintings from the collection of the Igor Savitsky State Museum of Arts of Karakalpakstan is Bull, created in 1929 by the littleknown artist Vasily Lysenko of Uzbekistan; it has regularly caused a commotion among the museum visitors from around the world. With a remarkable rise of the Nukus Museum’s brand in the international arena, this enchanting painting plays a prominent role: it is both a symbol of the museum’s exceptional nature and its unique icon. The State Russian Museum launched the branding in 1991, choosing the painting by V. Lysenko to be the “face” of the show “Soviet Art of the 1920s–30s from the collection of the Igor Savitsky State Museum of Karakalpak SSR. Nukus.” The reproduction of Bull appeared on giant banners on Nevsky Prospekt and on posters of the Russian Museum displayed throughout St. Petersburg, as well as on invitations. The painting was featured in A. Nevzorov’s popular program 600 Seconds. Bull was published on the cover of the 1989 bestseller of Aurora Art Publishers entitled “The Avant-Garde: Cut Down in its Prime” (Avangard, ostanovlennyi na begu), also printed in the city on the Neva. In 1998, the canvas travelled to France, where it made a sensation at the exhibition Les Survivants des Sables Rouges. Being a “logo” inextricably linked to the museum, this painting consistently drew the interest of a wide variety of visitors. This work has an impressive portfolio of legends and myths surrounding it,

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Figure 7-2.   Vasiliy Lysenko, “Self-Portrait,” 1928.

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Courtesy of the Igor Savitsky State Art Museum of Karakalpakstan

and it can be studied as a case in museum marketing. Countless publications in the media, TV features, documentaries—all mention the stories around Bull and its author, which were typical of the entire creative intelligentsia of the 1920s–30s. These stories have become an artistic expression, a metaphor for the entire concept of the Nukus collection, which includes many works by artists who shared a similar fate. Yet, both audience and experts favored Bull. This uncontrolled process, however, was rather at odds with the tragic fate of the artist, who could not even dare to imagine such popularity during his lifetime. Getting back to our story. In 1971, the museum received the works of Lysenko, which Savitsky had brought from Tashkent, having acquired them from the artist’s sister, Galina Lysenko. The canvases were in a terrible

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Figure 7-3.   Vasiliy Lysenko, “Bull,” 1928–1929.

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Courtesy of the Igor Savitsky State Art Museum of Karakalpakstan

condition after prolonged storage in folded form—the paint peeled off. Due to deformations and extensive loss of pigment, the canvases hardly drew any attention. This was not a deal-breaker for Savitsky, who was still capable of spotting the outstanding talent of the painter. Savitsky shared only bits and pieces of information about the author and his arduous life, which hampered the normal process of the registration of exhibits. They were immediately sent from the museum to Moscow for restoration. Later, the museum staff had to record the biography of V. Lysenko from the words of their colleagues, who remembered some fragments. This was the reason for many inaccuracies in these loose narratives. And since the Nukus Museum is the only keeper of this author’s works, all publications about Lysenko and any references to him were based on those initial summaries,4 as well as on the hypothetical conclu-

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sions of the reputable, now deceased, Olga Roitenberg in her monograph Now Somebody Remembered that We Lived . . ., and of the equally authoritative Uzbek art historian Rimma Yeremyan.5 Today we understand why Savitsky did not disclose all of the information about the artists whose works he bought for the museum. To save and preserve their remarkable works, he not only avoided publishing of some of the data but also used manipulations, which we now have to explain to researchers and our visitors to convey the complicated history of the museum. Over the years we have attempted to uncover the mysteries of Vasily Lysenko: we talked to the older generation of art historians and artists of Tashkent, as well as the art restorers to whom Savitsky sent his canvases for conservation in Moscow in 1972. We sifted through the catalogues and publications of the 1920s–30s, but with no particular success. Painstakingly collecting casual lines and remarks, we managed to understand that Igor Savitsky was simply unwilling to reveal these secrets. Fruitful progress in these detective-like investigations came in 2012, when the author of this essay finally managed to locate a source of information about the artist’s family. The neighbors of Vasily’s brother and sister, Dmitry and Galina, told us about their lives. The meaning, or rather the purpose, of some graphic works in the museum became clear (for example, painted sketches of shoe lasts for his brother Dmitry, who was a shoemaker). However, they revealed nothing about the artist himself. Meanwhile, the hype around the paintings and the personality of the mysterious artist has forced us to persist in asking the appropriate authorities to either confirm or refute speculations and hypotheses about Lysenko’s fate. Simultaneously, a review of all of the museum’s correspondence since 1970 yielded the desired result. There were two letters from Galina Lysenko in 1974, in which she drew Savitsky’s attention to the mistaken name of her brother, stating that he was Vasily, not Evgenii. She also mentioned that her brother was paralyzed and they needed money for treatment. This piece of news confirms that Lysenko was still alive at that time.6 What happened? Why was this information not noted by researchers (by negligence or intentionally)? Who recorded the name “Evgenii” and then “Vladimir” in official documents? There is no explanation to be expected. After all, more than forty years have passed. Ascertaining the name of the artist was a minor sensation that allowed us to narrow the search for traces of the artist and his acquaintances. And indeed, the answer from the Ministry of Internal Affairs soon arrived: that V. A. Lysenko, born in 1899 in Bryansk, was convicted in 1935 under Article 66-1 of the Criminal Code of the Uzbek SSR and sentenced to six years in prison. He escaped, was arrested again, and, after serving his time, released, and then left Tashkent for Lipetsk in 1954.

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At the time we established his real name and the reason why he disappeared from the artistic life of Uzbekistan, we had only one piece of documentary evidence of his existence—an article by the journalist Yu. Arbat in the newspaper Pravda Vostoka dated May 24, 1932, which was in the personal file of the artist A. N. Volkov, archived in the museum. In fairness, it should be mentioned that requests for information about the artist were sent to leading art historians R. Taktash, L. Shostko, and R. Yeremyan, and only the last addressee was able to render some help. Remembering a very critical assessment of Bull by Rimma Yeremyan, a member of the Uzminkul’t commission who demanded that it be removed from the exhibition as an “anti-Soviet painting,” we nevertheless turned to her in the post-perestroika period in the early 1990s to find out more about the artist. Although R. Yeremyan had changed her opinion about his work, her information proved to be tentative and unfounded. But returning to Yu. Arbat’s article, entitled “Artists do not see the big picture. Notes on the 1st Republican Exhibition of Fine Arts of Uzbekistan’s workers,” it was sharply critical and imbued with the spirit of the April 1932 Resolution of the Central Committee—“On the restructuring of literary and artistic organizations.” Arbat attacked Lysenko alongside a critique of the works of A. Volkov, P. Benkov, and M. Kurzin, which were shown at the 1st Republican Exhibition of Fine Art of Uzbekistan’s Workers. Having dedicated to him a whole paragraph, the critic did not even care to mention his initials. Lysenko entered the history of Uzbekistan’s art nameless, despite the three mentions in the article. This was the beginning, so to say, of multiple insinuations and guesses about his real name and fate. As for the works on display in the show, it is important to note that they were untitled. Only a few of the 21 canvases and drawings that Savitsky had bought from the artist’s sister were signed and dated. Savitsky named the paintings himself before sending them to the Moscow restoration workshop.7 Remarkably, he characterized the pictures as “antifascist” in a letter to the Minister of Culture of the Karakalpak ASSR, A. Khudaibergenov, in which he asked his permission to commission the art restorers from the capital. This detail is missing from the description of other paintings included in the petition, and such facts are usually not required in business correspondence. What was behind this decision? In 2012, during the course of our research, we spoke to the restorer A. Zaitsev and the expert of the State Research Institute of Art and Industry M. Krasilin, who had been engaged in the restoration, to find out at least some information about V. Lysenko and his work. We hoped that Savitsky had been less reserved with the Muscovites. Alas, this was not so. Interestingly, they explained this lack of communication by the fact that the Nukus director

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was “always in a rush,” as he “grabbed the painting and ran away before the owners could change their mind.” He sparingly explained to the restorers his understanding of Lysenko’s paintings, saying that the artist worked in the era when fascism was on the rise. We could not make sense of this interpretation, given that the paintings were dated late 1920s–early 1930s. A partial revelation occurred to us only in 2012, when we were working in the archives. Lysenko’s fatal friendship with the artist Fyodor Kravchenko, who flirted with ideas of racial superiority, must have influenced him significantly. Savitsky’s readiness to emphasize the “anti-fascist” nature of the themes must have played a decisive role in saving these brilliant works. Drawing on his years-long experience and in the name of rescuing the artist, Savitsky resorted to what was, in 1971–72, the most acceptable interpretation of V. Lysenko’s artistic heritage. Bull is not the name given by the author either. The painting could have been a reaction to the birth of fascism in Germany in the 1920s. Lysenko’s conversations with F. Kravchenko, who was impressed by some of the radical ideas of nascent German National Socialism, may have prompted the image, which still stirs the viewers’ imagination. It should be noted that some artists of his circle (F. Kravchenko and their teacher K. Malevich; N. Karahan) considered fascism in the 1920s to be a new western movement influenced by Christianity. Malevich, according to Lysenko, having visited Germany in 1927, spoke about bustling art life and admired new revolutionary undercurrents. The swastika was a symbol of Christian catacombs of Ancient Rome. K. Malevich’s mystical views of “spiritualizing the universe” impressed A. Nikolaev (Usto Mumin) and V. Lysenko. This explains the connection between these interpretations by Malevich and the philosophical complexity of the composition and content of Bull. The painting was initially registered under the title Fascism Poses a Threat, which seems justified in this context. Savitsky was trying to avoid repeated accusations of anti-Soviet activity and tirelessly emphasized Lysenko’s anti-fascist sentiment, which was a tactic of saving and preserving the heritage of rogue artists. The other works by Lysenko presented at the Igor Savitsky State Museum of Fine Arts8 are four self-portraits, three compositions, and one theatre backdrop design. They were created in the late 1920s–early 1930s under the influence of the Leningrad art scene. He spent a few years studying at the Institute of Artistic Culture (InKhUK) (1924–1929). Lysenko visited apartment art shows and discussions organized by V. Ermolaeva and P. Filonov, where he regularly conversed not only with K. Malevich but also with Tashkent artists A. Nikolaev, V. Markova, and F. Kravchenko. These years made a profound impact on the artist.

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Figure 7-4.   Vasiliy Lysenko, “Self-Portrait,” 1932–1934. Copyright © 2021. Lexington Books. All rights reserved.

Courtesy of the Igor Savitsky State Art Museum of Karakalpakstan

Back in Tashkent, Lysenko attended lectures on constructivism by M. Kurzin in the studio at the club named after Kafanov. He participated in the painting workshop of M. Kurzin and A. Volkov. After the group split, he followed the latter to continue work in the Sheikhantaur workshop. This freedom-loving and versatile creative environment formed V. Lysenko’s worldview as an artist. Official art critics rejected experimentation, and in the above-mentioned “Artists do not see the big picture. Notes on the 1st Republican Exhibition of Fine Arts of Uzbekistan’s workers,” Yu. Arbat wrote about Lysenko right after Volkov and Kurzin, placing him among the top three, which speaks for itself:

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From Volkov to Lysenko to Kurzin, from Kurzin to Lysenko—it’s a closed loop. What is the meaning of Kurzin’s man standing on the seashore? It reflects nothing! A standing man, that’s it. The steamboat in the sea isn’t thought-provoking either. “A man drinks alcohol”—let him do that. Lysenko took a step further. All of his paintings, all he has produced is abstract. Just the “beauty.” Abstraction, escaping into “pure” painting, “art for art’s sake”—all this is deeply reactionary. Painting blue symphonies in a republic where people are building socialism and fighting with the legacy of the old autocratic colonialist policy means to call for a departure from reality, for a segregated life.9

This was the first “red flag” for the artist. Lysenko worked as a designer and teacher at the Museum of the Revolution and school theatre, where he stayed until his arrest in March 1935, which occurred at the time of a rampant campaign against formalism and dissent. It is not surprising that amid a frenzied hunt for terrorists, counter-revolutionaries, and anti-Soviet agents,10 who were severely punished, V. Lysenko renounced his teachers K. Malevich and P. Filonov, calling them “mystical idealists” and discarding their views as anti-Soviet and harmful. Probably, he was also pressured to name his colleagues, A. Nikolaev, who had introduced him to Malevich, and M. Kurzin, as anti-Soviet elements. However, he was not the only one forced to give untruthful confessions. He also acknowledged that some of his drawings were anti-Soviet. He declared his anti-Soviet views to be the result of domestic problems and difficulties in life. He renounced them after he realized, as it were, that he had been transformed. His conviction in autumn of 1936 and subsequent imprisonment put an end to the career of a brilliant painter. He escaped from the camp and lived under an assumed identity in his native village of Sosnovka in Bryansk region, but was re-arrested and re-incarcerated again in Uzbekistan, and then toiled in the countryside on a state farm near Saratov, making a living as a sign painter. There was no longer a place in Vasily Lysenko’s life for creative ambitions. The last document he put his hand to was a pension application in 1966. These travails account for the discrepancies in his biography, and there is still much to be learned about his life after 1936. However, the phrase in his retirement application that he “once had a passion for painting” leaves little hope for more discoveries. MIKHAIL KURZIN (1888–1957) Mikhail Kurzin was a significant figure in the Uzbekistan art school of the 1920s–30s. As one of the founders of the “Masters of the New East” association, he was involved in the development of fine arts in the region. He not only partook in various republican shows, executing orders of the state

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bodies of revolutionary agitation and propaganda, but also taught young national cadres and gave lectures at educational institutions and painting studios. He was also on the Organizing Committee of the Union of Artists of the Uzbek SSR. Despite the destruction and loss of much of his early work, Kurzin left a deep mark on the country’s cultural history. The collection of the Igor Savitsky State Art Museum has 228 of his works, representing the entire artistic journey of the artist. His arrival in Uzbekistan from Siberia in the early 1920s, like that of most of his fellow artists, was not only about his fascination with the exotic and orientalism. The creative activity of this master was full of revolutionary pathos and ideas of bringing art to the masses. Art offered a set of efficient tools for agitprop, highlighting revolutionary and socialist transformations, as well as combating the old world. Researching the republican archives and materials on Mikhail Kurzin’s work, we find many reproductions depicting socialist labor scenes. He traveled a lot to construction sites and collective farms, creating portraits of the best-performing workers and painting the meetings of people with party leaders. An extensive collection of such paintings is on display in the Uzbekistan State Museum of Art: Woman at the Machine-tool (1933), Tashselmash (1933), Women’s Advance Brigade (1934), etc. His M. Kalinin in Tashkent (1927–28) and The Dance of Collective Farmers (1933) are now textbook works. In 1932, Kurzin participated in the All-Union exhibition “Posters in the Service of the Five-Year Plan” in Moscow. Authorities were invested in this part of his work, and so it is described in detail in textbooks and monographs. Unfortunately, critics and art historians mostly ignored his satirical illustrations in magazines as well as posters denouncing feudal anachronisms, which serve as particularly vivid illustrations of the artist’s talent and of the experience he gained from working on the OKNA ROSTA (“ROSTA Windows of Satire”) in Civil War-era Moscow.11 Private foreign collectors deserve full credit for the fact that the works of this genre have appeared in print in recent years.12 Even in the post-perestroika period, in 1989, official art critics described the work of masters who came to Uzbekistan mechanically as being “entirely or almost entirely focused on the aesthetic exploration of traditional, exotic aspects of the everyday life of the Uzbek people.”13 They explained the predominance of traditional motifs by the fact that the artists were “captivated by the evanescent oriental exoticism.”14 Art historians did not pay much attention to the fate of M. Kurzin, who was an outcast in the second half of the 1930s. Despite the volume of politically correct work in the spirit and style of socialist realism, M. Kurzin also created works that stirred discontent and irritation among those who determined the direction of artistic development. The standard accusations of formalism,

