Discovery Recommends:The Silent Steppe of a Kazakh Nomad under Stalin
Mukhamet Shayakmetov
«This an unusual and special book-the fascinating, tragic forgotten story of the Kazakh nomads of Central Asia under Stalin's brutal role» RECOMMENDED BY PEN - This book has been selected to receive financial assistance from English PENs Writers in Translation programme supported by Bloomberg
This vivid, personal account tells of the devastating consequences for ordinary people of totalitarianism and dictatorship This book chronicles the extremes of human behavior in adversity-from the government officials feasting on delicacies while those around them starve, to the peasants who share their last scraps of food with a young visitor, as collectivisation is ruthlessly imposed.
This is a much needed, moving, first hand account of the fate of the Kazakhs in the collectivisation terror of the 1930s - even у Communist standarts one of the most humanly, economically, ecologically and culturally disastrous policies, inflicted on a helpless population; and one which is still not otherwise adequately recorded in the West.» ROBERT CONQUEST
Author
Mukhamet Shayakmetov was seven
years old when the Soviet government started its drive to collectivise farming and herding in all forms. Collectivisation brought an end to the existence Mukhamets family and people had led. Worse, Mukhamets father was imprisoned as a kulak or «class enemy» leaving his family stripped of their livestock and possessions and ostracised from society.


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