Edda Schlager, a journalist, photographer, and “natural feminist,” has spent the last 17 years researching and capturing key moments in Central Asia’s modern history: the demolition of old buildings and the erection of new ones; the rise of a new patriarchy and women’s resilience; the modernization of public spheres and the recovery of the past. She thinks that today, the Central Asian countries have an opportunity to become independent of Russia for a second time, asserting their own uniqueness and betting on their globalized future.

Please tell us about your first impressions from your work and travels in Central Asia.

I myself am from Germany, and I have been living in Central Asia since 2005, specifically in Kazakhstan. During this time, I would say that I have become an Almaty girl — I have fallen in love with this city.

About my impressions—at first, I was a little intimidated because my Russian was not good enough for conversation and people in Kazakhstan did not speak much English. So I conducted my first projects with trepidation, and my first years were quite tough. But one thing I can say for sure is that people in Kazakhstan and in Central Asia in general are very open and interested in foreigners. More than that, in almost all the countries of Central Asia I have observed one big plus that initially really surprised me: people are very respectful of Germans. I am, of course, aware that there are so-called “local Germans”—the descendants of those Germans whom Stalin deported from the Volga or Crimea to Kazakhstan in the early 1940s. I studied them and their history at length. I am not one of those Germans, but still, locals’ respect for those Germans and their achievements was and is huge, and for me it has been an unexpected bonus.

Interview with

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Edda Schlager

Edda Schlager has been a freelance Central Asia correspondent based in Almaty since 2005. Her reporting area includes Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. She is the only German-speaking journalist permanently residing in the region and has been working mainly for German public radio broadcaster Deutschlandradio, but also as an author for newspapers and magazines in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, as a photographer and TV producer, e.g. for CNBC, ARTE, ARD. Her reports provide background information on current events in the region and place them in the context of international events. In 2017 she has published the “Architectural Guide Dushanbe” (in German, by DOM publishers), and currently, she is writing the “Architectural Guide Almaty” which will be published in English, as well by DOM publishers.

 https://eddaschlager.com/

I certainly do not want to romanticize anything about Central Asia—absolutely not. I have seen a lot of things here that are not romantic at all.

What was the first place you visited? Who were the first people you photographed? How have the places, people, and region changed since then?

I cannot say that I have visited all regions of Central Asia, but I have seen a lot. I have been to Turkmenistan—Ashgabat, Mary, Avaza; Uzbekistan—Tashkent, Nukus, Muynak, the Aral Sea, the Fergana Valley, Samarkand, Khiva, Bukhara; Kyrgyzstan—Bishkek, around Yssyk-Kul, Osh. I have been to many regions of Kazakhstan, except for the north; I like Altai very much. In Tajikistan, I have been to Dushanbe—I wrote a book about it—as well as Khorog, Murghab, Zeravshan Valley, the Pamirs, and others. There are places I haven’t been to yet, but I plan to.

Kazakhstan has changed a lot since I started living here: the infrastructure, the standard of living. To give just a minor example: internet connections have improved in many cities—and are now far better than in many places in Germany, I have to admit.

Among the region’s problems, I can mention the problem with freedom of speech for journalists and activists. This applies to all Central Asian countries. For instance, in Kyrgyzstan I am very concerned about the recent wave of repression in which more than 20 activists and politicians were arrested. It is almost impossible for foreign journalists to report from Turkmenistan, never mind their local colleagues. In Tajikistan, too, freedom of speech has deteriorated recently.

You are the author of the book Architectural Guide Dushanbe, published in 2017 by DOM publishers. What did you find interesting about Dushanbe? What are your thoughts on the demolition of some of its Soviet-era monuments?

The experience of doing research, taking photographs, going into some small neighborhoods in Dushanbe where foreigners’ feet had never stepped, talking to strangers who looked out the window and then invited me to have tea during Ramadan, was an amazing one that is impossible to forget. People were happy and surprised to have foreigners coming to them to write a book about beautiful Dushanbe.

Regarding historical buildings, it is very sad because many of those about which I wrote in my book no longer exist: they have been demolished, torn down. Usually, the way cities are urbanized is that other buildings are built and developed around an historic city center, and in this way cities are expanded. But what has happened in Dushanbe is an internationally rare case where they demolished everything that was old and then started to build something new in its place. In the process, they destroyed the history of the city, the work of the former architects, the culture of the times when they built the buildings. In my opinion, this is a very bad example of modern city development.

I am currently working on a second Architectural Guide, this time about Almaty. There have been cases in Almaty, too, where they wanted to—and eventually did—demolish historic buildings, and a civil movement has developed around that. There are now civic initiatives such as ArchCode and Urban Forum Kazakhstan that raise grassroots awareness among residents and improve their understanding of architecture. They also try to influence urban policy, and it seems to me that they have been successful in some respects. It gives me hope that Almaty is a little bit better in this regard than Dushanbe.

I would also like to add that there are similar tendencies toward civil movements in Tashkent that are—through architecture, urbanization, and the environment in which people live—developing people’s consciousness.

The transformation of the region has been enormous and we are particularly interested in women. Some think there has been progress; some clearly see regression in women’s lives and rights. What do you think? Do you have any memorable women’s stories to share?

I would say that I am a “natural feminist,” emancipated. I grew up in the 1970s and 1980s in the former GDR. Both of my parents were civil engineers, and already in those years they had established equal rights at home themselves; they were on the same level of development and partnership. For me and my sister, very naturally, there was never a question of not being able to become one or another kind of professional. My parents were always supportive and we had emancipation at home. For me, that was the norm. Only many years later did I realize that this did not apply to all women—not in Germany, and especially not in Central Asian countries.

There are so many examples of women I have met here in Central Asia whose fate moves me to this day. For example, I met a woman in Tajikistan who was infected with HIV. The story is that male migrant workers go to Russia, return once a year to Tajikistan, impregnate their wives, and infect them with HIV. Because of taboos and social rules in society, women are always ultimately to blame for such situations, which of course is completely wrong. This woman I met—I think she has probably died, because the last time we met she was very sick. She was quite open about everything, although such things are still taboo in Tajikistan. As far as I know, the HIV issue is still immanent in Tajikistan and women, of course, cannot get out of this situation on their own.

As a woman from a Western country, at that time, I did not understand why such women did not talk to their husbands or even leave them. Only later did I come to understand that neither men nor women are protected by a social system that meets their needs.

So, sitting in Western countries, where more or less fair social systems and state-financed safety nets are built, with the experience and worldview of someone from the West, it is almost impossible to understand these women and men—and it’s even less possible and permissible to condemn them. I have already said that in my opinion, the state does not provide its citizens with a social system that guarantees them a secure life. This is, in my view, one of the reasons why the birth rate in Tajikistan is very high. Women give birth to a lot of children, and for families this is like a substitute for social insurance. Because when these children grow up, some of them will die or get sick, some of them will leave the country as migrant workers, and (if the parents are lucky) some of them will stay near the parents to take care of them. Education in Tajikistan is very weak and the state tells people “to have a lot of children,” and women end up taking on all the consequences and responsibility.

There is another example from Kyrgyzstan. Bride kidnapping in Kyrgyzstan is a very famous topic in Western countries and I have written on this topic as well. I worked with a woman who had a women’s rights NGO, and she introduced me to a girl of about 19-20 years who had, at that moment, been kidnapped literally two days earlier. This girl gave me an interview and I learned about the shock she had gone through. Her husband let her give the interview; she spoke in a very quiet voice. When girls are kidnapped for marriage, they have to sit in the man’s (groom’s) house for three days, where neighbors and relatives will come and look at the girl and check whether she is normal, healthy, what her hair and eyes look like, whether she will be able to give birth to healthy children.

I took one picture of the house, and there was a blue cloth pinned up to isolate this “bride” girl so that anyone who entered the house would not immediately see her. I asked her what relationship she had with the guy who kidnapped her, and she said they went to the same university but she barely knew him. Then I interviewed that guy, and he said with a smirk that he and his friends were sitting around drinking beer, “and one of the friends said they all got married, and that I should get married too.”

And the girl was wearing a red dress and had a very sad face, which I still remember. It would be interesting to know how she lives now, because her parents told her that she has to stay there because if she goes back home, no one else will ever marry her. Maybe he raped her afterwards, as usually happens in such situations, which is scary to think about.