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fascination with constructivism, cubism, and other bourgeois artistic trends (which Yu. Arbat had denounced) affected Kurzin, too. It seems that the rejection of Mikhail Kurzin’s personality was mostly a result of its direct, explosive, and independent quality. The sharpness of his judgment, his awareness of an original talent, the sense of self-esteem and rich life experience, his service in Kolchak’s army, friendship with anarchists, and even participation in the expropriation of private banks in Moscow, as well as his acquaintance with prominent figures of the epoch (A. Lunacharsky, V. Mayakovsky, etc.) testify not only to the deeply conflicted life of the artist but also to his general rebelliousness. It can explain his depression when the mediocre and the ignorant seized power and were teaching and criticizing the venerable artist, who had by then been working “for pleasure” for some time. The political jobs, which he handled masterfully, became a different kind of art for him. This rift tormented M. Kurzin. Having become unrestrained and aggressive, he began criticizing his talentless colleagues. With inherent Siberian straightforwardness, he permitted himself to make rash judgments: that nobody appreciated talent anymore, that he wanted to save some money and emigrate, that he would be duly appreciated out there. In April 1936, in a pub, Kurzin said that he did not want to stay in the USSR, where great artists were not appreciated, and that he would have been better off in a capitalist country, and thus he was considering an escape. This cry from the heart was caused by a misunderstanding of his figurative and grotesque style. The violent colours of his compositions were perceived not as a decorative technique but as a mockery of the characters depicted. He was accused of sexism; his portrayal of women was called offensive. “Why does he make faces and legs green?!,” “He shows women as prostitutes,” yelled both critics and colleagues.15 The sarcasm and incisiveness of his political satire (Bai Agitating [1930], Old and New [1930]) were aimed not only at ridiculing and chastising the old feudal ways but also at the corruption of the ruling elites in general. Thus, the civic stance of the artist Kurzin was not just irritating but deeply suspicious. His painting Capital (1928) is quite ambivalent in this respect. This sharply satirical work, which has been in the museum since 1969, was perceived as falling in line with the ideology of the time, representing the denunciation of the capitalist world. The revolting couple, the embodiment of the world bourgeoisie, was associated with NEP profiteers, whom many Soviet artists depicted in a similarly grotesque and expressive manner. However, in 2003, with the invaluable help of the Japanese researcher of Russian culture, Professor I. Kameyam, who took a special interest in M. Kurzin’s life, we received new data about the artist. There was a photograph of the Capital that we had on display, but . . . in full. It was a sensation. It turned out that we only knew

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Figure 7-5.   Mikhail Kurzin, “Capital,” 1931.

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Courtesy of the Igor Savitsky State Art Museum of Karakalpakstan

a fragment of the work, the upper part. The whole painting’s idea unfolded in a completely unexpected direction. In the lower, missing, part of the composition, the author depicted himself holding a coffin in his hands. The number “17” is standing out to the right of his face with eyes closed. This is the date of the October Revolution. In the corner of the composition, there is a narrow tunnel with a multitude of people dressed in identical robes. . . . It is signed and dated 1928, although in the museum documents, the date is 1931. This photo has turned the familiar semantics of the work upside down. In our opinion, the profound tragedy of this self-portrait, placed at the very bottom, as if at the bottom of life, is an absolute expression of the artist’s mental breakdown, the portrait of a person who has lost his philosophical bearings in life. The placement of the revolution date also says a lot. We don’t know where the bottom of the canvas went. As in the case of V. Lysenko, we have to investigate the smallest facts in the biography of the master, who, despite his active and significant involvement in the cultural life of Uzbekistan, has not been a subject of a single monograph, except for a modest brochure about him in Estonian published by the Uzbek art historian R. Taktash in Tallinn in 1971. The year of 1936 went down in the history of the fine art of Uzbekistan as the year of the most severe crackdown on artistic freedom and harsh suppression of even slightest dissent. Many cultural figures were convicted. People lived in an atmosphere of surveillance and indiscriminate interrogation, slander, and accusations of formalism and anti-Sovietism. Undesirables were

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attacked from all possible angles: any delinquency, their past, social background, etc. The story of the scandalous behaviour of M. Kurzin at the vernissage of S. Malta’s show in May 1933 was the main ground for his conviction, despite the fact that the incident had happened three years before. Kurzin’s growing annoyance with what was happening culminated in a drunken debauch. Coming to the exhibition under the influence, he not only insulted Malta, bitterly criticizing his work, but, carried away by a rebellious mood, urged everyone “to throw down their brushes and palettes, go to the Kremlin and kill Stalin.” There were so many witnesses, and the artist behaved so violently, that his friends’ feeble attempts to explain his high-strung behaviour as the result of inebriation fell flat. This story created a great resonance. It made its way into testimonies of even those who had not been at the opening. All Kurzin’s “sins” were thrown back at him. They remembered his family (Kurzin’s father was a wealthy merchant associated with the Morozovs), his service under Kolchak, his fascination with anarchism, and his participation in a bank robbery in Moscow during his anarchist raids in Zamoskvorech’e in 1907. The basis for the proceedings against Kurzin were the “materials” obtained by the NKVD of the UzSSR showing that he had expressed counterrevolutionary and terrorist views and sought to emigrate. Acknowledging these facts under the pressure of the investigation, Kurzin tried to explain his past wrongdoing by his confused belief that anarchism was a revolutionary movement. But everybody seemed to have forgotten how much they admired the master’s work, and even one of his ex-wives, who seemed to be mercilessly settling her personal accounts with him, was “overly helpful” to the investigation. Eventually, M. Kurzin was convicted under Article 66 Part 1 of the Uzbek SSR Criminal Code for “counter-revolutionary agitation.”16 The artist served eight years in Kolyma, including three years of life in a special settlement in Bukhara. Then he was a day laborer in Bukhara for three more years. After going to Tashkent to buy canvases and paints, he was convicted again based on the previous case of 1937. In 1948, he was exiled to the Krasnoyarsk region. During the 20 years of these trials and tribulations, much of the artist’s work, reflecting his artistic quest and creative identity, was lost. It is now difficult to establish which the author destroyed himself (as he did routinely) and which the neighbors stole from the empty house after he had been arrested and his wife, V. Leitus, had left to live with her relatives. She claimed that during his arrest and after the search, two araba carts with his paintings were taken away by NKVD officers. The destiny of those works remains a mystery. Some paintings on cardboard ended up in the hands of the neighbors, who utilized them for drying apricots. The family had kept several of the

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Figure 7-6.   Мikhail Kurzin “Visit,” 1932.

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Courtesy of the Igor Savitsky State Art Museum of Karakalpakstan

works, which Savitsky bought for the museum. He also purchased the works, which survived with the families of Kurzin’s friends. They complemented the most representative collection of this brilliant master. In 1956, Kurzin was freed and lived in dire circumstances of need, hunger and disease for one year. He died of cancer in 1957. In the last year of his life, he created his final masterpieces: several portraits of old men and stunning still lifes—two versions of Siberian dumplings and Uzbek pilaf. These last still lifes convey simple and quiet joy. There is nothing spectacular in them, but they are “full of love and awe. He seems to be performing a religious rite with the colours and smells of life.”17 M. Kurzin painted these still lifes for himself, not for shows. They were first presented to the public at a posthumous exhibition. He was rehabilitated posthumously in 1960. ALEXANDER NIKOLAEV (USTO MUMIN) (1897–1957) The most talked-about and enigmatic persona in the history of the fine art of Uzbekistan in the 1920s–30s is A. Nikolaev, known by his pseudonym Usto

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Mumin. No other Uzbekistan artist of the time received so many interpretations of his life and work. The painter’s life saw ups and downs, recognition and oblivion, and a comeback and return to productive work, although in an entirely different capacity. Despite the contradictions and rejection of his early work, which official criticism tried to ignore, Usto Mumin was awarded publications and state titles. In the first years of his life in Uzbekistan, A. Nikolaev was involved in monument restoration projects in Samarkand. He was an active proponent of the preservation and study of local folk art and crafts. In 1936, he addressed the Organizing Committee of the Union of Artists of Uzbekistan with a report on the state, needs, and prospects of national art. He had spent years communicating with folk art masters and understanding the plastic art of crafting traditional ornaments and the Arabic script, as well as the secrets of ganch and wood carving, architectural forms, decor, and miniatures. The artist synthesized these techniques with European painting and Russian icon style in his work. His friends often mentioned his deep involvement with the local culture (V. Ufimtsev, in his book Telling My Story, and others). We will cite one of the unpublished memoirs of the sculptor O. Manuilova, who met Nikolaev in 1920 in Tashkent, where she had come with her husband to teach at the art school. The spouse, A. Manuilov, was appointed headmaster of the school, “Rasm Maqtab,” in Eski Djuva square in the old part of Tashkent, and his wife gave sculpture lessons there. Interestingly, the Soviet authorities attached great importance to promoting the new culture among the local people. Students of art schools were exempt from conscription. Those were troubled and hungry times. In the evenings, teachers of the schools would draw posters and caricatures of landowners and mullahs, with exhortations to fight against the basmachi rebels and for the emancipation of women. There, O. Manuilova met with A. Volkov, B. Lavrenev, and A. Nikolaev. The latter stood out from the rest. Later, when they met with Usto Mumin again in 1937, he helped Manuilova upon her arrival to Tashkent not only as the chief artist of the project, in which she worked under his supervision, but also as a great expert in the local culture. Manuilova was commissioned to create images of a dutarist and tambourist to decorate the entrance to the Uzbek pavilion of the AllUnion Agricultural Exhibition. Usto Mumin took her to the old town, where he knew many people. They visited deep corners of mahallas, teahouses, and mosques, where he showed her local characters and peculiarities of their life. The musicians played for them, and there were no other women there. They were lucky to have met and seen the performance of a famous dancer, Aliyev, at the court of Emir Bukhara, whose movement, despite his mature age, was very exotic. Usto Mumin took Manuilova to the Hamza Theater and bazaars, which helped her to individualize the characters. Despite being

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a reverent lover and diligent researcher of Uzbek culture and religion (the artist adopted Islam, took a pseudonym, studied the philosophy of Sufism, and wore Uzbek national clothing), Usto Mumin actively fought against the remnants of the past through the methods of agitprop. He worked in various publishing houses, was the art director of the satirical magazine Mushtum (“Fist”), drew numerous propaganda posters to promote the tightening of the socialist labor discipline (All to harvest cotton! [1933]), and created realistic canvases (White Gold [1934]). However, according to art historian L. Shostko, who worked in the Union of Artists of the UzSSR in the late 1950s, Nikolaev’s name sounded like a curse. Many official critics and art historians avoided writing about his work or mentioned only the politically correct paintings. For example, the monograph by reputable art historians M. Muntz and L. Rempel, Fine Arts of the Uzbek SSR, printed by Moscow’s Soviet Artist Publishing House in 1957, afforded Nikolaev just a ten-line passage,18 while presenting an exhaustive description of the 1920s–30s with the analysis of “mistakes and misconceptions” of the first generation of art workers. The vague information about Usto Mumin’s life in the late 1920s tells us that he left his beloved Uzbekistan for Leningrad, where he worked in the local branch of children’s publisher Detgiz and was in a dynamic creative exchange with the masters of the avant-garde K. Malevich (who was his teacher in 1919 in Moscow) and P. Filonov, and with Vera Yermolaeva, as well as with Uzbek artists V. Markova, V. Lysenko, and F. Kravchenko. Soon, however, he went back to Uzbekistan, driven by social and political passions and in search of a more congenial atmosphere. In the early 1930s, as mentioned above, Usto Mumin was actively applying his knowledge and energy to socialist transformations, having concealed his artistic and philosophical worldview deep within himself. In 1937, A. Nikolaev won the position of the chief artist of the “Uzbek SSR” pavilion at the All-Union Agricultural Exhibition in Moscow. A group of artists under his guidance created a unique design for the space, which consisted of several sections: “Livestock,” “Cotton Farming,” etc. The hall of the Karakalpak ASSR was picturesquely decorated with the colors of the steppe. In the above-mentioned memoirs, O. Manuilova, who had worked side by side with her mentor on a daily basis, tells how in 1938, at the height of the work, A. Nikolaev was unexpectedly arrested, and what was acknowledged to be the most beautiful pavilion of the Uzbek SSR was opened without the chief artist, who was languishing in confinement in distant Taishet. What happened then is still not clear. The only known official explanation is contained in documents obtained by the Russian researcher E. Shafranskaya and published in her book A. Nikolaev–Usto Mumin: His Fate in History

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and Culture.19 Unfortunately, most admirers of his work are unaware of this book. While M. Kurzin’s case was a typical one of punitive measures taken by the authorities against an open dissident, Usto Mumin’s personality, with all the extravagance and indulgent fascination with the aesthetics of the East, does not fit squarely into the mold of a political victim. Various rumors were in the air. Somebody explained the arrest with his spying for a foreign country—Usto Mumin allegedly went to the mountains not to sketch landscapes but to draw maps of the area and hand them over to the enemy. His fascination with Sufism, the once-expressed desire to become an Ishan in the early years of his life in Samarkand, and the fact that he wore Uzbek national clothing while fighting against reactionary feudal remnants could have been construed as covertly working against the official propaganda. Also, the authorities focused on artists linked to Leningrad in connection with the assassination of Kirov and thus suspected of terrorism and attempts to overthrow the Soviet regime. Usto Mumin’s arrest was also politically motivated. In 1936, the NKVD initiated proceedings against many cultural figures. V. Lysenko, M. Kurzin, Usto Mumin, M. Gaidukevich, V. Kaidalova, V. Gulyaev, E. Burtsev, I. Kazakova, F. Kravchenko, and others were also charged

Figure 7-7.  Alexander Nikolayev (Usto Mumin), “The Road of Life,” 1924.

