A Kazakh Teacher's Story by Mukhamet Shayakhmetov

'synopsis' may belong to another edition of this title. Told with dignity and detachment, this central Asian Wild Swans awakens the reader to the scale of suffering of millions of Kazakhs, and also astonishes and inspires as a most singular survivor's tale. Steppe: The Memoir of a Kazakh Nomad Under Stalin by Mukhamet Shayakhmetov.

In the following years the family traveled thousands of miles across Kazakhstan by foot, surviving on the charity of relatives. Our book club is a way for teachers and other participants to learn through. Seven-year-old Shayakhmetov and his mother and sisters were left to fend for themselves after his father was branded a 'kulak' (well-off peasant and thus class enemy), stripped of his possessions, and sent to a prison camp where he died. Their ancient traditions and economy depended on the breeding and herding of stock across the vast steppes of central Asia, and their independent, nomadic way of life was anathema to the Soviets. Nominally Muslim, the Kazakhs and their culture owed as much to shamanism and paganism as they did to Islam.

Worse, Mukhamet's father was imprisoned as a kulak or 'class enemy', leaving his family stripped of their livestock and possessions and ostracised from society.This is a first-hand account of the genocide of the Kazakh nomads in the 1920s and 30s. Mukhamet Shayakhmetov - Mukhamet Shayakhmetov was seven years old when the Soviet government's drive to collectivise farming and herding in all forms, including nomadic, reached the vast steppes of Russia's central Asian empire, and specifically east Kazakhstan.īy forcing individual farmers to give up their sheep and cattleĪnd join agricultural 'brigades', collectivisation brought to an end to theĮxistence Mukhamet's family and people had led since time immemorial. Simon Sebag-Montefiore, author of ' Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar' and recipient of the English PEN Writers in Translation Award. 'This is an unusual and special book - the fascinating, tragic, forgotten story of the Kazakh nomads of Central Asia under Stalin's brutal rule'.

It encompasses the horrors of political persecution and famine in the 1930s, and culminates in the author's first hand account of the Battle of Stalingrad and his long trek home through freezing winter conditions after being wounded and discharged from the Red Army. The Silent Steppe is an enthralling story of a family living through one of the most traumatic periods of Soviet history, as seen through the eyes of a young boy growing up in a family of Kazakh nomads.

A Kazakh Teacher's Story by Mukhamet Shayakhmetov