In general, violence against women in Central Asian countries is, in my opinion, often the only way men can show their power, because there are no jobs, no money, and they have nothing to offer a woman. Therefore, men feel humiliated and direct their anger toward women, to whom they are at least physically superior. All of this is ultimately a reflection of weak institutions of social and economic development; physical repression is perceived as a tool for governing both the family and the country.

But I don’t want to talk about women only as victims. There are wonderful examples of women in Central Asia who have done extraordinary things. Let’s speak about Kyrgyzsatellite, a project by Kyrgyz girls who want to launch a satellite into space—brave, educated, young women who are moving something forward.

Kazakhstan also has a fledgling women-created project called Aul.Inspired. They go to auls (villages) and teach children English and social skills at the same time. In parallel, the creators of the project work with schools and do volunteer work. They recently organized an event in Chilik in which 150 children participated. I think that we should talk about such examples, too.

In general, do you see Central Asia bidding farewell to all that is Soviet? How is the process of nation-building going? While the region self-reflects, are there any signs that the countries of Central Asia might be willing to work together on various issues, building a common market and maybe even foreign policy?

When I first came to the region back in 2005, I knew little and thought it was one region, and we still talk about these countries as one region, but we have to differentiate more. At that time, all the countries of Central Asia were very busy finding and developing their own identities.

If in the Soviet Union they were forced to be unified and depended economically on each other—for example, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Kazakhstan produced oil, gas, and coal and gave it to Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan in exchange for water—then during the years of independence they have moved away from each other and started to build their own economies. Uzbekistan had a closed economy under Islam Karimov, while Nursultan Nazarbayev in Kazakhstan, on the contrary, decided to invite foreign investors. Kazakhstan used to be economically less developed than Uzbekistan: I remember that after the collapse of the Soviet Union, even the German government said that in cooperating with this region, Uzbekistan would be the most important country. But because of the economic and political isolation under Karimov and the Uzbek authorities, the country’s economy did not develop much, and over time Kazakhstan’s economy began to take the lead in Central Asia. I remember Islam Karimov often accused Tajikistan of not wanting to give enough water, when in fact Uzbekistan wasted water resources due to poor maintenance of irrigation systems. When Shavkat Mirziyoyev came to power, he took a different, more regional approach. I think he succeeded, as the neighboring countries began to understand that Mirziyoyev’s proposal—more cooperation at the regional level—was not a bad option.

But in the last 2 years the situation has worsened again. There was Bloody January in Kazakhstan, there is the ongoing conflict on the Kyrgyz-Tajik border, there is repression in the GBAO in the Pamirs in Tajikistan, there were the protests in Karakalpakstan. All this is unfolding against the background of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, which has been having a major impact on the countries of Central Asia.

Now there is a big discussion about decolonization. So far, this is mostly on the level of scientists and activists—I think the discussion has not yet reached ordinary people—but probably this will change soon. In Kazakhstan, for example, the question of language is particularly relevant: many people, including in my milieu, are discussing in what language they should communicate, and they often raise the importance of the Kazakh language.

This is why I think that huge changes are to be expected in the region as a whole, especially since we do not know what will happen in Russia. But the impact of these processes on Central Asia is simply colossal. In addition, there are other big players—like China, Turkey, Iran, and Pakistan—that are looking to stake their claim in Central Asia and should not be forgotten.

You have worked across the entire Central Asian region. What do you think it shares across its countries and what divides it?

I see the countries of Central Asia as a bridge between the European world and the Middle East/the Arab world. Central Asia shares a common past with Russia, and despite Russia’s colonial policy toward these countries, we cannot undo history; we can only begin to interpret it differently. But each Central Asian country has its own culture, traditions, values, and its own way of becoming independent after the collapse of the Soviet Union—and now, we can maybe even say that there is an opportunity to become independent from Russia for a second time. So each country is definitely unique.

Central Asia is a place that tourists generally find attractive and safe. What else can we do to let the world know about the region? What do people abroad get wrong about Central Asia?

I think we should talk more about modern Central Asia—about modern entrepreneurs and the young people who live here and are trying to push their countries forward, about how advanced and cool these people are. This is something we in the West often do not acknowledge.

I see resilience among the people in this region. For example, during the pandemic, the authorities helped very little, but people developed their own personal protection systems and volunteers worked very hard. A separate important topic is the geopolitical role of this region, as I already mentioned. In Europe, little is known about this, and that is why I am here to report on it.

All photos by
Edda Schlager

The lives of women in Central Asia before Russian colonization are often portrayed in a miserable light. European travelers did not leave much visual evidence about local women. Women in large cities (Bukhara, Samarkand, and others) did not dare to be photographed with bare faces and were often confined to female quarters. While there are some black and white photos of the Kazakh or Kyrgyz people of that era, which show women dressed in white dresses and elaborate headdresses, there is rarely a smile on their faces. Instead, they look strict and preoccupied. This is no wonder, as they are most often depicted actively engaged in manual labor, busily carrying huge bales and saddling horses.

Author

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Askar Alimzhanov

Askar Alimzhanov graduated from the journalism department of the Kazakh State University named after S. Kirov. From 1986, he worked as a correspondent for the daily republican newspaper Leninskaya Smena. He also served as the editor-in-chief of the news service of the TV company “Tan.” In 1991, he worked as a reporter for the daily Cape Cod Times in Hyannis, Massachusetts. For a series of articles about Kazakhstan in the foreign press, he received an award from the Union of Journalists of Kazakhstan.

From 1997, he worked as editor-in-chief of the news service of the Khabar agency. Later, he held various positions in the administration of the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan, the Mazhilis of the Parliament of the Republic of Kazakhstan, the Embassy of Kazakhstan in the Russian Federation, the TV and radio corporation “Kazakhstan,” the Interstate TV and radio company “MIR,” and private analytical centers. He is currently the director of the Central State Archive of Film, Photo Documents, and Sound Recording of the Ministry of Culture and Sports of the Republic of Kazakhstan.

This virtual gallery is made possible by the generous collection provided by the Central State Archive of Film, Photo Documents, and Sound Recording of the Ministry of Culture and Sports of the Republic of Kazakhstan.

The lives of urban women and the inhabitants of the steppes and mountains were equally difficult. Yet the turn of the twentieth century brought many unexpected changes. In Kazakhstan, specialized women’s educational institutions emerged at the end of the nineteenth century. Thus began emancipation in the steppe. And already at the very beginning of the twentieth century, the first women’s rallies began to take place. In Semipalatinsk on March 18, 1907, the first women’s rally in Kazakhstan advocated for the charter of the emerging society of working women. The full equality of the rights of men and women was officially established by the Bolsheviks at the First All-Russian Congress of Women Workers, held on November 19, 1918. As they wrote then: “Soviet Kazakhstan joined the large-scale campaign to liberate the women of the East.” By 1924, universal suffrage had already been fully implemented in Kazakhstan. This is only four years later than women in the US got the right to vote—and much earlier than in Switzerland, where women won the right to vote in federal elections only in 1971.

The Bolsheviks envisaged mass labor involved in industry—and women were included in this vision. An increasing number of educational institutions began to appear, allowing women to master many professions that had previously been closed to them. Nevertheless, before the start of World War II, most women were employed in agriculture. This was due to the traditional way of life of the Kazakhs and undeveloped industry in Tzarist era.

Starting in 1941, when war broke out between Germany and the Soviet Union, industrial production in Kazakhstan picked up sharply, as the largest plants and factories were evacuated from the western part of the USSR to Central Asia. Workers were needed to man these new factories, and with most men going to the front, women had to take on these jobs.

The role of women during this period cannot be overestimated. Many Kazakh women fought and became heroes! Alia Moldagulova, Manshuk Mametova, Khiuaz Dospanov, and hundreds, maybe thousands, of women like them showed unparalleled courage in the face of a brutal war. Those women who lifted industry and agriculture on their shoulders in these most difficult years can likewise be called heroes. People were malnourished, but they sent everything to the front.

After the end of the Second World War, women’s lives did not improve. The happy photographs of that time—provided by the Central State Archive of Cinema, Photo Documents, and Sound Recordings of the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Kazakhstan—are mostly staged. This is in line with the general tenor of the times. Only what was carefully censored was published. Photos of happy workers and their families occupied the central pages of newspapers and magazines. The mass media had to convince people that the country was on the path to prosperity and, of course, personal happiness! People needed to believe that the new world was in the making, all at the hands of the Communists, Komsomol members, and, as they wrote then, representatives of the intelligentsia.