Courtesy of the Igor Savitsky State Art Museum of Karakalpakstan

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with various crimes. Witness testimonies provided compromising material against most artists. V. Lysenko and F. Kravchenko, tried in one proceeding, stated that Usto Mumin held the same views as Kazimir Malevich, and attributed both to the influence of “mystics and preachers of bourgeois ideology.” Someone called him a monarchist, remembering the toast Nikolaev once proposed to the peace of the soul of Tsarevich Alexei. They also recalled that he was related to Aleksandr Kerensky20 on his mother’s side and was particularly close to his aunt “Kerenka” (as she was known to friends and family), who lived in Leningrad on Zhelyabov Street and worked as a doctor in an outpatient clinic. He had at one time shared an apartment with her. Critics identified traces of “Kerenskyism” in Nikolaev’s behavior and statements. In addition to claims of witnessing anti-Soviet activities, denunciations often included facts about the immoral behaviour of the defendants and their circle. Some of the documents that official organizations released are indeed shocking. For example, the Organizing Committee of the Union of Artists of the UzSSR, represented by the administrator Lebedeva, sent “certificate No. 184 of 02.10.1937 about the submission of compromising material about artist V. Markova to take appropriate measures” to Leningrad, where the artist had moved “on a permanent basis.”21 Kurzin’s case was also full of various compromising documents regarding his moral make-up. Nikolaev’s morality file was much richer! We were suddenly reproached of making some unsubstantiated statements about the artist’s personal life, for which Western art historians, for example, John Bowlt in the American documentary The Desert of Forbidden Art, are readily forgiven. We never took particular interest in A. Nikolaev’s personal life except to explain his arrest, which, incidentally, was only logical because he had no other flaws in public opinion. Moreover, we would never have dared to bring up such a sensitive issue if it had not been for the many testimonies provided by people who knew him.22 Ought we, perhaps, simply avoid examining the details of why a talented master gets mistakenly confined in inhuman conditions for four years, isolated from both society and his creative work?! (Olga Manuilova described how he suffered, according to his wife, from the lack of the opportunity to work, and how she asked Manuilova to intercede for her husband with Vyshinsky, whom she knew, to create conditions for Nikolaev’s creative work in the camp. Usto Mumin was not released, but the request was granted.)23 This is what the relationship between the regime and the creator was like. No posthumous rehabilitation would bring back all that had been lost to humanity. The eroticism of his paintings of beautiful young men is the subject of endless discussions, both during excursions in the museum and on social networks.24 I would like to name the “reconstruction of the artist’s biography” by

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E. Shafranskaya, mentioned above, as one of the most comprehensive publications on the subject. The author treats it as delicately as possible, providing, arguably, the most objective analysis of his work. But by calling his work “an attempt at the reconstruction of the biography,” she thereby indicates that there are still blind spots in the complicated life of this outstanding personality. The classified status of the archives from this period also contributes to the persistence of rumors about the fate of Usto Mumin. We repeatedly contacted the relevant agencies in the 1990s to ascertain the facts about Usto Mumin but received no reply. Only the Museum of the Victims of Political Repressions in Tashkent was kind enough to provide information, although unfortunately incomplete. There is the impression that foreign researchers of the history of the 1920s–30s had better access to the materials than local specialists. In general, the situation with the release of information about the lives of even such prominent figures as Usto Mumin, who received official recognition and was posthumously rehabilitated in 1957, a month after his death, is still problematic. Thus, we have based our interpretations on our research, archives, and a gathering of their works collected by Igor Savitsky. The Nukus collection has 89 paintings and graphic works from different periods of Usto Mumin’s work. Along with masterpieces that have become classics of fine art, the museum acquired a self-portrait, portraits of the artist’s relatives, and a series of sketches of national and theatrical costumes. The portraits of shock workers he made during his trips to the regions as part of teams dispatched by the governing bodies reveal the evolution of the artist from the admiration and enthusiastic research of the centuries-old culture and philosophy of the people to works in a socialist realist style, made to government order. His early works are of particular interest. They draw the unfailing attention and fascination of viewers. The paintings Bridegroom, The Road of Life, and Portrait of a Boy in a Fur Hat, as well as a series of early graphic drawings, were shown in France and in the three largest museums of Russia, reproduced in many publications and receiving international acclaim. They are examples of sophisticated stylization, craftsmanship, and meaningfulness. The portraits not only convey the beauty of angelic faces of handsome young men, but also contain profound philosophical symbolism. His The Road of Life, executed on wood, like an ancient icon, is deeply philosophical. It reflects Usto Mumin’s quest, which we have already discussed. The river compositionally divides the real and the otherworldly, and the figures of conversing men can be construed as a reference to one of the important themes of Sufism—the teachings about usto and shogird (teacher and disciple). The palette is also symbolic. A painting like this opens up to a trained eye. Most see only external beauty, the elegance and clarity of lines. This type of art requires stillness.

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Figure 7-8.  Alexander Nikolayev (Usto Mumin), “Portrait of a boy in a fur hat,” 1924. Courtesy of the Igor Savitsky State Art Museum of Karakalpakstan

Although A.V. Nikolaev was rehabilitated in 1957, the real recognition of his early work came only 30 years later. . . . In 1957, A. Volkov, M. Kurzin, and A. Nikolaev (Usto Mumin) died one after the other. “And the era of artistic experimentation in the East came to an end with them.”25

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NOTES 1. V. Nadezhdin, “Zainteresovannye sovremenniki. Sovetskoe iskusstvo,” in L. M. Rempel’ (ed.), Iskusstvo sovetskogo Uzbekistana: 1917–1972 (Moscow: Sovetskii khudozhnik, 1976), p. 16. 2.  See the bibliography for the list of the museum’s catalogues. The Desert of Forbidden Art, documentary film (USA, 2010), A. Pope and C. Georgiev (prods.); The Passion of Igor Savitsky (Uzbekistan, 2015), Ali Khamraev, (prod.). 3.  From a letter of I. Savitsky to artist Irina Zhdanko, the wife of his teacher, Lev Kramarenko: “It might be reckless to create such a museum in our country. I torment everybody and myself, not knowing the purpose. Our country is so far from art, or rather the people are so dull in this respect that you sometimes stop caring whether all we have collected will go to waste or survive till things go better. Nobody understands what we are doing, nobody has a clue about what is hanging on the walls or

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fills the shelves. It reminds me of Auschwitz—an Auschwitz for art objects that seem so strange to millions of ignorant people. It is not clear whether they can be awakened and interested, or if their understanding can be improved. We might be unable to do that. Those that despise, disregard, are willing to destroy art are the ones who wield the power. In fact, it’s been like that for decades. It is true that art is similar to weeds, and they have not managed to eradicate it or mould it as they like. It keeps on breaking through in all directions. That gives hope and strength to continue this endless and meaningless fight, this rainbow-chasing. We are all daydreamers after all.”   4.  Archive of the museum, the artist’s personal file.   5.  O. Roitenberg, Neuzheli kto-to vspomnil, chto my byli. . . Iz istorii khudozhestvennoi zhizni 1925–1935 (Moscow: Galart, 2004); Museum Archive, personal file of V. Lysenko.   6.  Personal archive of M. Babanazarova  7. All-Russian Central Research Laboratory for Preservation and Restoration of Museum Valuables (VTsNILKR), later the I. Grabar State Institute for Scientific Research and All-Russian Art Scientific Restoration Centre (GTsKhIRM).   8.  The Nukus Museum has a total of 21 works by V. Lysenko, not six, as previously reported.   9.  Yu. Arbat, “Artists do not see the big picture. Notes on the 1st Republican Exhibition of Fine Arts of Uzbekistan’s workers.” Pravda Vostoka, May 24, 1932. 10.  The murder of Kirov in 1934 was the beginning of the era of “Great Terror” and mass purges, when thousands of innocents were accused under the pretext of involvement in this case. 11. These were agitational satirical posters created for the Russian Telegraph Agency (ROSTA) in 1919–1921. Translator’s note. 12.  I. Galeev, Venok Savitskomu: Zhivopis,’ risunok, fotografii, dokumenty (Moscow: Galeev Galereya, 2011); “Turkestanskii avangard”: katolog vystavki v Gosudarstvennom muzee Vostoka (Moscow, 2009). 13.  Rempel’ (ed.), Iskusstvo sovetskogo Uzbekistana. 14. Ibid. 15.  Museum archive, personal file of M. Kurzin. 16. Ibid. 17.  Rempel’ (ed.), Iskusstvo sovetskogo Uzbekistana, p. 174. 18.  M. Myunts and L. Rempel,’ Izobrazitel’noe iskusstvo Uzbekskoi SSR (Moscow, 1957), pp. 8, 11. 19.  E. Shafranskaya, A. V. Nikolaev—Usto Mumin: sud’ba istorii i kul’ture (Moscow: Svoe izdatelstvo, 2014). 20.  Leader of the Russian Provisional Government, which was overthrown by the Bolsheviks in the October 1917 revolution. Translator’s note. 21.  Museum archive. 22.  Museum archive. 23.  Museum archive, personal file of A. Nikolaev. 24. Shafranskaya, A. V. Nikolaev—Usto Mumin. 25.  I. Galeyev, Viktor Ufimtsev (Moscow: Galeev Gallery, 2009).

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BIBLIOGRAPHY Adaskina, Nataliya. “30-e gody: kontrasty i paradoksy sovetskoi khudozhestvennoi kul’tury.” Sovetskoe iskusstvoznanie. Sb. No 25. Moscow, 1989. Ahmedova, Nigora. Zhivopis’ Tsentral’noi Azii XX veka: Traditsii, samobytnost’, dialog. Tashkent, 2004. Akilova, K. “Sokrovishe Nukusa.” Catalogue of the Exhibition at the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts. Moscow, 2017. The Anthology of Fine Arts of Uzbekistan, vol. I, Painting. Tashkent: Academy of Arts of Uzbekistan, 2009. Babanazarova, Marinika. Igor Savitsky: Artist, Collector, Museum Founder. London: Silk Road Publishing House, 2011. Babanazarova, Marinika. “Lysenko, V.A.” In Entsiklopediya russkogo avangarda, vol. 2 edited by V. Rakitina and A. Sarab’yanova. Moscow: Global Ekspert end Servis Tim, 2013. Babanazarova, Marinika. “Orientalist Art in the Savitsky Collection.” Cultural orientalism and Mentality, vol. I. Milan, 2015: 23–35. Babanazarova, Marinika. “Posvyashchaetsya 100-letiyu so dnya rozhdeniya I.V. Savickogo.” Zolotaya palitra, no. 1 (2015). Babanazarova, Marinika. Savitsky Karakalpakstan Art Museum in Nukus: Guidebook. Tashkent: Silk Road Media, 2006. Coldefy-Faucard, Anne. “Les Survivants des Sables Rouges.” Art russe du Musee de Noukous Ouzbekistan 1920–1940. Caen: Conseil Regional Basse-Normandie, 1997. Collection of the Savitsky Karakalpak State Museum. Kul’turnoe nasledie Uzbekistana, vol. IX. Compiled by K. Akilova. Tashkent: Uzbekistan Today. Zamon Press INFO, 2017. Egamberdyev, E. Zhanrovaya zhivopis’ Uzbekistana. Tashkent: Izdatel’stvo literatury i iskusstva im. Gafura Gulyama, 1989. Eremyan, Rimma. Usto Mumin (A. V. Nikolaev). Tashkent: Izdatel’stvo literatury i iskusstva im. Gafura Gulyama, 1982. Galeyev, Ildar. Homage to Savitsky: Collecting 20th Century Russian and Uzbek Art. Stuttgart: Arnoldsche Art Publishers, 2015. Galeev, Ildar. Venok Savitskomu: Zhivopis’, risunok, fotografii, dokumenty. Moscow: Galeev Galereya, 2011. Galeev, Ildar. Viktor Ufimtsev. Moscow: Galeev Galereya, 2009. Hakimov, Abar. Avangard XX veka. Tashkent, 2003. Hakimov, Abar. Iskusstvo Uzbekistana. Istoriya i sovremennost’. Tashkent: San’at, 2010. “Iskusstvo Uzbekistana: dinamika identichnosti.” Materialy kollokviuma III Shveitsarskoe Agenstvo po sotrudnichestu i razvitiyu. Swiss agency for development and cooperation. Tashkent, 2007. “Iskusstvo Uzbekistana na sovremennom etape sotsiokul’turnogo razvitiya.” Materialy seminarov, dokladov i kollokviuma ekspertov. Shveitsarskoe Agentstvo po

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razvitiyu sotrudnichestvu. Swiss agency for development and cooperation. Tashkent, 2006. Kuteinikova, I. “The Road to the New East.” In Russia’s Unknown Orient: Orientalist Painting 1850–1920. Catalogue of the exhibition Russia’s Unknown Orient. Groningen, 2010. Mez, Adam. Musul’manskii renessans. Moskva: Nauka, 1973. Myunts, M. and L. Rempel’. Izobrazitel’noe iskusstvo Uzbekskoi SSR. Moskva, 1957. Nurmukhamedova, Irina. “Dva direktora–dve sud’by. Iz istorii Nukusskogo muzeya iskusstv im. I. V. Savitskogo.” Zolotaya palitra, no. 1(12) (2015). Rempel,’ Lazar’ (ed.). Iskusstvo sovetskogo Uzbekistana. 1917–1972. Moscow: Sovetskiy Khudozhnik, 1976. Roitenberg, Olga. Neuzheli kto-to vspomnil, chto my byli . . . Iz istorii khudozhestvennoi zhizni 1925-1935. Moscow: Galart, 2004. Russkii avangard. Grafika iz sobraniya Nukusskogo muzeya iskusstv Karakalpakstana. Chemnitz, 1995. Saidov, A. and K. Akilova. Luvr v pustyne. Kniga-al’bom. Tashkent, 2017. Savitskii, Igor’. Gosudarstvennyi muzei iskusstv Karakalpakskoi ASSR. Moscow: Sovetskii Khudozhnik, 1975. Shafranskaya, Eleonora. A. V. Nikolaev–Usto Mumin: sud’ba istorii i kul’ture. Moscow: Svoe izdatelstvo, 2014. “Sovetskoe iskusstvo 1920–1930-kh godov.” Iz sobraniya GMI KKASSR im. I. V. Savitskogo. From the collection of the Savitsky Karakalpak State Museum. Leningrad: Avrora, 1991. Taktash, Raphael. Mikhail Kurzin. Tallin: Kunst, 1971. “Turkestanskii avangard.” Iin Katalog vystavki v Gosudarstvennom muzee Vostoka. Exhibition Catalogue at the State Museum of Oriental Art. Moscow, 2009. Turutina, S., A. Loshen’kov, S. D’yachebko, E. Kovtun, M. Babanazarova and E. Gazieva. Avangard, ostanovlennyi na begu: Al’bom. Leningrad: Avrora, 1989. Ufimtsev, Viktor. My nazyvali sebya novatorami. Moscow: Pinakoteka, 2007. Umarov, Ahmad. Portretnaya zhivopis’ Uzbekistana. Tashkent: Fan, 1968. Vail’, Mark and Dmitriy Tihomirov. Radenie s granatom. Tashkent, 2006. Zabytye polotna. Zhivopis’ i grafika iz sobraniya Nukusskogo muzeya. Katalog vystavki. Moscow, 1988.

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Chapter Eight

“Our Camp Grew into a Busy City . . . ” The Art of Deportee Artists in Karaganda (Late 1930s–Early 1960s) Guldana Safarova

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If you happen to visit Karaganda, a small city in Kazakhstan, as you get off the train, go straight to the station’s waiting rooms. When you get there, look up, and you will see the fragments of a Soviet-era sculpted frieze. Then take a walk through the town’s old streets. Stalinist buildings with classical facades, arched entrances to courtyards, stucco, and carved balconies are still there, along with some Soviet-era exteriors commissioned from artists of the time. On the central Bukhar Zhyrau Avenue, there is the Palace of Culture for Miners erected in 1952. Six sculptures, symbolizing the unity of work, science, and art, crown the entablature of the palace portico. The local museum of fine arts is on the same central avenue. Be sure to visit it and see the collection of paintings by deported artists. You will feel the energetic presence of high visual culture usually found only in capital cities. This singular energy was brought here by prisoners of Karlag, who went through many hardships in Kazakhstan: hunger, hard physical labor, violence, crackdowns on creativity. . . . The history of art in the region began with these people. May of 1935. Spring in a semi-desert. . . . But why is artistic Petersburg here? How could an intellectual from Petersburg know that he would be announced an enemy of the people and sent out here to witness the arrival of the spring? Who in their right mind could have ever thought that? Long barracks with no room for hope were scattered on the hill—like the huge belly of a giant—surrounded by a double row of barbed-wire fences. Above the wire, there were watchtowers with guards in sheepskin coats holding rifles. There was a separate room for German shepherd dogs. They chased down the jail-breakers. It was torture . . . (As recollected by avant-garde artist Vladimir Sterligov, a student of Kazimir Malevich).1 157

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1944. Institute. We were alive again, at least it seemed so. But the worst lay ahead: nine long years in Stalin’s camps on trumped-up charges. Ukhta. Balkhash. Suppression of personality, bullying, hunger, humiliation, backbreaking toil. Death was close. Art disappeared from our lives. Even from memory. It felt like the end. (From the memoirs of Lev Kropivnitskii)2

Camp imprisonment, exile, and executions were the main tools of Stalin’s repressions in the 1930s. Karlag was created in 1931 and became a powerful machine, functioning like clockwork and crushing the lives of political undesirables for over twenty years. Camps formed an entire universe, a cruel system of survival. At the same time, it was a microcosm of Soviet society, a place to carry out social and educational work. The structure of Karlag was rather cumbersome. There were numerous departments: administration and maintenance, accounting and distribution, etc. There was a cultural and educational department, too. Camp workshops were set up as part of this department’s work to engage artists in design work. There sprang up cultural clubs, propaganda teams, theatrical performances, art studios and exhibitions. Musicians, actors, and artists became part of propaganda teams. Exile. The exiled were assigned to a place of residence in rural locations and had to report to the supervising authorities regularly. In the 1930s and 1940s, there was no branch of the Association of Artists in Karaganda where artists usually applied for employment. Moreover, life in the village presented very few opportunities for artistic professionals. Therefore, the exiled were forced to take any job available to escape starvation. Artists banned from returning to their cities on release from the camp were regarded as artists in exile too. These artists had to live and work for several years in Karaganda. Some of them stayed here for the rest of their lives but most went back to the cities they came from. Many artists had to go through these hard times in Karaganda: artists of nationwide acclaim or known locally in their cities and regions, ordinary unpretentious decorators, art students arrested right in their alma mater, amateur painters. . . . It’s hard to say how many of them were sent to camps or exiled. . . . DESTINATIONS. FAMOUS ARTISTS LIVING AND WORKING IN KARAGANDA 3 Heinrich Vogeler was a German artist, an exponent of Jugendstil(modern). Deported in 1941 to the village of Korneevka in Karaganda region, he spent the final months of his life in Kazakhstan. Vogeler died of malnutrition and illness in a rural hospital in the village of Khoroshevskoe in 1942.

