А Review of Robert Kindler, Stalinskie kochevniki: vlast i golod v Kazakhstane [Stalin’s Nomads: Power and Famine in Kazakhstan]. Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2017, 382 pp. Transl. from Robert Kindler, Stalins Nomaden: Herrschaft und Hunger in Kasachstan. Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2014, 381 SS. (Studien zur Gewaltgeschichte des 20. Jahrhunderts); F. L. Sinitsyn, Sovetskoe gosudarstvo i kochevniki: istoriya, politika, naselenie, 1917–1991 [Soviet State and Nomads: History, Politics, Population, 1917–1991]. Moscow: Tsentrpoligraf, 2019, 317 pp. (Noveyshie issledovaniya po istorii Rossii [The Latest Research on Russian History], no. 19); Sarah Cameron, Golodnaya step: golod, nasilie i sozdanie Sovetskogo Kazakhstana. Moscow: NLO, 2020, 360 pp. Transl. from Sarah Cameron, The Hungry Steppe: Famine, Violence, and the Making of Soviet Kazakhstan. Ithaca; London: Cornell University Press, 2018, 294 pp.
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.31250/1815-8870-2021-17-50-248-258Keywords:
nomadism, Kazakhs, famine, emigration, collectivization, sedentarization, nation-buildingAbstract
The review examines three new monographs that focus on the sedentarization and collectivization of nomad Kazakhs at the turn of the 1930s. The American historian Sarah Cameron, the German historian Robert Kindler, and the Russian historian Fyodor Sinitsyn describe the main specifics of nomadism in the steppes of Central Asia, study the premises of the Soviet policy aimed at its liquidation, and elaborate on the consequences of that policy, including armed resistance, mass hunger, and mass flight. All three authors conclude that this policy was implemented most radically, involved active violence, and was attended by huge economic and human losses. However, the scholars refuse to classify those losses as ethnic genocide. The review discusses the structure, key arguments, and conclusions of the monographs. It also provides a comparative analysis of varying descriptions and explanations of the tragedy in Kazakhstan, particularly focusing on who was primarily responsible for the events, the role of the ideology and pragmatic objectives in the policy of sedentarization and collectivization, and the link between that policy and Soviet nation-building.