In their parallel reality, women faced many problems. Between the 1950s and the 1970s, food supply was uneven. If in rural areas women could get by thanks to subsistence farming, the situation was more difficult for women living in cities, who faced queues for groceries, a shortage of high-quality consumer goods… The women of that era raised several children while working full-time in Soviet institutions and even advancing science! According to the 1989 census, the average Kazakh woman had five children. Thus, between 1959 and 1989, the population of Kazakhstan increased from 9.2 million people to 16.4 million. (As of 2021, Kazakhstan’s women had an average of three children, and in 2022, the population stands at 19.2 million.)

All these figures, of course, indicate that the well-being of the population has been slowly but steadily increasing—and the photos speak for themselves. As the lambs become larger, working women acquire new uniforms. Brand new tractors appear, as we see in the photo of Hero of Socialist Labor Kamshat Donenbayeva. And finally, in the 1970s, fashionistas arrive! How else can one understand the appearance of photographs of the beautiful Bibigul Tulegenova and Gulfairuz Ismailova looking at the Polish fashion magazine Uroda (“Beauty” in Polish)?

Of course, over the time that photography has existed, the lives and work of women in Central Asia have undergone dramatic changes. Today, the lives of women in Kazakhstan are not much different from those of women in any other country. They face all the same problems: love, family, health, children, work…

All photos by
the Central State Archive of Film, Photo Documents, and Sound Recording of the Ministry of Culture and Sports of the Republic of Kazakhstan.

The Central State Archive of Film, Photo Documents, and Sound Recording of the Republic of Kazakhstan

– http://kfdz.kz/

was set up almost 80 years ago but has recently expanded to include new collections available in digital form, allowing it to reach wider audiences. How does it strive to present the visual and audial history of Kazakhstan? Askar Alimzhanov, director of the Archive, explains in this interview.

Interview with

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Askar Alimzhanov

Askar Alimzhanov graduated from the journalism department of the Kazakh State University named after S. Kirov. From 1986, he worked as a correspondent for the daily republican newspaper Leninskaya Smena. He also served as the editor-in-chief of the news service of the TV company “Tan.” In 1991, he worked as a reporter for the daily Cape Cod Times in Hyannis, Massachusetts. For a series of articles about Kazakhstan in the foreign press, he received an award from the Union of Journalists of Kazakhstan.

From 1997, he worked as editor-in-chief of the news service of the Khabar agency. Later, he held various positions in the administration of the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan, the Mazhilis of the Parliament of the Republic of Kazakhstan, the Embassy of Kazakhstan in the Russian Federation, the TV and radio corporation “Kazakhstan,” the Interstate TV and radio company “MIR,” and private analytical centers. He is currently the director of the Central State Archive of Film, Photo Documents, and Sound Recording of the Ministry of Culture and Sports of the Republic of Kazakhstan.

Please tell us about the archive itself. What period does it cover, how was it assembled, what categories does it have? What is the access to the materials?

The Central State Archive of Film, Photo Documents, and Sound Recording of the Republic of Kazakhstan has the objective of ensuring the acquisition, storage, and use of film, photo, video, and audio documents that form part of the National Archival Fund of our country. Simply put, we collect, store, process, and restore everything that is of value in photo, film, video, and audio media. Despite the scale of its tasks, the archive is small and compact.

The archive was founded during the most difficult years of war. In 1943, by governmental decree, an archive of film and photo documents of the Kazakh SSR was established. Perhaps one of the drivers of the creation of such an institution was the evacuation of the leading figures of cinema to Alma-Ata. If you recall, that was when the TsOKS (the central united film studio of the country) was created. Initially, the archive was run by the NKVD (People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs: the Soviet police and secret police) archive department. And since that time, every documentary film about Kazakhstan that appeared onscreen, every picture published on the pages of newspapers and magazines, photo albums, collections, radio broadcasts or events of historical significance captured on magnetic film—all of them, in theory, should have found a worthy place on the shelves of the archive. But you know, this is an ideal. In real life, not all documents ended up on archival shelves, for different reasons: this remained in private collections, that was not transferred to the archive in time—and there’s a human element to this as well. Nevertheless, a huge heritage of audiovisual material on the history of Kazakhstan has been preserved. In terms of the number of film, photo, and sound documents, our archive ranks first in Central Asia.

In the first days of the archive, the first 30 direct positives were received here. And today there are about 300,000 units of storage of audiovisual documents that are of particular importance for the history of the country.

Next year the archive will celebrate the 80^th anniversary of its establishment. So it brings together more than a century of illustrative history of the country in motion and sound! And all this wealth is in the public domain. You can register on our website and explore the entire catalog. Without leaving your home, you can place an order and receive all the materials you are interested in.

The history and culture of Kazakhstan is often represented in the museums and archives of other countries. Are there any plans for cooperation with foreign archives—especially in Central Asia and Russia? How challenging is this?

Yes, you are absolutely right, many interesting and important audiovisual documents are located abroad.

There are many reasons for that. The fact that it was established in what once was a single large country and the fact that, it must be admitted, the art of photography, audio, and cinema came to us much later than, for example, Europe. Kazakhstan is currently implementing a comprehensive program, Archive 2025, that was developed as the result of a well-known article by the country’s first president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, on the problems of studying Kazakhstan’s heritage. The program was approved by governmental decree in 2019 and essentially funds the technical re-equipment of the archive industry.

The same program also provides for research in the archives of foreign countries of documents that are important for the history of the country. Our employees travel to the largest archives in Russia, where, for obvious reasons, there are many interesting documents. We also plan trips to other countries.

This year, our archive has been replenished with a new collection of digital copies of phonograms made on wax cylinders, which are stored in the Berlin Phonogram Archive of the Museum of Ethnology and Visual Anthropology. This is the earliest audio recording of Kazakh folk music, made in 1905 by the German ethnographer R. Karutz on the territory of Western Kazakhstan. The history of this collection is fascinating and reflects almost all significant events of the twentieth century.

Already this year, the archive has signed cooperation agreements with a number of major film, photo, and audio archives, so our plans are ambitious!

Tell us more about the work to reconstruct photos and other materials.

Of course. This is one of our main tasks. Technology has advanced tremendously. When I was a student, we studied video recordings on VCR devices that weighed over 800 kg. (I know, because we dragged the machine to the third floor!) Then there were VHS, SVHS, Betacam, DV, DVCPRO…and now a simple mobile phone is sufficient to take 4K pictures. Our archive preserves the entire documentary film stock of the Kazakhfilm and Kazakhtelefilm film studios. Film stock can become moldy over time. Before digitizing such material, it must be cleaned. Here we have some of the finest technologies—I won’t go into detail. And all this is restored, restored, and even digitized for longer and more reliable storage. Our specialists (without false pathos, I can say this is the pride of the industry) can convert the original film material into 4K format, which is most in demand today. By the way, almost 40% of the total volume of stored documents have already been digitized. And this work continues.

Occasionally, public activists and private collectors may also help collect photographs, private photos, postcards, and other materials. One such project is https://ca-photoarchives.net/. How do you feel about such collaborations?

Most of our archive is made up of private collections. We are open to any collaborations because people should see this heritage, study and use it not only for scientific purposes. Moreover, we encourage people to bring us interesting documents of historical or artistic value. We will digitize the source materials and return the originals, if necessary. It is usually impossible to store rare photos or videos or audio materials at the right temperature and in special conditions at home, while our archive could ensure that your grandchildren and great-grandchildren will have the opportunity to see it!

In general, do you agree that there is a lack of materials on the visual history of Kazakhstan? Do you think that these should be available to the public (sometimes it is difficult to find even a photograph of the decoration of a yurt in the public domain)? Could the opening of archives contribute to the popularization of Kazakh culture at home and abroad?

To be honest, I don’t quite agree that there is a lack of materials in the visual history. It seems to me that the term “lack” is not quite applicable. The visual story is what it is. What is preserved is preserved. Another thing: maybe it is not how we would like to be represented in the virtual space. Here we can agree. But many collections of major archives have been digitized and are already in the public domain—including ours. You just need to go to the website and go through the registration procedure to start your journey into the past. So the archives in our country are open and accessible. It seems to me that the issue is a lack of demand. A real serious story is yet to be uncovered. So far, so-called folk history and myth-making are popular. Claims that everyone descended from the Kazakhs, that our history has been carefully rewritten and hidden, are very common … And it would be fine if it were only on social networks, but we even publish books that claim to prove that Genghis Khan, Attila, Tomiris, and even the Golden Man were purebred Kazakhs. It’s funny, of course, but what will it lead to? I really hope that these are the growing pains of our society.