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Vera Ermolaeva was a famous avant-garde artist and an associate of Kazimir Malevich. In 1934, she was subject to political repression and sent to Karlag. Another accusation brought against her in 1937 led to her execution in Karlag. Artur Fonvizin was a member of the widely-known artist groups “Blue Rose,” “Jack of Diamonds,” and “Makovets.” His German descent was the

Figure 8-1.   Artur Fonvizin. From the series “Old Karaganda,” 1944. From the collection of the Karaganda Regional Museum of Fine Arts

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reason for his exile to Karaganda in 1942. Due to the efforts of a number of famous Soviet artists, he returned to Moscow in 1943. Traces of his creative legacy can be seen in the series of watercolours “Old Karaganda” Vladimir Eifert was a brilliant artist of Russian impressionism, an expert on antiques, and director of the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts. He was deported to Kazakhstan in 1941. His assigned destination was the village of Pushkino in Karaganda region. In 1943, he was allowed to stay in Karaganda. Vladimir Eifert was an artist and teacher who made a contribution of the highest significance to the art history of the region. Vladimir Sterligov was a student of Malevich and a friend of Vera Ermolaeva and Lev Yudin, who were his collaborators in developing the principles of “pictorial and plastic realism.” He was subjected to repression in 1934 and spent the next four years in Karlag. Subsequently, he became recognized as an artist of the Second Russian Avant-garde. Lev Kropivnitskii was a prisoner of Ukhtizhemlag in the Komi Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic and the Steplag of Kazakh SSR. When he was freed, he worked at the Balkhash Palace of Culture (as a stage designer, director, and as head of the art studio) for two years as a hired specialist. The Balkhash period was the time of his first experiments in abstract painting. It was here, on the Kazakh land, that his new creative method took shape.

Figure 8-2.   Lev Kropivnitskii. “A tree.”

From the collection of the Karaganda Regional Museum of Fine Arts

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Subsequently, he became a famous Moscow non-conformist artist (of the “Lianozovo Group”). Alexandr Chizhevskii was a famous biophysicist, the founder of heliobiology and aeroionification, and an amateur artist. In 1942, he was persecuted and exiled to the Carpathians. After his release and until 1959, he lived in Karaganda. Yokoyama Misao was a famous Japanese artist. He was brought to Karaganda as a prisoner of war (from 1945 to the 1950s). Yokoyamo Misao returned to Japan and in January of 1956 opened a solo exhibition dedicated to his impressions of Karaganda, which gained him his first recognition in Japan. Robert Grabbe was a well-known graphic artist and illustrator who worked in the decoupage technique. He was a student of Dmitrii Mitrokhin, Elizaveta Kruglikova, and Viktor Zamirailo. In 1951, he came to work in Karaganda as an artist at the Karagandagiproshakht Institute for Coal Mining Engineering. His chief motive for the relocation must have been the desire to avoid persecution. He died in Karaganda in 1991.

Figure 8-3.  Robert Grabbe. “Ex libris of Grabbe’s library.”

From the collection of the Karaganda Regional Museum of Fine Arts

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Petr Sokolov, chief artist of the Bolshoi Theater, also served time in Karlag. The exact date of his death is unknown, but it is likely that he died in 1937. Vladimir Sterligov’s memoirs contain a note on Sokolov and his painting “Politburo,” created in Karlag. This was a rare instance of an imprisoned artist creating a work that was critical of the authorities. The list of artists is extensive. Each of them was significant in their own way, but a colossal government machine suppressed all of them. Many painters, after years of exile, were unable to fully realize their creative potential.4 Fate had a few scenarios in store for the artists in exile. Scenario one—art produced under conditions in which personality was suppressed (in Karlag camps). Scenario two—artists and the city, origins and development of art in the region due to the potential of deported artists. SCENARIO ONE: ART AMIDST SUPPRESSION

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Not much evidence remains from which to reconstruct the story of cultural life in Karlag, the story of artists’ life in exile. The first in-depth research of the art of deported artists began in the late 1980s when the regional museum of fine arts in Karaganda was founded. Museum employees visited artists’ studios, traveling to Moscow and other cities of the USSR. Some of the artists were still alive to tell their stories for the record, and the museum acquired their paintings, graphics, sculptures, and documents for the collection. Letters and notes about the experience of camps began to appear in the press. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the archive of Karlag was opened to researchers. It was at that time that it became possible to find some documents (interrogation protocols, explanatory statements, decrees), which helped to reconstruct, at least partially, stories of their camp life. . . . Heinrich Vogeler: The steppe is bare, with no trees or bushes. Wind . . . Wind . . . A heavy storm. It is horrible for my sick chest. I imagined the end of my life differently. . . . —From a letter to Theodore Plevier of 20 October 1941.5

Lev Kropivnitskii: From Resolution 7? 19 of 4 August 1949. . . .prisoner Krapivnitsky cut his hand with glass in an attempt to commit suicide, then skipped his work without reasonable excuse. “Resolution: on the grounds of his misdemeanour, prisoner Kropivnitskii will be placed in punitive isolation for 5 days. . . . —From the personal file of L. Kropivnitskii. The archive of Karlag.6

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Vera Ermolaeva: Having been accepted as an artist to prepare for the exhibition, she has been producing beautiful posters and worked with enthusiasm, in particular now, in preparation for the Moscow exhibition. She deserves credit as a shock worker. —Performance report in the prisoner’s work record. Personal file No. 91342. From the personal file of Vera Ermolaeva. The archive of Karlag.7

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Below is the copy of her record.8 The same personal file also contains Ermolaeva’s execution decree. She was to be released on 25 September 1937, but she had no idea she would be shot the following day. . . . Vladimir Eifert wrote in his statement to the Communist Party Central Committee: “In November [1942], the collective farm assigned me to night

Figure 8-4.  Copy of document from the personal collection of G. Safarova and L. Pletnikova (Tuzhikova).

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watchman’s duty. After a month of 12-hour shifts without a break, in the wind and cold, without a sheepskin coat, I got pleurisy; I have been in bed for a month and still have not recovered. . . .”9 When one examines the works of artists who suffered the hardships of exile or a labor camp, there is a certain sense of anticlimax. There is no drama and suffering in them. The authorities prohibited the depiction of anything related to the actual camp situation. Patriotic paintings, portraits, copies from reproductions, etc., were allowed. There is an eyewitness account by E. M. Antselovich-Zinchenko about painter Aleksandr Grigoriev: “A withered grey man with a transparent face and a quiet voice, who did not live in the barracks, but had a tiny separate room in the back of the Dolinskii office. The artist did not have the right to paint pictures or landscapes. He could only make portraits stripped of any camp attributes, and make reproductions of famous canvases by copying from postcards. I bought postcards during my trips to Karaganda, and often helped Grigoriev prepare the canvas for his paintings. I unstitched sacks, darned the cloth, and then the artist primed it and painted on the canvas.”10

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This withered grey man was once one of the organizers and leaders of the Association of Artists of Revolutionary Russia, as well as the Union of Soviet Artists in the 1920s. We know of some sporadic cases when artists managed to hide their paintings from searches (shmon), and then take the canvases out of the camp. One such artist was Hulot Sooster. A few of his works are in the Memorial museum in Moscow: “Hulot worked as an artist at the camp. He slept during the day, and painted at night. The prisoners commissioned their portraits, and he charged them 5 rubles. But that’s not all. He had hopes of somehow sending home pictures that he secretly painted the zone. It could have landed him in serious trouble, but Hulot couldn’t help it.”—From the recollections of his wife, Lydia Sooster.11

Later, in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Hulot Sooster became a famous artist of the Moscow underground. Drawings and poems of Lev Premirov became a revelation in the late 1980s in Karaganda. He suffered the hardships of labor camps in Ukhta and Balkhash. He then remained in Karaganda, but was not able to become a fulfilled artist. He died in 1978. He reproduced many of the realities of the camps from memory, and these became the leitmotif of his art until his death: “Why am I repeating myself? I simply have to. I propagate. I know that my writings, my drawings, all my works are dying, people in power loathe them, they are also unbearable for people who have no choice but to put up with them.”12

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Figure 8-5.   Lev Premirov. A drawing from the diary.

From Premirov’s diary (collection of the Karaganda Regional Museum of Fine Arts)

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Here is another document of artistic life in Karlag from 8 June 1944:13

Figure 8-6.   Document of artistic life in Karlag from 8 June 1944.

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Copy of document from the personal collection of G. Safarova and L. Pletnikova (Tuzhikova)

It concerns the exhibition-show of the cultural-educational division of the NKVD Gulag administration (KVO-GULAG). It featured six works by the artists Makarova, Menitskaya, Iznar, Artobatskaya, and Matkovskaya. The document lists the names of the paintings, which are representative of what ​​ artists were allowed to portray in the camp. The titles speak for themselves: “Pioneer’s Honour,” “Into Slavery” . . . Exhibitions of this kind took place in the clubs of all camp departments. Camp art studios, or rather, drawing circles, were set up as part of these departments. Dagmara Evsteshina recollects: “My family lived in a settlement in the village of Dolinka (from the Russian “dolya,” which can be translated “fate”) within the Karlag NKVD camp. I remember the club where I attended a drawing circle led by a female artist, a prisoner. An armed convoy escorted her to the class every day. When she had a minute to spare, she drew her daughter, who had died at the age of six. The woman worked on a large oil painting for an exhibition using an approved sketch. She then gave the sketch to me.”14 This labor camp art studio may have been the first in the region, and thus occupies a significant place in the history of the culture of Karaganda.

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“Our Camp Grew into a Busy City . . . ” 167

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There is only incomplete information about the artists mentioned above. Artobatskaya was in charge of the art studio not only in the Dolinka club but also in Spassk. Natalia Iznar, a descendant of the prominent French Jacobin Iznar, was arrested as the relative of a traitor. In the camp, she worked as a theatre designer for the plays Somewhere in Moscow and Lesson of Life. Her letters from Karlag have survived. They contain her thoughts on the years spent in Kazakhstan: “I grew so much in those years, so I rid myself of many cowardly, hysterical traits.”15 Iznar and the artists Alla Vasilyeva and Maria Myslina became close friends in the camp. They shared similar attitudes and thoughts and also had been students of famous masters in the best art universities of Moscow and Leningrad. Maria Myslina was an unpretentious artist, known by few, but at the same time possessing an extraordinary artistic talent. After Karlag, she worked in Cheboksary and Vladimir. She was able to return to Moscow in 1955. In the camp, Myslina “worked at a dyeing factory, in an embroidery workshop, made oil and gouache paintings, and designed amateur performances in collaboration with the artist Lyudmila Pokrovskaya.”16 The biographies of persecuted artists often mention camp performances, which were staged in culture clubs and were very popular in Karlag. Vladimir Sterligov shared one of the most vivid recollections:

Figure 8-7.   Maria Myslina, “Children,” 1960s. From the personal collection of Alexander Balashov

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“We staged A Profitable Position for the ‘civilians.’ By ‘we,’ I mean ‘cons.’ ‘Cons’ are convicts; we were ‘cons,’ not persons. Directors, artists, decorators, etc.—CONS. The artists Petr Sokolov, Vera Ermolaeva, Volodya Dubinin and Vladimir Sterligov represented Moscow, Leningrad, Kiev, Kharkov, Odessa and other cities. “The ladies of the ‘civilians,’ that is, the wives of the guards, threw a banquet!!! . . . the wife of the head of the third department (the most fearful) Klyushin was the most seductive of all the “ladies.” After the meal, she scooped handfuls of candy from the vases and playfully threw them to us. We had no choice but to catch them.”17

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SCENARIO TWO: ORIGINS AND DEVELOPMENT OF FINE ARTS IN THE REGION In the 1930s and 1940s, Karaganda was a small mining town, and institutions in the field of culture and education were only beginning to take shape. There were newly built theatres, cultural clubs, the first cinema house, and the Teacher’s Institute. However, there was no Association of Artists. As is known, this institution regulated the activities of artists and distributed paid jobs. It was difficult for artists to survive without it. There is one line in the catalogue of Vladimir Sterligov saying that he headed the organizing bureau of the Association of Artists of Karaganda in the late 1930s. Yet no traces of this organizing bureau have been found. Until art production studios and a branch of the Association of Artists were set up in Karaganda, exiled artists had no choice but to take any job available to get by. They were mostly design jobs (posters, signs, announcements, honorary boards, schedules of socialist competitions, portraits of top shock workers, interiors of public buildings, etc.) or stage design for local theatres and cultural clubs. This layer of culture has not been comprehensively researched. One might still happen upon a masterpiece by a deported artist in a simple former administration building, factory, or canteen in the outskirts of Karaganda. Hundreds may pass it by daily, completely unaware. The phrase “passed by” is extremely fitting as a description of little-known and forgotten artists. One can write just a few lines about them since the traces of their life in Karaganda have mostly disappeared. They continue to disappear because the attitude to visual art brought here by these artists in the past has now changed. There remain only a few buildings with decorative elements created by the deported artists in Karaganda today. One of them is the railway station built in 1952, a collaboration of a group of local artists consisting of former “convicts.” The sculptural friezes in the waiting rooms are partially preserved.

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These artists have been identified.18 Evgeniya Ovoshchnikova, a sculptor from Kharkiv, a student in the workshop of Golubkina in the 1920s; Leonid Usaitis, the son of an enemy of the people sent to the labor army in the Urals, who then came to Karaganda to join his mother; Anna Shishkova from Moscow, a graduate of the 1905 Memorial Moscow Art College, later illustrated the Kazakh fairy tale Er-Tostik, her work is stored in the Kasteev State Museum of Arts; Nestor Kisilevsky

Figure 8-8.   Photos by N. Rybetskii, 1955.

From the collection of the Karaganda Regional Museum of Fine Arts

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from Lviv; Yurii Gummel’, who later became a famous sculptor in Karaganda, a student of Ovoshchnikova, author of the sketches of the sculptural friezes; Nikolai Baklanov, another local sculptor, and so on. . . . In the 1930–1950s, deported artists found work in the Kazakh Drama Theater (Kazdramteatr) or the Russian Drama Theater. Here is an incomplete list of their names: K.K. Samusiev (from Leningrad), A. A. Soglobov (from Sevastopol), L. Hamburger (from Moscow, a graduate of the Stroganov School), B. Levina-Rosenholtz (from Moscow, a student of R. Falk, who was exiled to Karaganda after imprisonment in Krasnoyarsk Region), A. F. Almazov (graduate of the Moscow Higher Art and Technical Studio [Vkhutemas], student of A. Osmerkin), D. G. Crane (from Kiev). . . .19 “There’s the theatre. This palace of culture is of rare beauty, you couldn’t imagine it. Fairy-tale, in the Kazakh language, will soon be on, and it will be a challenge: snakes, and horses, and giants, and beautiful paintings, and ornamental sculptural work, in a word, all kinds of tasks to complete. . .”—From a letter of Eva Levina-Rosenholtz, 17 October 1954.20

The regional Karaganda archive has filings of the Socialist Karaganda newspaper. There are caricatures signed by “L. Gavrilov” in the issues of the 1950s. It was the creative alias of Leonid Hamburger, who was deported because of his German origins in 1941. Hamburger worked in the newspaper and the theatre and also produced the first exposition at the Museum of Local History.

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TEACHER-ARTISTS AND THEIR ROLE IN THE ESTABLISHMENT OF VISUAL ARTS IN THE REGION Going through life’s hardships, people inevitably ask themselves how to learn to survive, what the meaning is of this turn of events, and what to do next. Some broke down, succumbing to the feeling of hopelessness, and traumatic experience became their constant spiritual companion for the rest of their lives. Others had overcome the terror of the encounter with the authorities and decided to live a quiet life in Karaganda, not “standing out,” and then returned to their home cities and earned their living doing ordinary decorating jobs. These were the majority. Still others like Sterligov, Kropivnitskii, and Sooster continued to experiment. The camp experience became a bifurcation point in their artistic mind and contributed to a change in the creative method. They came back to Moscow and became successful artists and innovators.

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Two people were special to the Kazakh land. Why? They fell in love with the vast Kazakh steppe and its relentless wind, and devoted their lives to Karaganda. They found the meaning of life here in Kazakhstan. They stayed. These are the artists and educators Vladimir Eifert and Pavel Frizen. This is not to underestimate the merits of such artists as Ovoshchnikova, Kropivnitskii and others, who also taught in art studios of Karaganda and Balkhash (the Karaganda sculptor Gummel was a student of Ovoshchnikova). However, it was Vladimir Eifert and Pavel Frizen who played a decisive role in the formation of the region’s art scene.

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VLADIMIR EIFERT Vladimir Eifert was the most significant figure in the history of art in the region, Researchers have published several biographies, so we will indicate only the milestones.21 In the 1920s he was a member of the “Zhar-Tsvet”, society of artists in Moscow, at that time he made friends with Igor Grabar.’ In the 1930s Eifert worked as an expert on antiques in the trade missions of the USSR, director of the Pushkin State Museum of Art in Moscow, scientific secretary and deputy director of the State Tretyakov Gallery, member of Moscow Union of Artists. In 1941, he was deported to Kazakhstan as a person of German origin. From 1941 to 1943, he was in exile at the Pushkin State Farm in Karaganda region. In 1943, he received permission to work in the city, and in 1947, he began teaching at the art studio of the Kirov Mine Club. Vladimir Alexandrovich Eifert was a talented Russian impressionist painter (see Illustrations) and also a brilliant teacher. His painting studio was a school of art of the highest standard. “He nurtured more than a hundred students and organized the first art exhibitions,” wrote art critic N. Ivanina about V. Eifert.22 His students entered the best art institutions in the country, and most of them came back to Kazakhstan and became Karaganda artists. Among them were Giliarii Gilevskii, Nikolai Zhirnov, Ilya Khegai, Alexey Tsoi, Yuri Perepelitsyn, and Viktor Bush. What was Eifert’s method of teaching?23 His students painted from life, studied anatomy and color science, and actively engaged in copying and sketching. It is known that Eifert gave students his own paintings for copying, since there was no art museum in Karaganda. Several exhibitions of the works of artists from his art studio were held in Almaty and Moscow. A newspaper in Karaganda reported that 60 people attended Eifert’s studio; more than 200 paintings were shown at one of the exhibitions, 22 of which were selected for the republic’s exhibition of amateur paintings. Eifert never

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Figure 8-9.   Vladimir Eifert, “The Outskirts of Karaganda,” 1947. From the collection of the Karaganda Regional Museum of Fine Arts

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returned to Moscow. He died in Karaganda in 1960. Some of his paintings are on display in the Karaganda Regional Museum of Fine Arts, but his best works are in the collection of A. Kasteev State Museum of Arts in Almaty. One of Eifert’s students, Viktor Bush (who was from a family of deportees), became his successor as art teacher. After graduating from the Savitsky Art College of Penza in 1964, he returned to Karaganda and taught for 20 years at an evening school for young workers and in the art studio of the Palace of Culture for Miners. Bush’s students later formed the backbone of the artistic profession in Karaganda. PAVEL FRIZEN Pavel Petrovich Frizen was a student of Konstantin Yuon in the 1920s. He completed his art education in Kharkov and Moscow. In 1935, he was arrested and sent to Karlag. After his release, he worked as a graphic designer in the village of Litvinovka. Then he lived in Karaganda and was in charge of the art studio at the Palace of Culture for Miners from 1955 to 1966. According to the memoirs of his contemporaries, people aged from 12 to 60 attended his studio. Many students of Frizen, as well as students of Eifert,

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entered the country’s art universities and schools and then returned to Karaganda. Among his students were Karaganda artists L. Smaglyuk, A. Syrov, Yu. Vol’f, and S. Konurov. A few sketches made in the realistic tradition of the painting of the 1960s are all that remain of his artistic legacy. He died in Karaganda in 1978.24 A reminiscence of a former Karaganda citizen and student of P. Frizen, Stanislav Masterov, who studied in his art studio from 1960 to 1966, emerged on the internet just recently: “If Murat Auezov said Saint Sebastian was his spiritual father, then such a figure for me was Pal Petrovich, who also possessed a powerful intelligence, humanness, and incredible charm and whom

Figure 8-10.   Pavel Frizen. “The Courtyard,” 1948.

From the collection of the Karaganda Regional Museum of Fine Arts

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we adored and idolized. On his 85th birthday, 25 of his students came and made 25 portraits of him. The best time of my life was . . . the art studio in Karaganda!”25

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ONE MORE SCENARIO. . . . This scenario is rather intricate. Here the city of Almaty enters into the story. Here are the dotted outlines of the artist’s life. The well-known Kazakh artist Abram Cherkassky was persecuted and sent to Karlag in 1938. He was freed on 19 August 1940 and returned to Kiev. In 1941, he was evacuated to Kazakhstan, to Aktyubinsk, and from Aktyubinsk transferred to AlmaAta where he became a lecturer at the State Art School. From 1941 to 1960 he was Professor at the N. V. Gogol State Art College in Almaty. Famous Kazakhstani artists such as Sabur Mambeev, Kanafiya Telzhanov, and many others were his students. Vladimir Sterligov’s story is quite similar. Released from Karlag in 1938, he settled in the Moscow suburbs in 1939. Life had other plans, and when World War II began, the artist was called into the Army and sent to the front in 1942. After suffering a severe concussion, he was admitted to a hospital in Alma-Ata, and he then remained in the city until 1945. In Alma-Ata, Sterligov lived an active life: he organized a painting studio at the Association of Artists, taught at an art school, hosted literary broadcasts on the radio, illustrated children’s books, and participated in exhibitions. In November 1945 he returned to Leningrad. Thus, these two artists of Karlag, who safely returned to their cities after their imprisonment, by a twist of fate, found themselves again on Kazakh land. Each of them managed to fulfill his talent as an artist, teacher and organizer, influencing the art scene of the republic to varying degrees. But the Alma-Ata story does not end there. . . . Rustam Khal’fin, a brilliant artist and intellectual, patriarch or, more precisely, the “father” of Kazakhstan’s Contemporary Art, studied in Moscow as a young man. In 1971, he met with Vladimir Sterligov. This acquaintance determined the artist’s future and had an impact on his creative method. Khal’fin’s personality, his rebellious, innovative avant-garde spirit, became one of the sources of the transformation of Kazakhstan’s art in the mid-1990s. It was during this period that contemporary art began its advance in Almaty, opening new artistic horizons. But that is another story. . . .

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AUTHOR’S NOTE The article “Our Camp Grew into a Busy City. . . .” is based on research by the following: • The first employees of the Karaganda Regional Museum of Fine Arts (1980s–1990s): art historian N. Ivanina, art historian L. Pletnikova (Tuzhikova), and art historian G. Safarova, as well as local history expert Yu. Popov and journalist E. B. Kuznetsova. • Joint research of G. M. Safarova and L. N. Pletnikova (early 2000s) as part of a project initiated by Desht-i-Art Center, which resulted in the publication of the reference book When art Fades from Memory, in 2001, with the support of the Soros Foundation Kazakhstan. The history of the search for the traces of repressed artists has not ended. It continues with the new team of the Karaganda Regional Museum of Fine Arts.

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NOTES  1. From V. Sterligov’s memoirs. See S. Turutina, A. Loshenkov, and S. Dyachenko, Avangard, ostanovlennyi na begu: Albom (Leningrad: Avrora, 1989), p. 27.   2.  G. Safarova, “Kogda iskusstvo ukhodilo iz pamyati,” Industrial’naya Karaganda, 15 September 1995.   3.  Compiled on the basis of research conducted by N. I. Ivanina, L. N. Pletnikova (Tuzhikova), and G. M. Safarova.   4.  Turutina, Loshenkov, and Dyachenko, Avangard, ostanovlennyi na begu, pp. 23–26.   5.  Yu. G. Popov, Poslednie dni Genrikha Fogelera: nakhodki kraeveda o predbyvanii izvestnogo khudozhnika v Tsentral’nom Kazakhstane (Saint Petersburg: Vserus. sobor’, 2008), p. 12.   6.  Copies of documents from the personal collection of G. Safarova and L. Pletnikova (Tuzhikova).   7.  Copies of documents from the personal collection of G. Safarova and L. Pletnikova (Tuzhikova).   8.  Copy of document from the personal collection of G. Safarova and L. Pletnikova (Tuzhikova).   9.  From the archive of the Karaganda Regional Museum of Fine Arts. 10.  From the personal archive of E. B. Kuznetsova. 11. L. Sooster. Moi Sooster (Tallinn: Avenarius, 2000), https://www.sakharov center.ru/asfcd/auth/?t=page&num=4760

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12.  From Premirov’s diary (collection of the Karaganda Regional Museum of Fine Arts). 13.  Copy of document from the personal collection of G. Safarova and L. Pletnikova (Tuzhikova). 14.  A letter by D. Evsteshina from the personal archive of E. B. Kuznetsova. 15.  N. Iznar’s correspondence is held in the archive of the Karaganda Regional Museum of Fine Arts. 16.  Tsibirinka, “Sud’by . . . Myslina Maria Vladimirovna” (online publication) https://tsibirinka.livejoumal.com/451675.html, 6 January 2014. 17.  Turutina, Loshenkov, and Dyachenko, Avangard, ostanovlennyi na begu, pp. 23–26. 18.  Based on joint research by G. M. Safarova and L. N. Pletnikova (Tuzhikova). L. N. Pletnikova and G. M. Safarova, Kogda iskusstvo ukhodilo iz pamyati (Karaganda, 2001). 19.  Based on joint research by G. M. Safarova and L. N. Pletnikova (Tuzhikova). 20. M. Valyaeva, Yu. Didenko, E. Levina, and V. Shalabaeva, Eva Pavlovna Levina-Rozengol’ts, 1898–1975: sbornik materialov. Katalog vystavki proizvedenii (State Tretyakov Gallery; State Pushkin Museum. Moscow: Krasnaya Ploshchad’, 1996), p. 31. 21.  This summary draws on research by N. I. Ivanina and L. N. Pletnikova. See L. N. Tuzhikova, Sovetskie khudozhniki v Karagande kontsa 30-kh—nachala 60-kh godov. Katalog vystavki (Karaganda, 1990). 22.  N. I. Ivanina, “Ego pomnyat v muzeyakh Moskvy. A u nas?,” Industrial’naya Karaganda, 31 July 1999. 23.  From an interview with art historian L. Pletnikova (Tuzhikova) who wrote her thesis “Life and art of V. Eifert” (A. M. Gorky Ural State University). The thesis has not been published. 24.  This summary draws on research by N. I. Ivanina and L. N. Pletnikova. See Tuzhikova, Sovetskie khudozhniki. 25.  S. Materov, “Khudozhniki Karlaga, Karagandy” (online publication) https:// www.proza.ru/2018/01/24/1783

BIBLIOGRAPHY Ivanina, N. I. “Ego pomnyat v muzeyakh Moskvy. A u nas?” Industrial’naya Karaganda, 31 July, 1999. Izobrazitel’noe iskusstvo Kazakhstana. Katalog Kazakhskoi gosudarstvennoi khudozhestvennoi gelerei im. T. G. Shevchenko. vyp. 7. Moscow, 1971. Kovtun, E. V. V. Sterligov. Katalog vystavki, stat’i, vospominaniya. The State Russian Museum. St. Petersburg: Museum, 1995. Kropivnitskaya, G. (with N. Kropivnitskaya). Lev Kropivnitskii. Zhizn’ i tvorchestvo. Moscow, 1995. Kuznetsova, E. “Posledneee pribezhishche.” Niva, No. 1 (2001).

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Kuznetsova, E. “Svoi v svoego vsegda popadet (Karlag: po obe storony ‘zapretki’).” In Kust karagana (Istoriko-publitsisticheskii al’manakh “Slovo”, vyp. 3). Almaty: Glagol, 1996. Muzei tvorchestva i byta v GULAGe. Obshchestva “Memorial.” http//www.memo. ru//museum Pletnikova, L. N., and G. M. Safarova. Kogda iskusstvo ukhodilo iz pamyati. Karaganda, 2001. Popov, Yuriy. “Kartiny Vladimira Eiferta.” Shakhterskaya nedelya, December 8, 1990. Popov, Yuriy. Poslednie dni Genrikha Fogelera: nakhodki kraeveda o predbyvanii izvestnogo khudozhnika v Tsentral’nom Kazakhstane. St. Petersburg: Vserus. sobor’, 2008. Safarova, Guldana. “Kogda iskusstvo ukhodilo iz pamyati.” Industrial’naya Karaganda. 15 September, 1995. Sooster, L. Moi Sooster. Tallinn: Avenarius, 2000. https://www.sakharov-center.ru/ asfcd/auth/?t=page&num=4760 Talochkin, L., and I. Alpatova. Drugoe iskusstvo: Moscow 1956–1976 gg. Moscow: SP “Interbuk,” 1991. Teatr GULAGa. Compiled by M. Korallova. Moscow: Memorial, 1995. Turutina, S., A. Loshenkov, and S. Dyachenko. Avangard, ostavlennyi na begu: Al’bom. Leningrad: Aurora, 1989. Tuzhikova, L. Sovetskie khudozhniki v Karagande kontsa 30-kh—nachala 60-kh godov. Katalog vystavki. Karaganda, 1990. Tuzhikova, L. N. “Bez strakha dushu rasterzal.” Industrial’naya Karaganda, September 12, 1989. Tuzhikova, L. N., and G. M. Safarova. “Iskusstvo repressirovannykh khudozhnikovanemtsev v Karagande (konets 30-kh–nachalo 60-kh gg.).” In Kul’tura nemtsev Kazakhstana: istoriya i sovremennost’. Materialy Mezhdunarodnoi nauchnoprakticheskoi konferentsii, Almaty, 9–11 oktyabrya 1998. Almaty, 1999. Valyaeva, M., Yu. Didenko, E. Levina, and V. Shalabaeva. Eva Pavlovna LevinaRozengol’ts, 1898-1975: sbornik materialov. Katalog vystavki proizvedenii. State Tretyakov Gallery; State Pushkin Museum. Moscow: Krasnaya Ploshchad’, 1996. “Velikaya utopiya: Russkii i sovetskii avangard 1915–1932.” Exhibition Catalogue. Moscow: Bentelli, Bern: Galart, 1993.