What interesting collections have you discovered in the archive? What topics do you think could be explored more with visual materials?

To be honest, I started my job quite recently. But before my appointment, I had many projects where I had to conduct research in the archives of different countries. And then we were surprised that few people are genuinely interested in these collections. Take, for example, a yurt donated by the Kazakhs to the then-future Emperor Nicholas during his famous journey from Japan. It has never been exhibited in Kazakhstan! Or take the aforementioned wax rollers from Berlin. After all, no one was interested in them. The ethnographic records of Akhmet Zhubanov, which he made in his student years, are still not in demand by anyone. And there are many such examples.

As for the interesting collections of the archive, have you ever heard the voice of Mukhtar Auezov? His 1965 radio speech dedicated to the freedom-loving people of Ukraine and Taras Shevchenko is simply amazing in its relevance! Have you ever seen the youthful joint photograph of famous Kazakh writers A. Tazhibaev and B. Momyshuly? The arrival of the first steam locomotive in Alma-Ata is a spectacle in no way inferior to the Lumiere brothers’ famous documentary “Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat Station”! So there are many topics for research. But all this requires knowledge and serious preparation.

Kazakh culture and Central Asian culture (which often overlap) are very visually impressive. What else can we do to promote them to the rest of the world?

I agree that a unique culture has developed in Central Asia. But to be honest, I am a supporter of a slightly different approach. There is no need to insist that the world recognize our culture. Our culture is self-sufficient. And it will become interesting to the rest of the world only when we ourselves become immersed in it. After all, culture is not only concerts and exhibitions abroad, not only the publication of expensive volumes and expensive shows. Culture is, first of all, a process of self-knowledge. As soon as we rethink ourselves in culture, realize ourselves as part of a vast and diverse world, stop being isolated in our cocoon, then we will become interesting to others. We often try to make the world look at us, but in my opinion, we must first learn to look at the world with our own eyes!

While working in the archives of the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, I came across an interesting document. It was a list of the tools of Tarifbai Tillyabayev, a zargar (jeweler) from Samarkand who worked in the mid-20^th century. The tools were purchased in November 1948 and compiled by the legendary ethnographer Olga Sukhareva. According to the list, the tools—among which there were such instruments as otashgirak (tongs), gaichi zargari (jeweler scissors), and tustak (tweezers)—belonged to the Samarkand Museum. I wrote a request to the museum, although frankly speaking, I had no expectation of finding anything; after all, a lot of time had passed since then. Imagine, then, my surprise when I found out that the instruments mentioned on the list are still part of the collection of the Samarkand Museum. It was even more surprising to learn that contemporary jewelers from Central Asia use tools almost identical to those that were in use almost a century ago. Moreover, they create silver ornaments similar to those that existed in the 19th century, crafting them on the basis of photographs or rare surviving masterpieces. This process weaves the rich traditions of the past into the everyday present.

Author

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By Snejana Atanova

Snezhana Atanova is a research fellow at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Science (Moscow), associated researcher at the French Institute for Central Asian Studies (IFEAC). She researches material culture and cultural heritage of Central Asia with reference to anthropology, archaeology, and history.

Past

In Turkestan, jewelry production was mainly concentrated in the cities of Andijan, Bukhara, Karshi, Kokand, Samarkand, Tashkent, Shakhrisyabz, Urgench, and Khiva. There were also specialized kishlaks of zargars, such as Zargarlik near Jizzak (Fahretdinova 1983, 71). In the Transcaspian area, jewelers were present not only in the city of Merv, but also in every large Turkmen village. The best works of embossing, filigree, openwork carving, cloisonné, and turquoise-encrusting were made in Bukhara. Kokand was famous for its niello and enamels. The peculiarity of the jewelry art of Samarkand masters consists in the use of the openwork filigree technique. Urgench, Merv, and Khiva are known for massive cast decorations, such as the bracelets without closures (bilesik) that adorned Turkmen women. Among the ranks of jewelers were not only Tajiks, Turkmens, and Uzbeks, but also Jewish masters, Persians, Lyuli Gypsies, Indians, and Dagestani-Laks. It is believed that the latter brought a new jewelry technique, niello, to Turkestan.

From the second half of the 19th century, not only new techniques, but also new shapes began to appear. Local jewelers mastered the production of so-called European jewelry. Accompanied by the penetration of European/Russian fabrics, accessories, clothing styles, and even food, this was an inevitable process that intensified with the annexation of Turkestan to the Russian Empire, when Russian settlers—among whom were masters of applied crafts and representatives of Russian trading houses and factories—arrived in the region. The manufacture of “European jewelry” indicates, among other things, that there was a fashion for European items in Turkestan in the 19th century, just as there was a fashion for Central Asian ones in Russia and for Oriental ones more broadly in European countries. In the eyes of the inhabitants of the Orient, Europe was as much enshrouded in a veil of exoticism as the Orient was for attendees at elegant balls in Paris in the 18th century (see Photos 1 and 2).

Most of the jewelry produced in Turkestan was made of silver, although gold was also widely used in Bukhara from the end of the 19th century. During that period, bars of gold and silver were brought from Russia; silver was also imported from China. But bullion of precious metals was a luxury; more often, the basis was an alloy of Chinese, Russian, and Persian coins. Among other precious materials, carnelian and coral were imported from India and Europe, turquoise from Khorasan, and pearls mainly from Europe, while glass beads were both local and European in origin.

To become a master jeweler in Turkestan in the 19th century, one had to either be born into a jeweler’s family or apprentice to a recognized jeweler. The second route was especially difficult. Jewelers were not interested in transferring their professional secrets to outsiders, so the apprenticeship period could be long. The apprentice was not taught, but only allowed to look closely at what the teacher was doing; the latter usually deliberately kept the secrets of craftsmanship to themselves. After about 4-5 years, a master had a well-trained apprentice who worked for his teacher for another 5-10 years for free before being initiated into the profession. Among Bukhara zargars, initiation was obligatory: it was considered that the absence of his teacher’s blessing would lead to failure in an apprentice’s work (Sukhareva 1962: 52).

Present

In contemporary Central Asia, the art of jewelry is far from forgotten. Across the region, jewelers create beautiful works of art that call to mind the masterpieces produced in the century before last. Here are some notable jewelers from the region.

Suhrob Akhrarov (Samarkand, Uzbekistan) trained as a jeweler at the artisanal lyceum in Tashkent. He is 52 years old, but he enrolled in the lyceum when he was 24, which means that he has been in the profession for almost 30 years. He has vast experience and has mastered many jewelry techniques. Suhrob specializes in making jewelry on the model of antique items and is also engaged in the restoration of such items. For example, they recently brought him an antique earring and the master is working on making a similar one (see Photo 3). Another example of his craft is a magnificent tilla-kosh (headpiece) (see Photo 4) made by the jeweler on an old model. This type of jewelry is still popular in Samarkand, where it is bought for brides. This zargar buys his tools in a specialized store and makes kolyb (stamps) himself on the model of antique ones (see Photo 5). Customers bring him their own gold, silver, and precious stones; the jeweler also remelts “ancient coins, spoons, and everything he comes across.” The jeweler makes glass beads himself.

Shavkat Khatamov (Bukhara, Uzbekistan) did not grow up in a family of jewelers; his father was a carpenter. When he was 25, he went to learn jewelry-making from a Daghestani Lak ethnic craftsman who subsequently emigrated to Israel. Shavkat learned a lot from his teacher and himself later taught his son jewelry craftsmanship. Among the jewelry created by Shavkat are modern “European” styles as well as those that reproduce the jewelry of the late 19th and early 20th centuries from old photographs (see Photos 6 and 7). “I’m passionate about recreating old masterpieces,” Shavkat says. Among his tools are rare old kolyb (stamps) and others he has made himself. Today, kolyb made in Afghanistan are brought to Central Asia, but they are expensive and lack “clarity of ornamentation and pattern.” The master makes his kolyb from bronze and steel; making a bronze kolyb is a complicated process (see Photo 8). Shavkat Khatamov’s work can be seen on his Instagram page (https://www.instagram.com/shavkatkhatamov/).