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Chapter Nine

The Endless Time After Art as a Medium for Understanding Cultural Memory and Trauma in Post-Soviet Kazakhstan Asel Kadyrkhanova

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THE TIME AFTER The news of the collapse of the USSR reached me around the end of my first summer vacation. I was spending the August of 1991 in a sanatorium in the breezy Almaty mountains. Apple trees were already shedding their fruit onto the dry grass. I remember how one day, after a midday rest, an unusually large number of people gathered in the common living room with the only TV in the building. They were watching an extraordinary broadcast: the Soviet Union might have disintegrated. Having seen the news program, people had poured out into the street and were talking a lot. They said we should wait and everything would return to normal. But if not, what would happen then? Confusion, joy, and fear were in the air. . . . The USSR was no more, and the gloomy and anxious decade of the nineties had settled in, waking millions of shocked and perplexed people from their prolonged Soviet sleep and pushing them to face a new reality–the post-Soviet reality. The term “post-Soviet,” initially proposed to refer to the territory and republics of the former Soviet Union, later acquired a predominantly cultural connotation, describing not so much a geographical phenomenon as a cultural one. Like other “post-” concepts, such as postmodernism or post-colonialism, it was understood to convey the meaning not of consistency or continuity but rather complexity.1 The prefix “post-” in the word “post-Soviet” signifies a shift in perspective on the same old condition, rather than an emergence of the new order of things. “Soviet” remains the foundation for post-Soviet, its ineradicable root, and this means that so long as we exist in the post-Soviet timespace, the past continues to dominate the present, in what has penetrated our bones, flows in our blood, and continues to echo in our laughter, screams, 179

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and speeches, as well as the texts which the years of the Soviet regime have dictated to us. Therefore, I am proposing a metaphorical comparison: the time after the USSR is a timeless space of trauma. Drawing on Freud, Cathy Caruth argues that trauma manifests belatedly. Moreover, it is precisely because of its belatedness that the trauma is identified as such, as a “point at which knowing and not knowing intersect,” when a traumatic event attempts to break forth into the individual’s consciousness, to reveal its own reality.2 In other words, due to its extremity, the experienced traumatic event is not immediately available to consciousness and attempts to reconstruct itself afterwards in an individual’s memory through repetitive actions that re-enact the situation. Caruth argues that the survivor does not seek to forget the trauma, as one can forget only that which one remembers but, on the contrary, tries to recall it through repeated re-enactment, in order to capture, in this replay, the troubling memories. Initially, the term “trauma” was used mainly to denote a bodily injury (from the Greek trauma meaning “wound”). From the 20th century on, this word has been increasingly used to signify a psychic wound inflicted by a catastrophic event in an individual’s life, which, unlike a bodily injury, does not heal with time.3 In the life of society, one can describe trauma as a “limit event”—an episode of extreme violence, undermining the foundation of humaneness, which cannot be fully grasped or conveyed. Such an event becomes, on the one hand, a point of no return that divides history into “before” and “after,” and, on the other hand, a recurrent compulsive memory. If personal trauma affects the individual’s psyche, then “collective trauma” defines the underlying mechanisms of social interaction shuttered by the event. One of the key questions the post-generation asks is: does the trauma go away with the death of the survivors? Or else: if parents have been destroyed by their experience of inhumane violence, can this leave a mark on the children? To what extent do post-generations “inherit” the past? How transitory is individual trauma? Although we cannot literally “inherit” the experiences and memories of others, they can still be transmitted to us through behavioral and relationship patterns, as well as by semantic constructs in society—in sum, by that elusive influence that we exert on each other. Moreover, family trauma affects us to a greater extent due to the particular emotional proximity between family members. If we consider that trauma manifests at a later point in time, it primarily affects the children of the survivor who, on the one hand, become secondary victims of the reproduced traumatic experience; on the other, it is for them that this experience begins to take the form of the original event.4 Marianne Hirsch suggests the term postmemory to designate secondgeneration memory. Postmemory is the “hybrid” memory of those who had

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not had personal experience of the event, but because of the emotional proximity to the survivors, have still “inherited” the memory of it. Hirsch considers postmemory a powerful form of memory because “its connection to its object or source is mediated not through recollection but through an imaginative investment and creation [of borrowed recollection].”5 But apart from imagination, post memory is also inherited through appropriation: the second generation identifies itself with the first and carries the burden of its past. If we look at the society of modern Kazakhstan as a society of postmemory, we will see that it resembles a patchwork stitched together from fragments of family stories that contain traces of personal tragedies of mothers, fathers, grandmothers, and grandfathers who had survived the massacres and ethnic deportations, famine, the Gulag, life as a refugee, or repatriation. The trauma and feeling of loss may manifest in many ways if we take into account different trajectories of destinies of the people who found themselves in Kazakhstan. On the one hand, Kazakhstan was a major destination of ethnic deportations in the 1930–50s, but it was also the place from which ethnic Kazakhs were forced to flee during collectivization and kulak dispossessions. The descendants of the survivors, therefore, experience this connection with family memory and its places differently. However, although Stalinist terror affected different groups differently, the unifying basis for their stories is the presence of silences and gaps in family histories, disengagement from the parents’ pre-catastrophe lives, and in general a “heritage” of trauma. The legacy of Stalinism has been discussed more than once, and the “time after” came over and over again: in the 1960s during the Thaw, in the 1980s, and finally in the 1990s, but interestingly, each time this conversation starts, we find ourselves at the beginning of the process of understanding. We can say that life in the post-Soviet space turns the focus onto the past. And although the obsession with memory is generally a global phenomenon of modernity, it seems to me that a person from the former Soviet Union has been exposed to this condition twice over, because their interest in the past is reinforced by existence in an undefined ideological space in the wake of an overwhelming totalitarian past, which has generated mixed feelings of grief and rage, sorrow and nostalgia. The “post-” time reveals itself as a non-linearity in which society continues to exist in a suspended attempt at comprehension. This work is an attempt to examine the possibilities of art in dealing with post-Soviet memory and trauma. I am interested in how art can help recognize the presence of trauma, its traces and symptoms in the society, and how it may facilitate the healing process, if it is even possible. In addition, I will consider scholars’ views on the role of art after totalitarianism, and the ethical and aesthetic challenges posed by the need to work with the “pain of others.” Finally, I will briefly describe my recent works in which I address post-Soviet trauma.

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BETWEEN MOURNING AND VIGILANCE Art can communicate with viewers on a non-verbal level, through indirect expression, which makes it an effective tool for working with such fluid matter as memory. At the same time, art can easily become an instrument of manipulation. Jan Assmann distinguishes so-called “authorized bearers” of memory, such as historians and writers.6 Artists can also be classified as such, as they are involved in the production of cultural memory. A vivid example is official Soviet art, which extensively produced images of the Soviet utopia. This canon has remained influential to this day, being reproduced in new works of art and creating, or re-activating, a sense of nostalgia for the Soviet Union. This nostalgia is of a peculiar kind, as it can affect both older and younger generations. Sometimes young people with no experience of living in the USSR can still feel that they “remember” it, as they have formed their memories through films, songs, photographs, and paintings from the era. Speaking about the role and responsibility of art in addressing post-Soviet memory and trauma in Kazakhstan, I would like to discuss two theories that consider the role of art after atrocity. These are Hirsch’s above-mentioned theory of postmemory, and the concept of concentrationary memories developed by Griselda Pollock and Max Silverman. I would like to view them through the framework of mourning. The question to begin with: why is mourning necessary? Sigmund Freud contrasts mourning with another pathological condition—melancholia. Mourning is a healthy reaction to the loss of something of value: a dear person, freedom, one’s homeland, etc. However, pathological forms of mourning, as well as melancholia, make this process impossible, as the ego identifies itself with the object of loss. To come to terms with the loss, a long and painful process of de-identification/detachment is needed. This is what Freud terms Trauerarbeit—the work of mourning.7 Basing his argument on the Freudian concept of mourning, Alexander Etkind argues that in post-Soviet Russia unmourned losses manifest indirectly, or through what he calls “warped mourning,”8 which can be traced in works of Soviet and post-Soviet art and culture. The same might be applicable to Kazakhstan, where the trauma has never been fully acknowledged, so unmourned losses may make themselves visible in art and culture. However, the post-traumatic condition in Kazakhstan differs from Russia in that the country went through processes of Russianization along with Sovietization, which resulted in gaps and ruptures in the transit of cultural memory. In this case, it is not only de-identification with the Soviet body that is needed, but finding ways to reidentify with the pre-Soviet Kazakh culture­—the traditional nomadic culture that is no longer existent.

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To speak of the ways that art can help collective mourning, I would like to turn to the theory of postmemory again. Postmemory is characterized by one’s over-identification with the traumatic history of one’s parents. In a way, the presence of loss is known to the later generation—they have been growing up sensing the void—the silence, or partial silence. Perhaps they have heard some stories about the traumatic experience of a parent, which gave some shape to the void. Therefore, artists whose work can be characterised as postmemory art tend to work with the sense of absence, as if they strive to indicate the void. Their works activate the feeling of a loss as they give the loss some shape, which, in turn, facilitates mourning. Lisa Saltzman gives examples of two artists who work with absence: Christian Boltanski and Shimon Attie. Boltanski’s installation Missing House consists of a series of plaques, indicating names of the Jewish tenants of the destroyed house at 15/16 Grosse Hamburgerstrasse in Berlin. The plaques assert that viewers should embrace what happened.9 Shimon Attie employs a similar technique, projecting photos of missing Jewish families on to the facades of the houses in which they had lived.10 Attie chose to use photography, a medium made powerful by its indexicality, and which Hirsch views as “material connections to a lost past.”11 “Postmemory artists” often work with their family histories, selfidentifying as carriers of traces of trauma. Because postmemory is shaped, largely, by imagination and appropriation, the traces and indexes in artworks may be as much artifice as they are factual, since it is the very sense of absence that is central to these works. This tendency is, however, not so strong in Kazakh contemporary art, which chooses to address the past in a different way. While some artists explore their own family histories, most works do not rely on the sense of absence. Instead, they seem to try to rework, aesthetically, the troubling present. Griselda Pollock and Max Silverman propose the concept of the concentrationary to think about memory in the post-totalitarian world. They borrow the term “concentrationary” from the work L’Univers concentrationnaire (1946) by French writer and activist David Rousset, survivor of Neuengamme and Buchenwald Nazi concentration camps. The concentrationary universe is not merely a universe where “everything is possible,” but a particular political system that was not contained within concentration camps, but functioned in the society that instrumentalized these camps.12 Pollock proposes the prism of the concentrationary imaginary, in analogy with Lacan’s concept of the Imaginary, one of the three registers of the psyche, to look at the unnoticed traces of concentrationary thinking in contemporary art and culture. Pollock believes that in acknowledging concentrationary thinking,

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it is crucial to recognize its virtual work in imagination and in imaginary forms that anaesthetize us to its presence while shaping our subjectivities in its image. Unhinged from the space and time of its historical origins in Hitler’s camps or Stalin’s Gulags, the concentrationary may have infiltrated its logics into cultural fantasy, becoming a sort of apolitical unconscious [. . .], normalizing narratives of militarized superpowers enslaving or erasing subjected peoples and dispensable others.13

The patterns of Soviet cultural production might remain ingrained in the ways we narrate the past through works of art, cinema, and literature. Therefore, it is necessary to stay vigilant not only to what one consumes, but also what one produces. As a post-Soviet artist, I keep asking myself: is my work ethical? Whose gaze does it adopt or reproduce? Does it invoke empathy for the victim, or does it replicate the violence that was once done to them? How can I not speculate on someone else’s misery when making a work on trauma and pain that I myself have not directly lived through? What message does my work deliver? These are difficult questions. In a way, each artistic act in the time after Gulag becomes a response to Theodor Adorno’s paradoxical question about the barbarism of art after Auschwitz.

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SPACES OF MEMORY One of the studies of collective memory provides this definition: “memory in its basic form is our relationship to the past, the feeling of our existence in time.”14 I would like to expand this definition to include our existence in time and space. From the early theorist of collective memory Maurice Halbwachs who utilized the notions of “external” and “internal” in his conceptualization of individual and social memory, to contemporary researchers speaking about “lieux de memoire” (places of memory) (Pierre Nora) and “horizons of memory” (Jan Assmann), there is a tendency to view memory as a spatial phenomenon. Collective memory is often imagined as something that exists in space, simultaneously shaping and being shaped by society. I would like to propose two spatial regimes—physical space and semiotic space—that can help to think how to decode, and to work with, collective memory as an artist. These spaces are not impermeable, but continuously flow into each other in the human perception of reality. For example, when we try to recall in memory some landscape, we are able to do so because the real experience of the landscape (us seeing it) has been “framed” by our mind into a visual image, which is the process of symbolization. Vice versa, texts or images can take a physical form (e.g. printed, made into objects), they can be located in the actual site, in conditions that would reveal the physical

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reality of these objects. It is impossible to distinguish these spaces clearly, but this is not my objective; I mention them only as a way of illustrating the concept. Physical space can contain the trace of an event—its index. It is a real trace, an imprint of the past in the present, like the inscriptions on the Reichstag. The symbolization of space occurs when the trace is imagined. Our knowledge of an event that happened in a certain place changes our perception of that place. This is why abandoned buildings where something terrible has happened might seem to us more frightening than ordinary deserted buildings. In this case, memory processes, and possesses, the real space, translating it into something symbolic (or imaginary). The semiotic space also retains traces. The simplest example is a photographic image, which is basically an optical cast of the space. Photography refers to an event; it is an index in its purest form. Traces in the textual space are less apparent. The trace in the text is transformed into a non-symbol, a connection between the signifier and signified. This connection is elastic and fragile, as words are not always adequate in expressing the experience, especially a traumatic one that escapes verbalization. One might say, for example, that traumatic memoirs only contain traces of the event translated into language—but they are not accounts of the events. Memory inhabits the text, often being concealed from the reader. So as we read the text, we follow the traces dissolved in it. Regarding post-Soviet memory, it dissipates and concentrates in both types of spaces. Post-generations inherit the physical space: we live in towns and houses built during the Soviet era. They form our bodies like papier mâché casts. Physical space sets the direction for our movements—straight streets, square houses, public parks. This, to an extent, defines our self-perception in the world. At the same time, we inherit semiotic space: not only books, films, songs, and works of art, but also memoirs, testimonies, photographs. The artist’s task might be to read this memory and rewrite it, or create a kind of counter-memory. In this, an artist’s work with collective memory can be likened to a phenomenological notion of existing in the stream that we are trying to grasp. Working with physical space can be by means of photography, drawing, or painting—the media that transfers the cast—a mimetic sign—onto a surface detached from the referent. It can be through direct engagement with the place by means of installation, land art, or sculpture. The above is a possible perspective on working with collective memory. However, different artists approach this topic differently and use different methods. I will examine this theme by discussing works of mine that address different aspects of post-Soviet memory: the installation Machine (2013), the

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mixed media work Windows of Tolerance (2017), and my current project on the memory of the collectivization famine in Kazakhstan.

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*** With reference to the fact that artistic practice often draws on intuitive knowledge, I can point out several methods that I employ in my work. First, I employ embodied practices, which implies physical involvement in the creation of artworks (e.g, performance, hand-drawing, hand-embroidery). Embodied practices refer to the bodily character of trauma that exists as a form of unconscious knowledge. At the same time, handwork is an essential part of my practice, as continuous and repetitive labor allows me to work through, or live through, the pain of others. Second, I tend to work with physical space, which either becomes part of the artwork, as in installations, or is translated into the semiotic, becoming a surface. The installation Machine (2013) was created for the exhibition 1937: Zhoktau—Territory of Memory, dedicated to commemoration of the victims of Stalinist terror in Kazakhstan. In this work, a thousand arrest warrants are connected by red thread to an old mechanical typewriter manufactured in 1929. The red thread helps to materialise the symbolic trace of the event in the space of the present. The interchangeability of the two types of line, trace and thread, has been discussed by Tim Ingold who noted that “threads may be transformed into traces, and traces into threads . . . through [such] transformations . . . surfaces are brought into being, and conversely . . . are dissolved.”15 In my installation, these two types of lines co-exist. The arrest warrants on the walls also act as traces. I copied them from real documents that have lost their indexicality by being disseminated on the internet, erased the surnames of the arrestees but left the signatures of the perpetrators intact, and then printed them on vintage paper. In this way, they re-acquire materiality, the signatures become notable—each is a trace that leads to the real touch, the real person who had once signed the death warrant. The red thread acts both as a sculptural element (it is tangible), and as a graphic element—the eye perceives the thread as a line connecting the action and the consequence—the typewriter and the arrest warrant. The typewriter, in turn, is a faceless machine, a symbol of the smooth mechanism of destruction utilized by a totalitarian system. I wanted to make it stand for the distance and anonymity that makes it easier to commit an act of violence.16 During the process, I strung each thread by hand, walking repetitively back and forth: from the typewriter to the wall and to the typewriter again. This repetitive walking turned into a performance, a form of mourning. As each

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Figure 9-1.   Machine, 2013. Artwork by the author.