Serzhan Bashirov (Nursultan, Kazakhstan) comes from the East Kazakhstan region. There were no jewelers in his family, although his grandmother was famous for her skill at making traditional Kazakh headgear and fur coats from fox and wolf skins. Serzhan studied artistic metalwork at the Almaty Art School in the 1980s, and later learned sculpture at the Almaty Theater and Art Institute. The jeweler’s jewelry installations struck a chord with me when I met him in 2019 at an exhibition of Kazakh artisans in Washington, DC. Preferring to work with silver, carnelian, and turquoise, Serzhan combines “native” materials and the techniques of the masters of bygone centuries into new forms (see Photos 11 and 12). In this process, he deploys a number of what he calls “folk techniques”—notching, forging, riveting, etc.—as well as more sophisticated approaches like scanning, enamel, and grain. As the jeweler points out, kapsyrma / kaptyrma (silver clasps with hook and loop) and shashpau / sholpa (ornaments for braids) from the last century are now made extremely rarely and exclusively to order. However, even in the 19th century, when these ornaments were popular, they were made mainly to order (although in the first half of the 20th century, craftsmen began to sell their products in the bazaar). Sadly, the jewelry that richly decorated Kazakhs in earlier times has ceased to be a part of everyday life and is now confined mainly to museum collections (see Photo 13). Serzhan Bashirov’s Instagram page is https://www.instagram.com/serzhankz/?hl=ru.

Zhakshylyk Chentemirov (Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan) is originally from Issykul region. There were no jewelers in his family, though his father was a talented woodcarver. Zhakshylyk always loved to draw, so after school he entered an art school in Bishkek. Since then, he has lived and worked in Bishkek. The jeweler works mainly with silver, turquoise, coral, pearls, wood, and bone. All materials can be bought in a specialized store; some customers bring their own stones and precious metals. Sometimes customers ask to melt their jewelry down into new pieces, although the old jewelry usually has extremely low silver content. Zhakshylyk has experience making antique jewelry such as earrings, pendants, etc., but does not hide the fact that it is not easy to recreate such jewelry, which is done with the aid of photos. As Zhakshylyk does not like to copy others’ works and prefers to create his own masterpieces (see Photos 14 and 15), his jewelry works, which are very popular among tourists and locals, differ from traditional forms and feature new designs. That being said, the jeweler uses old jewelry techniques that existed in the region. Among the techniques that he “does not use much” are grains and filigree: significantly, the jewelers of Northern Kyrgyzstan never liked the latter, whereas it was widespread in the South. A curious series of his jewelry for weddings is called “Kyzga Sep” (bride’s dowry) (see Photo 16). This kind of jewelry, while not reproducing the traditional forms, supports one of the traditional wedding rituals: a dowry. More of Zhakshylyk’s jewelry can be seen on his Instagram page at https://www.instagram.com/chentemirovzhakshylyk/?hl=en.

A very honorable profession among Turkmens, jeweler was traditionally considered a man’s profession. In modern Turkmenistan, women are also becoming jewelers. Ogulgerek Myradova (Ashgabat, Turkmenistan) trained as a jeweler at the State Academy of Fine Arts of Turkmenistan in Ashgabat. After graduating from the Academy, Ogulgerek continued her work there; she is also a member of the Union of Artists of Turkmenistan. There were no jewelers in her family, but her father is Mukhammet Yazyev, a famous Turkmen artist. Ogulgerek creates jewelry together with her husband, Shohrat Myradov, a fellow graduate of the State Academy of Fine Arts. Both jewelers create fantasy jewelry based on their own sketches (see Photo 17), but most of all, they are fascinated with creating Turkmen jewelry “in the national style.” Ogulgerek and Shohrat explore old masterpieces through printed and visual sources, as well as by looking at antique jewelry in Turkmen museums (see Photo 18). They prefer silver (traditionally a thin layer of gold is applied to the silver pattern), carnelian, turquoise, zirconia, chrysoprase, chrysolite, and black agate. They have mastered the traditional Turkmen jewelry techniques of past centuries, but also develop new ones: for example, engraving and stamping were historically widely used by Turkmen jewelers, while filigree was less common. Both jewelers use engraving and stamping for traditional jewelry, while filigree is widely used in modern-type jewelry. “It was impossible to imagine a Turkmen woman or girl dressed in the national costume without silver jewelry,” reported Soviet ethnographer Galina Vasil’eva in 1973 (90-98) (see Photo 19). In 2021, Turkmen women, like women from other Central Asian countries, continue to wear traditional jewelry.

This review does not include the jewelry art and masterpieces of Karakalpaks, Uighurs, Arabs, Jews, and other ethnic groups from Central Asia. Yet even this short overview demonstrates several important points.

Changes in jewelry production are constantly occurring due to social, political and economic changes, even if traditional forms remain comparatively stable. Artisans are interested in creating a new type of jewelry; clients/customers from Central Asia support this with continued demand for jewelry of modern design. Some vintage jewelry forms are already disappearing, but not everywhere. In Turkmenistan, one can find an abundance of jewelry that is similar in form and design to that of earlier centuries. Such jewelry masterpieces are especially obligatory for a bride: silver ornaments make the bride’s costume at once physically heavy and solemn. The preserved tilla-kosh and jewelry sets included in kyzga sep (dowry) reveal that some traditional forms (or their echoes) have been preserved not only in Turkmenistan, but also in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. Thus, wedding traditions seem to protect Central Asian jewelry from extinction.

Just as it was centuries ago, today’s Central Asian jewelry is diverse, with the jewelry of Kyrgyz masters differing from that of their Turkmen and Uzbek counterparts, although the contemporary jewelry of Kazakh and Kyrgyz masters may overlap. Local differences are now significantly blurred, but some jewelry techniques continue to be preserved and developed where they were practiced before. Further research into the jewelry art of the region would be valuable.

Bibliography:

Fahretdinova Deliara. Iuvelirnoe iskusstvo Uzbekistana. Tashkent, 1983.

Sukhareva, Ol’ga. Pozdnefeodal’nyj gorod Bukhara. Tashkent, 1962.

Vasil’eva, Galina. “Turkmenskie zhenskie ukrasheniia.” Sovetskaiia Ethnografiia 3 (1973): 90-98.

The author would like to thank every jeweler who kindly agreed to be interviewed and talk about their jewelry art and practices.

In Soviet times, statues of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, a Russian revolutionary and the first head of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, were powerful political symbols.

For most of the 20^th century, monumental representations of Lenin could be found in all corners of the vast Soviet Union, as well as in Eastern Bloc countries. They came in different sizes and poses and were made of various materials, but they always reflected the official canon with regard to Lenin’s representation. They stood for the unity of the global proletariat, a welfare state, a dream of world revolution, and a common communist future.

Author

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Karolina Kluczewska

is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Centre for Global Cooperation Research, University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany. There are two strands to her research: development aid and interactions between international donors and local actors in Central Asia, and artistic production in Soviet Tajikistan.

And then, with regime change in Eastern Europe in 1989 and the Soviet collapse in 1991, the Communist political and social order suddenly became a thing of the past. The turn to democracy and the free market implied that this past needed to be re-imagined or retroactively charged with a new meaning.

In some post-communist countries, this process was swift and straightforward: the Communist period was unequivocally denounced. In Poland and the Baltics, for example, the removal of Communist-era symbols in the early 1990s, starting with Lenin statues, signified a rupture with that past and, allegedly, a fresh beginning.

In other parts of the Soviet bloc, re-defining the past took longer. In Ukraine, for instance, the Soviet past was officially condemned only in 2015, with the adoption of decommunization laws that envisaged, among other things, the mandatory removal of Soviet monuments.

In still others, re-imagination of the past has been less straightforward and remains far from complete. Such has been the case of Tajikistan. The story of two Lenin statues in Dushanbe is emblematic of the country’s complex process of coming to terms with its history.

Two Lenins

Arguably the most important Lenin statue in the Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic was the one that stood in the main square of Dushanbe. In 1961, on the eve of one of the annual Communist celebrations, local politicians ordered a 5-meter Lenin statue, which was to adorn Lenin Square, from a renowned sculptor in Moscow. Legend has it that the artist did not deliver the order on time and the Tajik delegation to Moscow had no choice but to find a substitute at very short notice. In one of the warehouses of spare and defective Lenin statues, they identified a suitable monument, which was later transferred to Tajikistan and placed in the city center. Regardless of how much truth there is in this story, the Lenin statue, created by a team of four Russian artists—Radin, Polyakova, Gavrilov, and Kutyrev— was unique. It did not violate the canon, but nor did it fully adhere to it. Whereas other Lenins had their right hands raised, the Dushanbe Lenin was left-handed. This is how, for the next 30 years, he would indicate the path to world revolution to everyone passing through the city center.