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Figure 9-2.   Machine, 2013.

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Artwork by the author.

single thread stood for a nameless victim, it felt like a ritual to repeat their journey. Although I could not do it for each and every victim of the Stalinist annihilation machine, whose number is not thousands but hundreds of thousands, it felt like a ritual that might initiate the process of mourning. In my other work, Windows of Tolerance, I also employ acts of ritualistic repetition. This project started in 2016 with a series of drives through the urban space of Almaty, the former capital of KazSSR. The photography I had done revealed an interesting detail: while the abundance of barred windows throughout the city had always been conspicuous, it was the collection of photographs that revealed to me an impressive variety of ornaments on window grills—the combination of patterns, from strictly geometric to fancifully oriental, welded into solid metal structures. It felt like someone had stitched the city buildings together with a metal thread. I regard the phenomenon of the window grill as a symptomatic manifestation of post-Soviet trauma in the lived space. Although the window grill, this symbol of human co-habitat, is everywhere in the world, in former Soviet countries that have gone through the shock of the collectivization of property in the 1930s, and then the reverse shock of privatization in the 1990s, it acquires an additional meaning. I use it as a metaphor, a powerful tool to aid my attempts at the deconstruction of the inside and outside, private and public, individual and collective.

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I printed photographs of windows on canvas and then stitched on top of them. The embroidery was applied over the images of window grills, so their patterns served as an outline for my needlework. Embroidery in this work is both a mimetic act that reconstructs, or mimics, the work of trauma, and an attempt to heal what cannot be healed. Pollock cites the less widespread etymological meaning of the word “trauma”—to pierce,17 saying that trauma pierces through the shell of consciousness, breaking out of the unconscious repetitively, revealing itself as a persistent symptom. Stitching, a repetitive piercing of the fabric, mimics the symptomatology of trauma. The texture of the canvas is modified by this invasion of an additional thread that follows the contour of the ornament, both altering and accentuating it. I embroider in surgical gloves in order to emphasize my attempt to heal what cannot be healed. On the other hand, stitching is traditionally associated with female handiwork and passivity. Embroidered products are designed to decorate everyday life, so it is overlooked that embroidery is hard work that requires endurance. Prolonged repetitive piercing of dense fabric makes my fingers hurt. With time, the skin hardens and becomes less perceptive to pain. As an artistic gesture, the act of embroidery can help to address the issue of the lowered threshold of sensitivity to recurring violence, which characterizes societies where the perception of violence is normalized. Through the act of embroidery, I seek to point to possible remnants of totalitarian thinking in the present day. In this work, the physical space of the city—buildings and windows—is translated into the digital (photograph) and then transferred into the surface of the fabric. Such translation dissolves the real space, rendering it symbolic. A real phenomenon turns into a visual image, malleable and changeable, and also into a text that I try to read and, at the same time, rewrite. I borrow the Derridean idea of text as embroidery. Jacques Derrida compares reading to embroidering, saying that each act of reading is, at the same time, an act of writing, so the reader becomes the author of the text they read, which is being “rewritten” through their perception. Derrida likens this reading-writing to embroidery, that is, adding a new thread to the already existing intersection of threads—the text(ile).18 Through my gesture of reading-rewriting the space of memory, I seek to create an alternative space in which mourning can possibly take place. In addition, embroidery, as a way of leaving a mark on the surface, is similar to hand writing, which is, in turn, one of the mnemonic techniques. When one learns to handwrite, it is done by writing repetitively, tracing out rows of identical letters in the copy-book. These letters do not add up to words, but remain as chains of identical letters—“a,” “o,” and so on—signs without meaning, whose only purpose is to help one acquire a bodily skill. Similarly,

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in this work, embroidery does not so much serve to give meaning to a cultural phenomenon or find an explanation for it as to become an act of remembrance in itself. In the same way as writing, which one does in order to learn to write, embroidery can teach one to remember, even when the memory has been lost.

Figure 9-3.   Waltz about Spring. Still from video, 2017.

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Artwork by the author.

Documentation of the stitching process is shown in Waltz about Spring. This is a two-channel video juxtaposing two images: the video-image of the actual site and video-documentation of my performance. This double vision technique splits reality into the objective and subjective. Until the stitching begins, both images look identical. A needle that pierces the fabric in the second image breaks the illusion; after that the viewer can observe the two moving images simultaneously. The title Waltz about Spring comes from the title of the song that is played in the background. It is a song from the Soviet musical comedy Nash milii doktor (“Our Dear Doctor”), filmed in an Almaty sanatorium in 1956. In the film, patients are preparing to give a concert for their doctor’s anniversary. A beautiful song performed by Bibigul Tulegenova and written by Yakov Ziskind and Alexander Zatsepin resonates with its epoch. Written a few years after Stalin’s death, during the time known as the Thaw, it tells of the long-awaited arrival of spring—the initial “time after.” Using the song in the background of the video showing a wintry post-Soviet town recontextualizes it, proposing that the “time after” has been prolonged till the present day. Repetition and handiwork are the methods that I use in my ongoing project with the provisional title Scarier than the Earth. The title refers to the rhetorical question that Mikhail Bakhtin asks in his text on laughter in medieval times: What can be scarier than the Earth? Bakhtin argues that for the medieval man, “earth,” or “bottom,” was the place of concentration of fear. This is the fear, above all, of being swallowed by the earth, that is, of death.19 I draw a parallel between the land and the social class that was the closest to it, between landscape (peysage) and peasants (from French pays, meaning

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“land”), or, in the case of Kazakhstan, pastoral nomads, who depended on the earth and on pasture, and who left few traces when they disappeared into the earth during the famine of the 1932–1933. This work is my attempt to touch on remnants of memory about Asharshilik (Kaz: killing by starvation) in Kazakhstan. Working with the memory of this tragic event is difficult, first of all, due to temporal distance. The famine happened eighty years ago; therefore, hardly any witnesses are left to tell the story. As this was a forbidden topic in the USSR, famine was not discussed. Survivors of the disastrous hunger that took the lives of 1.5 million could not talk openly about their experiences. The unshared memories lived and died with their owners and, therefore, today there is a vast layer of unspoken memories which have almost been erased from social memory. The second difficulty that I face is the problem of the communication of traumatic experiences that defy comprehension. The inexpressibility of trauma has been discussed by many authors, including Primo Levi, who writes on the survivor’s guilt and inability to testify to the extreme experience of suffering—the truth of the camp as it was for those who “have not returned”—the “drowned.”20 For me, as a postgeneration artist, it is difficult to approach the existing accounts of survivors and witnesses, because I face another aspect of inexpressibility: in order to understand someone else’s fear and pain that they described in their texts, I must try to feel it. But it is unclear how I can do so, as I have not lived through—and I do not wish to live through—anything like that, and because my attempts to study the traumatic history expose me to the disturbing knowledge that I must try to allow myself to appropriate, even though this is traumatizing in itself. In my work, I study the memoirs of witnesses from Valerii Mikhailov’s book The Chronicle of Great Zhut. In the 1980s, Mikhailov conducted the important work of collecting information about collectivization in Kazakhstan. He cites eyewitness accounts, of which there are few, but which give an idea of the nature and scale of the tragedy. My goal was to animate these memories so that through the process of drawing and animation I could understand the work of memory and trauma, as well as the limits of its expression within the text. Hand-drawing is my attempt to touch upon someone else’s pain, but also my endeavor to contain it. I montaged my animated drawings into an animation-film that blends the barrier between the real and imaginary in reworking the memory of the famine in a qualitatively different form of text. Drawing and animating helps me understand the processes of memory from different angles: memory as a duty (we must remember) and memory as a message that is transmitted across generations and cultures (we cannot help but know). Similarly to needlework, animation-making involves multiple repetitions of the same action, which is similar to mnemonic techniques

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Figure 9-4.   Scarier than the Earth. A still from the video. Paper, coal, animation, 2018.

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Illustration by the author.

of re-writing the same text. The same scene or character is drawn and erased repetitively. With each drawing and each erasure, a trace left on the paper becomes more and more salient. In the beginning, the image can be erased easily, but with more applications, the charcoal soaks into the fabric of the paper; it becomes the surface itself. Along with images drawn from my own memory and imagination, I work with photographs found on the internet. The Kazakh famine has been hardly documented on film; there are only a few photographs, which help to reconstruct the bigger picture, but which cannot serve to represent the event in its entirety. In particular, I am interested in the image of Filipp Goloshchekin, who is remembered as the principal architect of the collectivization policy in Kazakhstan. He is a participant in the crime who has a face, unlike hundreds of thousands of faceless dehumanized victims. The image of Goloshchekin allows me to address once again the question of personal responsibility in mass atrocities. The work on this project has also revealed to me the desensitization of the modern eye to images of cruelty and suffering. In order to create an image, I first make a drawing from a photograph, for example, of a child whose body had been disfigured by lethal hunger. It is a demanding process that exhausts me emotionally, so that I cannot work for a few days after I finish the drawing. Copying from a picture presupposes a different mode of attention, because it obliges one to maintain close contact with the original image. This is a prolonged and extremely attentive act of seeing that can reveal details

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Figure 9-5.   Scarier than the Earth. Paper, coal, animation, 2018. A still from the video.

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Illustration by the author.

that a casual viewer’s eyes can neglect. This prolonged gaze slows down my attention, so I focus on the withered limbs, the swollen belly, and the serious animal gaze of the dying child. My own body responds with some sort of pain—my own belly, arms, and legs tremble. I do not know, however, what my drawing would convey. Would it convey my emotional response? Or would it be perceived as less affective by the viewer, because it has lost the indexical value of the photograph? Our consciousness rejects images of violence and pain. A natural reaction is to turn away, not to look. When confronted with something abjective (for example, a dead body), one experiences a conflict of subjectivity, when the bodily real enters, through the abject, into the conscious mind. Such an encounter is traumatic; it urges us to look the other way rather than empathize. And this presents the problem of representation of victims of violence, because instead of sympathizing with them, the viewer turns away from the traumatizing image. This leads up to the aesthetic problem of representation of Asharshilik— the Kazakh famine. There is dissonance between the inside and outside of hunger. Between the iconography of hunger that has been so widespread, so overused in mass media, that these images begin to be perceived as ordinary to the desensitized modern eye; and the real experience of lethal hunger, the individual experience of losing the ability to consume food, losing human appearance in the struggle to simply survive. The ethical dilemma of depicting a suffering body, a person in a humiliated, dehumanized state, brings us back to

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Adorno’s paradox of art after Auschwitz. How can the artist and the spectator avoid becoming barbarians revelling in the suffering of others, when by depicting victims in their dehumanized state, we expose them, re-enacting the violence and thus joining their executioners? That is why I aim at metaphorical and allegorical expression. Through allegory, implication, editing, and sound, I seek to create a work that would convey the horror of what happened without speculating on the images of the victims. In my search for metaphors, I focus on textual memories. For example, Mikhailov begins his book with the memories of poet Gafu Kairbekov. This is his childhood memory. The three-year-old Gafu is sleeping in a cart, while his family, escaping from hunger, is on the way from the aul to the neighboring town. The boy wakes up, sees the full moon, stares at it, then turns around and looks at the road lined with piles of frozen corpses. He doesn’t fully understand what they are. In his memory, he compares dead bodies to trees, saying that these were frozen trunks with twisted branches.21 This image is imprinted in his—and our—memory. We have not witnessed frozen dead bodies, but have seen piles of felled trees, so we can imagine what he meant. Trees are a poetic metaphor that I extract from the text and work with further. The bodies of people who, according to the memories of eyewitnesses, covered the vast expanses of the steppe, lay along the roads filled with people fleeing the famine. The bodies became part of the landscape for a short time and then sank into the ground without leaving a trace. To sum up, working with other people’s memories, I look deep into events that I did not directly witness. I try to recreate visually what exists, mostly, in a textual form. It inevitably involves a reconstruction of the event, similar to a cinematic reconstruction. However, I do not seek to reconstruct facts, but rather try to create a sense of both the changeability of memory and its persistence. I strive to work as honestly as possible with the memories of other people who have found the strength to share them, so that their memories can become part of the cultural memory. Handwork and ritualistic repetition over a prolonged period of time are the methods that I use to work with transgenerational memory of the Stalinist terror in Kazakhstan. It will be some time before the analysis can be given on how effective these methods are and what the ultimate results of my work on hunger will be. One thing is clear to me now: the creative process generates a kind of understanding I would not have achieved through purely theoretical research. *** In this text, I have discussed the peculiarity of post-Soviet memory that is characterized by the unconscious latent trauma of the Stalinist terror.

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Comprehensive study of this memory in Kazakhstan is just beginning and should be interdisciplinary, involving historians and jurists, as well as artists. Art may act as a mediator of collective memory and as a tool to create counter-memory, which is partly the case in contemporary Kazakh art, as it consciously or unconsciously recycles the remnants of Soviet imagery in the postmodernist collage of codes and symbols. Nevertheless, the tragic heritage of the Stalinist terror is tangible. It requires the work of individual artists who would accept the ethical and aesthetic challenges of interpretation and reworking of this legacy, which presumes thoughtful handling of both the historical and the personal.

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NOTES   1.  Marianne Hirsch offers a detailed model for the concept of post-memory with reference to the metaphor of Rosalind Morris of “post-concepts” as Post-it stickers for concepts. See Hirsch, The Generation of Postmemory: Writing and Visual Culture After the Holocaust (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012), p. 5.  2. C. Caruth, Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative and History (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), pp. 3–4.  3. This is discussed in G. Pollock, After-Affects/After-Images: Trauma and Aesthetic Transformation in the Virtual Feminist Museum (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013), p. 1.   4.  See D. LaCapra, “Trauma, History, Memory, Identity: What remains?,” History and Theory, vol. 55, no. 3 (2016), pp. 375–400.  5.  M. Hirsch, “Past Lives: Postmemories in Exile,” Poetics Today, vol. 17, no. 4 (1996), p. 420. Adapting Hirsch’s theory, Alexander Etkind, a researcher of the postSoviet memory, proposes the version of the third generation instead of the second. He believes that children inherit the trauma of their parents, while grandchildren inherit the work of mourning and, through mourning, a possibility of healing. See A. Etkind, Warped Mourning. Stories of the Undead in the Land of the Unburied (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2013).  6. J. Assmann, “Collective memory and Cultural Identity,” in J. K. Olick, V. Vinitzky-Seroussi and D. Levy (eds.), The Collective Memory Reader (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), p. 213.   7.  See: S. Freud, “Mourning and Melancholia,” in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, xiv: On the History of the PsychoAnalytic Movement, Papers on Metapsychology and Other Works (1914–1916), ed. by J. Strachey (London: Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psychoanalysis, 1957), pp. 237–258 (here, p. 243).  8. Etkind, Warped Mourning, p. 17.   9.  L. Saltzman, “What remains?,” in Saltzman, Making Memory Matter: Strategies of Remembrance in Contemporary Art (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006). 10.  Hirsch, “Past Lives,” p. 441.

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11.  Ibid., p. 429. 12.  G. Pollock and M. Silvermann, Concentrationary Memories: Tracing Totalitarian Violence in Popular Culture (London: I. B. Tauris, 2015), p. 7. 13.  Ibid., p. 6. 14.  Olick et al. (eds.), Collective Memory Reader, р. 3. 15.  T. Ingold, Lines: A Brief History (London: Routledge, 2007), p. 54. 16.  Rebecca Littman considers people to be generally averse to violence, so that the average person tries to avoid violent acts when they involve immediate interaction. Anonymity and detachment from the object of violence render such acts theoretical, as they do not involve harming a person directly. See R. Littman and E. L. Paluck, “Cycles of Violence: Understanding Individual Participation in Collective Violence,” Advances in Political Psychology, vol. 36, no. 1 (2015), p. 85. 17. Pollock, After-Affects/After-Images. 18.  J. Derrida, “Plato’s Pharmacy” [1968], in Derrida, Dissemination, trans. by Barbara Anderson (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), p. 63. 19. M. M. Bakhtin, Tvorchestvo Fransua Rable i narodnaya kul’tura srednevekov’ya i Renessansa (Moscow: Khudozhestvennaya literatura, 1965). 20.  P. Levi, “The Grey Zone,” in Levi, The Drowned and the Saved, trans. by Raymond Rosenthal (London: Abacus, 1989). 21.  V. Mikhailov, Khronika velikogo dzhuta (Alma-Ata: Zhalyn, 1996), p. 4.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY Adorno, Theodor. “Commitment.” [1962]. PAJ (Baltimore, Md.), 3, no. 3 (1979): 58–67. Agamben, Giorgio. Homo Sacer III. Remnants of Auschwitz: The Witness and the Archive. New York: Zone, 1999. Apel, Dora. “The Artist as Secondary Witness.” In Memory Effects: The Holocaust and the Art of Secondary Witnessing. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2002. Arendt, Hannah. Origins of Totalitarianism. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1966. Assmann, Aleida. “Canon and Archive.” In The Collective Memory Reader. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. Assmann, Aleida. Dlinnaya ten’ proshlogo: memorial’naya kul’tura i istoricheskaya politika [The Long Shadow of The Past: Cultures of Memory and the Politics of History]. Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2006. Assmann, Jan. “Collective Memory and Cultural Identity.” In The Collective Memory Reader. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. Assmann, Jan. Kul’turnaya pamyat’: Pis’mo, pamyat’ o proshlom i politicheskaya identichnost’ v velikikh kul’turakh drevnosti [Cultural Memory: Writing, Memory and Political Identity in Early Civilisations]. Moscow: Yazyki Slavyanskoi kul’tury, 2004.

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Auge, Marc. Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity. London: Verso, 1995. Bakthin, Mikhail. Tvorchestvo Fransua Rable i narodnaya kul’tura Srednevekov’ya i Renessansa [Francois Rabelais and Folk Culture in Medieval Ages and Renaissance], accessed at http://www.bim-bad.ru/docs/bakhtin_rablai.pdf Bakhtin, Mikhail. Estetika slovesnogo tvorchestva [The Aesthetics of Verbal Art], edited by S. G. Bocharov, 2nd edition, Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1986. Caruth, Cathy. Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative and History. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996. Debord, Guy. Theory of the Dérive. 1958. http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/2.derive. htm. Accessed 26 May 2017. Derrida, Jacques. “Plato’s Pharmacy.” In Dissemination. London: The Athlone Press Ltd., 1981. Etkind, Alexander. Warped Mourning. Stories of the Undead in the Land of the Unburied. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2013. Ettinger, Bracha L. Bracha Lichtenberg Ettinger: Artworking, 1985–1999. Brussels: Palais des Beaux-Arts, Ghent: Ludion, 2000. Freud, Sigmund. “Mourning and Melancholia.” In The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, vol. XIV (1914–1916): On the History of the Psycho-Analytic Movement, Papers on Metapsychology and Other Works, edited by J. Strachey. London: The Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psycho-analysis, 1957. Gibbons, Joan. Contemporary Art and Memory: Images of Recollection and Remembrance. London: I. B. Tauris, 2007. Gigliotti, Simone. “Unspeakable Pasts as Limit Events: The Holocaust, Genocide, and the Stolen Generations.” Australian Journal of Politics and History 49, no. 2 (2003): 164–181. Halbwachs, Maurice. Sotsialnye ramki pamyati [Social Frameworks of Memory]. Translated by C. N. Zenkin. Moscow: Novoe Izdatel’stvo, 2007. Hartman, Geoffrey H. “On Traumatic Knowledge and Literary Studies.” New Literary History 26, no. 3 (1995): 537–563. Hirsch, Marianne. The Generation of Postmemory: Writing and Visual Culture After the Holocaust. New York: Columbia University Press, 2012. Hirsch, Marianne. “Past Lives: Postmemories in Exile.” Poetics Today 17, no. 4 (1996): 659–686. Huyssen, Andreas. Twilight Memories: Marking Time in a Culture of Amnesia. New York, London: Routledge, 1995. Ingold, Tim. Lines: A Brief History. London, New York: Routledge, 2007. Kobylin, I. I. “Vozvyshennyi ob’ekt biopolitiki (Dz. Agamben o probleme svidetel’stva)” [The Sublime object of biopolitics. G. Agamben on the Problem of Witnessing]. Vestnik Nizhegorodskogo universiteta im. N. I. Lobachevskogo. Seria Sotsial’nye nauki, No. 3 (23) (2011), pp. 118-123. Kristeva, Julia. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. New York: Columbia University Press, 1982.

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LaCapra, Dominick. “Trauma, History, Memory, Identity: What Remains?” History and Theory 55, no. 3 (2016): 375–400. Laub, Dori. “An Event Without a Witness: Truth, Testimony and Survival.” In Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History, edited by Shoshana Felman and Dori Laub. London: Routledge, 1992. Levi, Primo. The Grey Zone: The Drowned and the Saved. Translated by Raymond Rosenthal. London: Abacus, 1989. Littman, Rebecca, and Elizabeth Levy Paluck. “Cycles of Violence: Understanding Individual Participation in Collective Violence.” Advances in Political Psychology 36, no. 1 (2015): 79–99. Mikhailov, Valery. Khronika velikogo dzhuta [The Chronicle of the Great Zhut]. Almaty: Zhalin, 1996. Nora, Pierre. “Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Memoire.” Representations, Special Issue: Memory and Counter-Memory, no. 26 (1989): 7–24. Olick, Jeffrey K., Vered Vinitzky-Seroussi, and Daniel Levy, eds. The Collective Memory Reader. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. Pianciola, Niccolo. “The Collectivization Famine in Kazakhstan, 1931–1933.” Harvard Ukrainian Studies, 25, no. 3/4 (2001): 237–251. Pollock, Griselda. After-Affects/After-Images: Trauma and Aesthetic Transformation in the Virtual Feminist Museum. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013. Pollock, Griselda. “Art/Trauma/Representation.” Parallax 15, no. 1 (2009): 40–54. Pollock, Griselda. “Death in the Image: The Responsibility of Aesthetics in Night and Fog (1955) and Kapo (1959).” In Concentrationary Cinema: Aesthetics as Political Resistance in Alain Resnais’s Night and Fog (1955), edited by Griselda Pollock and Max Silvermann. New York: Berghahn, 2011. Pollock, Griselda. “Photographing Atrocity: Becoming Iconic?” In Picturing Atrocity: Photography in Crisis, edited by Geoffrey Batchen, Mick Gidley, Nancy K. Miller, and Jay Prosser. London: Reaktion Books Ltd, 2012. Pollock, Griselda, and Max Silverman. Concentrationary Memories: Totalitarian Terror and Cultural Resistance. London: I. B. Tauris, 2014. Pollock, Griselda, and Max Silverman. Concentrationary Memories: Tracing Totalitarian Violence in Popular Culture. London: I. B. Tauris, 2015. Saltzman, Lisa. Making Memory Matter: Strategies of Remembrance in Contemporary Art. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006. Spiegelman, Art. Maus: A Survivor’s Tale. London: Penguin, 2003.

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About the Editors and Contributors

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ABOUT THE EDITORS Zhulduzbek Abylkhozhin, who was born in 1951 in Alma-Ata, graduated from the History department of the Abai Kazakh Pedagogical Institute (now KazNPU) in 1976. That same year, he began working at the Chokan Valikhanov Institute of History, Ethnography, and Archaeology of the Academy of Sciences of the Kazakh SSR. He progressed through the ranks: from Senior Assistant to Chief Research Officer of the Institute. In 1983, he defended his doctoral (kandidat) thesis, and in 1991 he became Doctor of Historical Sciences. Since 1985, he has been teaching the course “History of Kazakhstan” in leading universities of Almaty. He is the author or co-author of 12 scientific monographs and he participated in the writing of several sections of the five-volume academic publication History of Kazakhstan, as well as various schoolbooks and study guides. He has authored over 150 academic articles, including publications in foreign journals (Sweden, Italy, France, USA, Japan, Germany, Turkey, and Russia). He has been a guest lecturer at universities in France, England, and Japan. Area of interests: the history of Kazakhstan of the twentieth century. Mikhail Akulov, who was born in Kazakhstan, defended his doctoral thesis in 2013 at Harvard University. That year, he returned to Almaty to assume teaching, scholarly, and administrative responsibilities at the Kazakh-British Technical University. Working first as chair of the Department of History and Social Science and then as dean of the General Education Faculty, he focused primarily on bringing the liberal arts curriculum in line with current educational practice. In autumn 2018, he joined the Department of History, Philosophy, and Religious studies at Nazarbayev University, where he 199

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teaches courses on Eurasia’s complex history during the “Short twentieth century” (1914–1991). Alexandra Tsay is an independent research fellow in cultural studies, curator, and graduate of Warwick University, UK. Her area of interest is contemporary art and its ability to reflect and help comprehend events and phenomena of public life. In 2017–2018, Alexandra participated in the Central Asia-Azerbaijan Fellowship Program at The George Washington University and the Global Dialogue Fellowship at The New School for Social Research, and has taken a curatorial residency at The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Seoul. She has programmed festivals in Almaty and has curated exhibitions around themes of political and socio-cultural transformations in post-Soviet Central Asia and collective memory of Stalinist repressions. Alexandra is the founder of the Open Mind project.

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ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS Marinika Babanazarova was born in 1955 into the family of a prominent scientist and public figure of Uzbekistan, academician Marat Nurmukhamedov (1930–1986). In 1977, she graduated with honours from the English department of the Faculty of Romance and Germanic Philology at Tashkent University. From 1977 to 1983, she taught at Nukus University and then moved to work at the Museum of Arts of Karakalpakstan at the invitation of the director, Igor Savitsky (1915–1984). Savitsky was a friend of the Nurmukhamedov family and was an influence in Marinika’s cultural development. Whilst working in the museum, Babanazarova studied Art History at the Tashkent Theatre and Art Institute, and in 1990, she defended her thesis, dedicated to her mentor and entitled “Igor Savitsky: Artist, Collector, and Museum Founder.” Later, she used this as the basis for a biography of him, published in four languages. After Savitsky’s death, Babanazarova was director of the museum for 31 years (1984–2015). Under her leadership, the collection increased by a third, growing to almost 100,000 items. The modern museum complex of three buildings was built. The museum received international recognition and became the fourth most popular tourist destination in Uzbekistan after Bukhara, Samarkand, and Khiva. Marinika Babanazarova organized over 20 international exhibitions, with published catalogues. She authored several publications about the museum and its collection, which have been published in different countries. She partook in creating numerous TV programs and worked on scripts for documentary films by Uzbek, Russian, and foreign producers. She has received prestigious awards in the field of literature and art from the Republic of Uzbekistan and the French Republic.

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About the Editors and Contributors 201

Asel Kadyrkhanova is a visual artist and PhD Candidate at the University of Leeds, UK. She works across a variety of media, such as painting, installation, and moving image. Through her artistic practice, she explores questions of cultural memory, trauma, and collective and individual identity in posttotalitarian societies. She completed a B.A. and M.A. in Painting at the Kazakh National Academy of Arts in Almaty, Kazakhstan (2001–2007), and an M.A Fine art at Newcastle University, UK (2009–2011) with the support of the Bolashaq International scholarship of the President of Kazakhstan. Her doctoral research is supported by a Leeds Anniversary Research Scholarship; it focuses on the capacity of art to serve as a medium of memory in addressing Soviet trauma in modern-day Kazakhstan. Asel Kadyrkhanova’s work has been shown in solo and group exhibitions such as: CITATION, Leeds (2019); Postnomadic mind, Wapping Project, London (2018); Suns and Neons above Kazakhstan, Yarat Centre for Contemporary Art, Baku (2017); Internal memory: Not Enough space?, Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow (2017); The Eighth River, Ile Alatau National Park (2015). In 2018, Kadyrkhanova was artist-in-residence at California College of the Arts (USA) as part of the CECArtslink fellowship program.

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Catriona Kelly is Professor of Russian at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of the British Academy. She studies Russian cultural history, in particular Russian modernism and the recent history of Leningrad/St. Petersburg. She has authored several books on Russian culture, among them Comrade Pavlik: The Rise and Fall of a Soviet Boy Hero. She has translated into English poems by Marina Tsvetaeva, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Bella Akhmadulina, Elena Schwartz, and others. Ekaterina Kuznetsova is a journalist, researcher of the history of Karlag, and author of books about Karlag NKVD: Karlag: po obe storony kolyuchki; Karlag: mecheniye odnoi metoi; and Krovavyi tridtsat sedmoi: Repressirovanniy Kazakhstan, published in Kazakhstan, as well as in Russia and the United States. Guldana Safarova is an art historian, museologist, and curator. Education: Philological faculty of Buketov KarGu, Higher School of Art Studies at the Russian Academy of Arts, Culture and Tourism (Moscow), Bharatya Vidya Bhavan Institute, Delhi, India. From 1990 to 1992, researcher at the Karaganda Museum of Fine Arts; from 1994 to 2001, Deputy Director of the Karaganda Museum of Fine Arts. From 2001 to 2012, organized projects at the Desht-i-Art Center (together with Larisa Pletnikova).

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Curator of art shows, museum expositions, and exhibition projects dedicated to Karlag, as well as the Contemporary Art educational and exhibition projects for young artists. All of the projects were created in collaboration with Larisa Pletnikova. Curator of the Central Asian project MUSEUMSTAN, 2006–2008 and 2010–2012 (together with Pletnikova). The project aimed to promote innovative museum practices. She is the author of studies and publications on the cultural policy and art of Kazakhstan, as well as on museum practice.

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Zauresh Saktaganova, Doctor of Historical Sciences, is Professor in the Department of Archaeology, Ethnology, and Domestic History, and Director of the Center for Ethno-Cultural and Historical-Anthropological Research at Buketov Karaganda State University; She graduated from the History and Pedagogy Faculty of Petropavlovsk Pedagogical Institute and completed her post-graduate studies at Al-Farabi Kazakh State University. In 2004 she defended her doctoral thesis in the field 07.00.02–Domestic History (History of the Republic of Kazakhstan). Her scientific interests concern the problems of the modern (twentieth century) history of Kazakhstan. She has authored more than 300 scientific publications (in total more than 300 printer’s sheets), including 10 monographs and more than 20 textbooks and teaching aids. Her monographs include “Economic modernization of Kazakhstan, 1946–1970” (2017), “History of urban daily life in Central Kazakhstan, 1946–1991” (2017), “Women of Central Kazakhstan during the Great Patriotic War, 1941–1945” (2016), and others. Yuriy Serebriansky is a Kazakhstani author of Polish origin. He writes prose and poetry. He is also a literary translator and has taught in the creative writing workshop at the Almaty Open Literary School (AOLS) and International Writing Program (IWP) projects. Since 2006, his work has appeared in Kazakh, Russian, and American literary journals. He was awarded the Russkaya Premia literary award in 2010 and 2014 for the short prose category. In 2017, his Kazakhstani Fairy Tales was recognized as the best bilingual book for a young audience at the Silk Road Book Fair. He participated in the LIPKI Young Writers’ Forum in 2006 and 2008, was Editor-in-Chief of Esquire Kazakhstan from 2016 to 2018, and holds the Fashion TV Award. Currently Editor-in-Chief of Kazakhstani Polish diaspora magazine Ałmatyński Kurier Polonijny, he also has served as an editor of the prose section of the Literratura Russian literary magazine since 2019. He was a participant in the International Writers’ Program (IWP) writers’ residency in Iowa City, Iowa in 2017, and has been a member of Kazakh PEN since 2017. His prose and poetry have been translated into Kazakh, Polish, English, Arabic, Chinese, Spanish, French, and German. He is the author of six volumes of prose and poetry.

Stalinism in Kazakhstan : History, Memory, and Representation, edited by Zhulduzbek Abylkhozhin, et al., Lexington Books,