Whereas other Lenins had their right hands raised, the Dushanbe Lenin was left-handed.

This Lenin was right-handed, but it was also in many ways unique. The material used to make the statue came from melted bronze tsarist cannons.

The second, smaller Lenin statue was located in Dushanbe’s central park, just a few hundred meters from the square that hosted the main monument. It was actually 36 years older than the figure in the square. This bronze statue was created by Vladimir Kozlov back in 1926 and was an exact copy of the figure from Smolny Palace in St. Petersburg, where Lenin and the first Soviet government worked in 1917. This Lenin was right-handed, but it was also in many ways unique. The material used to make the statue came from melted bronze tsarist cannons. The monument was created on Stalin’s orders and donated to Dushanbe to commemorate the second anniversary of the formation of the Tajik Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (later, in 1929, upgraded to the Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic). Moreover, this was the first Lenin statue in the whole of Central Asia. Lenin remained in this place for 82 years, accompanying several generations of Tajikistanis, as the park was a popular place for families, couples, and young people to go for a stroll.

Statues Removed

The post-1991 trajectories of the two Dushanbe Lenin statues reveal policymakers’ confusion not only about what to do with Communist-era monuments, but also about how to re-imagine the Soviet past as a whole.

Following the trend in other Soviet republics, Tajikistan proclaimed national sovereignty in August 1991 and officially declared its independence on September 9, 1991. The chaos and demonstrations that accompanied the transitional period resulted in the government issuing a decree that banned the Tajik Communist Party and ordering the immediate removal of the Lenin statue from the main square. The order was signed on the evening of September 21 by acting president Kadriddin Aslonov, who was literally on his knees in front of the monument and angry masses. That very night, the monument was demolished with a crane, with the involvement of youths gathered in the square. In the process, some parts of the statue fell onto the ground and broke into pieces. Just two days later, the prosecutor’s office opened a criminal case regarding the dismantling of the statue. The decision to ban the Communist Party was also revoked. By this point, however, pieces of the monument had already been lost. In the spring, the Tajik civil war (1992-1997) broke out and the remains of the Lenin statue were no longer a priority.

In 1999, after the war ended, a 13-meter statue of Ismoili Somoni, a ninth-century regional ruler, was erected in the main square, in the same place where Lenin used to stand. This happened on the occasion of the 1,100^th anniversary of the foundation of the Somonid Empire, which in current Tajik historiography is portrayed as the first Tajik state. Somoni, with his right hand raised, overlooks the city center, just as the left-handed Lenin did before him. The replacement of Lenins with Ismoili Somonis slowly became a national trend.

The Lenin statue from the central park met with a different fate from the monument in the main square. This statue, although located just a few hundred meters away, survived the 1991 unrest and the subsequent civil war untouched, remaining in its place until 2008, when the park underwent a major renovation. At that time, the Lenin statue was quietly removed and replaced with a monument to Rudaki, a ninth-century poet and the father of modern Persian literature. The Lenin statue was moved to the territory of the Art Fund (Khudfond), where it remains to this day.

This uncertainty about what to do with Lenin reflects a perplexity about what exactly the Soviet past means for contemporary Tajikistan.

Neither Remembering nor Forgetting

To date, the 67 years of Tajikistan’s Soviet statehood have not been re-imagined in any way. The Soviet past is not remembered, celebrated, or commemorated. Equally, it is not demonized, condemned, or deliberately silenced. The removal of Lenin statues across the country has been a slow and rather mundane process that remains ongoing 30 years after the Soviet collapse. It intensified in the last decade, but only to free up space in the main squares of local towns for archaic figures who have been raised to the level of national heroes. Lenin statues, in turn, have been moved to local parks but have not been destroyed.

Unlike in Central or Eastern Europe, this has never been a symbolic show orchestrated by policymakers and accompanied by crowds demanding that the statues be torn down. Instead, Tajik government officials justify the gradual removal of Lenin statues by arguing, rather vaguely, that they do not meet contemporary urban standards. Periodically, officials declare that the monuments will be renovated and preserved as historical artefacts, but this never seems to happen. Members of the contemporary Communist Party frequently write petitions to the government asking for the statues to be restored, but their appeals go unanswered. As a result, ordinary citizens sometimes take care of old Soviet monuments by bringing them home. On rare occasions, people even renovate the statues on their own.

The officials claim that new, local academic interpretations of Soviet history are needed to underpin a new political narrative on the country’s Soviet past. In the meantime, contemporary Tajik historiography remains incomplete. While the country’s independence is celebrated, there is no clear narrative as to what exactly the country gained its independence from. And when Tajikistan’s past is celebrated, this is the remote history of the Somonid Empire, not the Soviet period. While policymakers remain unsure how to deal with the Soviet past, which most of them experienced, younger generations are often unfamiliar with local 20^th-century history, including who Lenin was.

Why Remember?

Tajikistan’s Soviet past cannot yet be re-imagined because re-imagining is a cultural process oriented toward the future. By positioning themselves toward their immediate past, countries simultaneously opt for a certain vision of their future and declare what political and social order they want to build. In Tajikistan, this order is still in the making: the state is neither secular nor religious, neither over-present in nor absent from people’s lives, neither neoliberal nor welfare-oriented. As such, it is unclear to what extent the Soviet past should be remembered and what lessons can be learned from it to shape the future. Equally, it is unclear why this past should be forgotten and which of its elements should not be repeated.

A talented ethnographer, photographer, traveler, collector, artist, and researcher of the history and culture of Central Asia, Samuil Dudin (1863-1929) made his first expedition in 1891.

Dudin was a participant in the Orkhon expedition and was involved in a study of Mongolian antiquities led by the scholar Vasily Radlov, who played a huge role in the young ethnographer’s fate. Radlov contributed not only to Dudin’s expeditionary work, but also to his studies in Ilya Repin’s class at the Academy of Arts in 1892-1898. The first expedition was followed by a second: in 1893-1894 Dudin, together with Vasily Barthold, visited the Semirechenskaya region, Tarbagatai, and Eastern Turkestan. On this expedition, Dudin was entrusted with pictorial and photographic representation.¹ A few years later, Dudin, together with Sergei Oldenburg, went on two consecutive expeditions to Chinese Turkestan (1909-1910 and 1914-1915).²

Author

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Snezhana Atanova

Snezhana Atanova, research fellow in material culture and history, Department of Central Asia, Caucasus, Volga and Ural Regions, Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Science. Her areas of expertise include material culture and cultural heritage of Central Asia.

The author would like to thank the Kunstkamera Museum for permission to use the photos of Samuil Dudin in this article. All images are reproduced here with the written permission of the Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (the Kunstkamera). No further reproduction by third parties is possible without proper authorization from the museum.

In 1899, Dudin visited the Kazakhs of the Akmola, Semipalatinsk, and Semirechye regions.³Kunstkamera researchers Valeriia Prishchepova and Inga Stasevich have reconstructed the route he took: from Jamantuz (40 3⁄4 versts) to the picket Kaidaul (30 1⁄4 versts) to the picket Chakchansky (Shakshak, 33 1⁄4 versts) to the Cossack village of Bayanaul (24 versts).⁴

The researcher captured his trip to the Kazakh steppes in immortal photos. Moreover, based on photographs, as well as on his drawings and “information from the Kazakhs,”⁵Dudin prepared several publications devoted to the decorative and applied arts of Central Asia: “Kyrgyz ornament” (Kirgizskiī ornament), “Carpets of Central Asia” (Kovrovye izdeliia Sredneī Azii), “Woodcarving by Kyrgyz” (Rez’ba po derevu u Kirgiz), and “Central Asian Carpets” (Sredneaziatskie kovry).⁶

There are numerous parallels between Dudin’s photographs and the photographic collection of the earlier and very famous “Turkestan Album,” created on the order of the Governor-General of Turkestan, Peter Mikhailovich von Kaufman, but there are also differences between the two. The expedition to the Kazakh steppes was organized by the Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography, giving Dudin’s photos—unlike the politicized ones in the “Turkestan Album”⁷—genuine ethnographic value. Indeed, this photo collection should be designated as an ethnographic companion to the life of Kazakhs, primarily those who lived in the Semipalatinsk region. This photographic companion depicts the clothing, daily occupations, and decorative-applied arts of the Kazakhs of the late 19th century.

Traditional Clothing

In the photographs of Samuil Dudin, we see a lot of everyday clothes for men, women, and children. Men’s attire included unique elements: a winter hat known as tymak (Russian: malakhai)⁸ and a leather belt called kise (see Photo 1). The tymak was made from felt, fox fur, or astrakhan. This headdress was worn in the 20th century, especially by shepherds in winter pastures. Other necessary items of clothing for winter are a covered coat (ishik) and a sheepskin coat (ton); the latter was worn over a coat (shekpen) made of homespun cloth (see Photo 2).

The leather kise with which the upper gown (shapan) was belted (see Photo 1) acquired an exclusively decorative character by the end of the 19th century, as Chokan Valikhanov has noted.⁹ Kise was replaced by the cotton belt belbeu¹⁰ (see Photo 1). The leather kise, a distinctive element of Kazakh dress, was decorated with embossing and figured overlays encrusted with silver and semi-precious stones. The kise was not merely decorative; a semi-circular bag with a flap (kalta or kise) was attached to the belt using special pendants and housed a fire-starter, flint, and other tools needed by a nomad (see Photo 3). On the other side of the belt hung a pouch with a knife and a pouch with bullets and gunpowder.

Dudin also depicted the kalpak, a man’s headdress popular among the Kazakhs and the Kyrgyz¹¹. The kalpak was made of thin felt and its color helped to identify its owner: the rich chose snow-white kalpaks, while the poor wore black, gray, and brown ones. The kalpak was decorated with embroidery and patches of colored cloth. The Kazakh nobility wore kalpaks of velvet richly decorated with silk and gold thread embroidery.

The upper coat (shapan) was also worn by women, together with a long dress (koilek). Ruffles, which were very fashionable in the 19th century, were used to decorate the dresses of girls and young women. Girls’ headwear (borik) was trimmed with fur (see Photo 4). Unlike similar men’s headdresses, fur was sewn to young women’s borik only on the outside.

The following photograph Photo 5 shows the girls in tunic-like koilek dresses made of printed chintz of Russian manufacture. The oldest woman wears a camisole and a headdress kimeshek of white calico. Similar kimeshek with modest embroidery were worn by women over the age of 40. One of the girls put on her head a shapan trimmed with colorful adras fabric (see Photo 5).

During this period, Russian cotton fabrics, which at first were more expensive than local ones, began to penetrate the region. As a result, clothing from that era was made from a wide variety of local Central Asian and Russian fabrics, as well as British, Indian, and Iranian textiles that were imported into the region. Photo 6 shows a Kazakh family in their yurt. Numerous felt trunk covers (karshyn) serve as a picturesque background.

In and Beyond the Yurt

The mobility of the Kazakhs influenced their culture and crafts. A whole series of photographs by Dudin, including “A group of girls during the aul movement” (Photo 7), clearly demonstrate the mobility of 19th-century Kazakh nomads, offering us insight not only into their daily lives, but also into the surrounding landscape.

Moving freely across the steppe, the nomads carried with them their mobile houses—yurts.

“The preferred house of a nomad, the yurt is a tent 4 meters in diameter and 3-4 meters high with a conical roof. The yurt is covered with white felt that is 2 cm thick; a piece of felt is attached at the entrance and serves as a door.”¹²

Dudin paid much attention to the yurts: their “movable architecture,”¹³ assembly, felt coverings, and interior decorations. He also photographed certain elements of the mobile dwelling—namely changarak, kerege, and tunduk¹⁴—and explored how these yurt parts were purchased. Photo 8 shows the purchase of a tunduk at the famous Kuyanda-Botov Fair. The fair took place for a month each year, from May 25 to June 25, between 1848 and 1930 in the valley of the river Taldy. The annual fair can be described as international: many traders and buyers from Kazakhstan, Siberia, the Urals, Central Asia, and China came to participate.¹⁵

Photo 9 shows how the women assembled the yurt and covered the wooden frame with felt. In winter, the yurt was wrapped with double felt. Felt also reigned supreme in the interior decoration of the yurt, serving as the base for numerous carpets, storage bags, and chest covers (see Photo 10).

Embroidery, felt and silver art

Dudin was not only a photographer; he also collected and studied objects featuring the decorative and applied arts of the Kazakhs. He was one of the first to talk about the need to preserve the decorative art of the steppe nomads, which had been gradually declining under the influence of “common European culture.”¹⁶ He described the craftsmanship of the peoples of Central Asia in vivid detail:

“The love for colors and flair for them, the love for ornamental decoration of household items and the richness of this decoration are peculiar to the peoples of Central Asia. In the past, this tendency was undoubtedly revealed with greater force and on a larger scale than now […] It is extremely important to collect samples of everything that has been and is still being done in the region in terms of this art, as the materials collected so far are still insufficiently complete and systematic. Especially important in this sense are objects of those ethnic groups that have so far retained the urge to decorate domestic objects and do it on their own, without resorting to the help of artisans from other ethnic groups. If I am not deceived by my observations, I had the opportunity to meet such people during my travels in Central Asia in the time period from 1893 to 1914. They were Kyrgyz-Cossacks and Kara-Kyrgyz who lived in the Kyrgyz Republic (formerly the Governorate-General of the Steppe) and in the regions of Jetysu (Semirechenskaya), Syrdarya, Samarkand, and Fergana. What the reasons were that created this phenomenon, I am not certain, but one of them is clear to me: it is the fact that the Kyrgyz more fully preserved the nomadic way of life; almost nothing has changed in their way of life, despite all the impacts of cultures of neighboring nationalities.^17“

To support his conclusions, Dudin referred to photographs of the felt carpets syrmak (see Photo 11) and tekemet, the storage bags ayak kap, and other felt and leather items. These artisanal pieces served as the interior and exterior decoration for a yurt, like a felt door curtain (Photo 13).

It is interesting to note the similarity of the ornament, which is reminiscent of the “tree of life”, on the different felt works. This highly stylized tree made of animal horns, where the lower part is like the roots of ancestors and the upper part the future generations of a large Kazakh family. The ornament on the felt rug syrmak and felt door (see Photos 11 and 13) is inlaid; the pattern was superimposed on the main background and then quilted and stitched along the contour of the pattern. Photo 14 depicts a felt storage bag ayak kap that is decorated with embroidery and felt appliqué. The eternal tree of life is also reflected in the silver ornaments of the saukele headdress and silk embroidery on the bride’s wedding garment (Photo 12). Long pendants zhaktau attached to the sides of coral threads complement the bride’s rich attire.

In the paper on Kazakh ornamentation,¹⁸ Dudin shared his thoughts about embroidery, which, in his opinion, appeared later than the art of felting. However, this does not detract from its originality. He singled out three main embroidery stitches that are central to Kazakh needlework: tambour, plain, and cross stitch.

As the researcher noted, stylized plant ornamentation prevails in the embroidery. We can see it on the black velvet of elegant pants known as kesteli shalbar (see Photo 15). Only wealthy Kazakhs could afford such pants. Another type of men’s pants, zhargak shalbar, were made of finely wrought yellow or red suede, embroidered with silk thread and patterned braid, and decorated with fur. The pants were similar in their cut, but differed in their material of manufacture. For example, winter shalbars were lined with wool or sheepskin.

The full extent of the huge cultural heritage of the Kazakh people that is reflected in the photographs of Samuil Dudin is outside the scope of this article. However, anyone interested in the history of the Kazakhs at the end of the 19th century can explore Samuil Dudin’s photographic collection can explore Samuil Dudin’s photographic collection on the Kunstkamera website.

This post is a republication of “Along the Route of Samuil Dudin’s Expedition“, 29 January 2021, Abai Center. The Abai Center recognizes the legacy of Abai Kunanbaiuly, a great Kazakh poet, philosopher, and founder of written Kazakh literature, as well as the rich heritage of the Kazakh culture more broadly. It is both a virtual space for articles and blogs via the website, https://abaicenter.com, as well as a welcoming host of events such as presentations and discussions on literature, arts, cinema, music, history, archeology, and anthropology.

1. Valeriia Prishchepova, “K 150-letiiu so dnia rozhdeniia S.M. Dudina—khudozhnika, etnografa (po materialam MAE RAN)” For the 150th Anniversary of the Birth of Dudin S. M.—Artist and Ethnographer (Based on the Materials of the MAE RAS),Antropologicheskiī forum online 15, pp. 608-649,accessed January 25, 2021.

2. E. Rezvan, “Samuil Dudin—fotograf, khudozhnik i etnograf: (materialy ekspeditsii v Kazakhstan v 1899 i 1920): [katalog fotovystavki]” [Samuil Dudin—Photographer, Artist, and Ethnographer (Materials of Expeditions to Kazakhstan in 1899 and 1920): [Photo Exhibition Catalog]] (MAE RAS, 2010), p. 107.

3. E. Rezvan, “Zerkalo s pamiat’iu serdtsa: Kazakhstan v tvorcheskom nasledii Dudina S.M.” [The Mirror with the Memory of the Heart: Kazakhstan in the Creative Heritage of S.M. Dudin], Konsul 4, no. 19 (2009): 51-54, 52.

4. Rezvan, “Samuil Dudin,” p. 110.

5. S. Dudin, “Kirgizskiī ornament” [Kyrgyz Ornament], Vostok 5 (1925): 120-172, 172.

6. Ibid.; “Rez’ba po derevu u Kirgiz” [Woodcarving by Kyrgyz], Zodchiī 10 (St. Petersburg, 1901); “Kovrovye izdeliia Sredneī Azii [Carpets of Central Asia], Collection of MAE 7 (1928): 71-158; “Sredneaziatskie kovry” [Central Asian Carpets], Stolitsa i usad’ba 2 (St. Petersburg, 1916).

7. Alexander Morrison, “The Conquest of Central Asia through the Turkestan Album,” Voices on Central Asia, May 2, 2018, https://voicesoncentralasia.org/the-conquest-of-central-asia-through-the-turkestan-album/, accessed January 25, 2021.

8. A typical malakhai has four parts: two cover the ears, the third covers the back of the head and neck, and the fourth serves as a visor. The crown is formed from leather gores.

9. Chokan Valikhanov, “Sobranie sochineniĭ” [Collected Works], Volume 1 (Alma-Ata, 1961), 142.

10. I. Zakharova and R. Khodzhaeva, “Kazahskaia natsional’naia odezhda” [Kazakh Folk Clothing] (Alma-Ata, 1964), 59.

11. The Kyrgyz call this headdress ak kalpak (white kalpak).

12. Moser Henry, A travers l’Asie centrale [Across Central Asia] (Paris, 1886), 19.

13. E.A. Кlodt and V. Chepelev, “Kazahskiĭ narodnyĭ ornament” [Kazakh Folk Ornament] (Moscow, 1939), 7.

14. Tunduk—the upper part of the yurt, a lattice circle/hole in the center of the domed ceiling. The only “window” of the yurt, it was opened for lighting during the day and covered at night.

15. Prishchepova, “K 150-letiiu so dnia rozhdeniia S.M. Dudina,” 626.

16. Dudin, “Kyrgyz ornament,” 164.

17. Ibid., 164-165.

18. Ibid., 164-183.

These days streets are not so busy and crowded in the Central Asia’s largest cities: Tashkent, Almaty, Bishkek and Dushanbe. Yet, they are slowly returning to the previous life even though the tempo varies across the region. While Bishkek and Tashkent seem to encourage economic activity, Almaty is still cautious and Dushanbe struggles with new waves of infections. Restrictions, in some way or another, are kept in most of the cities and policemen are roaming the deserted streets to make sure the situation is firmly under control.

Bishkek is getting out of lockdown

Bishkek was among one of the cities where the Kyrgyz government introduced a curfew. By now the curfew has been lifted, as well as most of the restrictions along with it. It is not yet back to the previous normal in Bishkek, as the city tackles continued epidemics.

Cinema theaters and other places remain closed for the public.

Roadblocks in out-of-city roads, many of which were self-initiated by nearly villagers, are being dismantled throughout the country.

The public transportation is again operational, with the requirement of only seated passengers, alligning with proper distancing and the wearing of masks.

Though masks are not worn in public by many, it is still a symbol of the continuing epidemic and they are worn by the guard of honor.

Wearing masks is also a requirement for entry into the big shops and malls which also organize a temperature check.

The signs on the floor are used to keep safe distance in queues at cashiers’ desks, and are present in many shops.

In some places, such as this bank, customers are let inside in at low numbers to prevent overcrowding on the premises, so people often have to form a queue outside.

While lifting lockdown mitigated some of the issues for vulnerable groups of people, some civic groups continue providing assistance to those need, such as e.g. Narodny Shtab Biz Barbyz (People’s Headquarters We are Here for You) which is still collecting and distributing food packages.

The lockdown and internal roadblocks prompted many people in Bishkek to start using bicycles to move around the city, and many of them continue doing so, despite the reopening of public transportation and the removal of internal roadblocks.

Parks and boulevards were among the latest places opened in the city, much to the joy of Bishkek residents who are trying to find playgrounds for children and refuge from the increasing heat.

Fast rise of infections in Tajikistan

Tajikistan confirmed its first positive COVID-19 cases a month and a half later than its neighbors in the region, but soon took the lead in the death toll in Central Asia. As of 02 June 2020, the Tajik authorities reported 4,100 confirmed cases and 47 deaths. An unofficial alternative list of deaths from COVID-19 and pneumonia which has been composed by the civil society activists exceeds 400 names. The comparatively fast rise of numbers in Tajikistan tells either about underreporting in neighboring countries, the success of strict preventive measures their governments took, or a combination of both.

Tajikistan had the weakest response to the pandemic in the region (Turkmenistan excluded) – denying the recognition of positive cases until April 30th and referring to illnesses and deaths with similar symptoms as “pneumonia.” Other countries in the region such as Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan stood in line to announce their first cases in mid-March. Though Tajikistan closed its borders, it pompously celebrated Navruz on March 22nd, which traditionally involves thousands of students and schoolchildren in the performances. Earlier, on March 1st, Tajikistan conducted parliamentary elections, followed by the Higher Chamber’s elections on March 27th. On April 17th, President Emomali Rahmon’s son, Rustam Emomali was elected as the Chairman of the Higher Chamber, which constitutionally authorizes him to rule the country in case of an accident with the incumbent president.

The expectation that Tajikistan will not confirm coronavirus cases until all these political plans are fully implemented has come true. Dushanbe officially confirmed its first cases on April 30th. This was done a few days prior to the official WHO delegation visit and Minister of Health was fired.

Frustrated by the inactivity of the officials in March and April, the Tajik public started listing death cases, which now includes 10 times more names than the official count. The list is compiled in a special portal kvtj.info, which was then shut down. But a Facebook group, “COVID-19: Tajikistan,” is full of stories of deaths, sicknesses, and challenges. The activists post stories on other popular social media sites and instant messengers, such as: Odnoklassniki, VKontakte, Instagram, YouTube, Viber, and IMO. Many stories do not make it online at all: only 660,000 social media users in the country (We Are Social, 2020), which reflects the country’s overall weak internet penetration (26%, We Are Social, 2020).

As stated by officials, some of the reasons for recent deaths are linked to “pneumonia” and “heart attacks”. Tajikistan did not announce how the country collects statistics and identifies reasons for death during the pandemic. Statistics problems and death reason identification is a matter of discussion in many other countries too.

In March, Tajikistan closed all borders and shut its airports down, as well as closed mosques for a short period.

In the end of April, the country closed schools, mosques, bazaars, and banned export of some food products. The United Nations, many other international organizations, and diplomatic missions shifted to telework.

In May, the country closed universities, unessential services such as barbershop, fashion saloons, gyms, etc., and urged everyone to wear masks in public, along with starting to clean streets and buildings with chlorine. The state uses its wide broadcast media system to call upon people to wash hands, use antiseptics, remind them to keep a safe physical distance, and avoid unnecessary travel.

Though there is no official quarantine announced, the streets of Dushanbe are mostly empty, due to the combination of school holidays, businesses shutdowns, recent Ramadan, and the pandemic.

President Rahmon appeared in public for the first time wearing a mask on May 20th.

Several hospitals have been re-tasked with curing only potential COVID-19 patients. The authorities are building new hospitals, and with Uzbekistan’s support, they launched a field hospital in Dushanbe which has been unused so far.

Though the authorities say COVID-19 patients are treated for free, prices for medicines have reportedly increased and some important medicines are difficult to procure. Price for the cheapest mask rose from 1 TJS to 7 TJS.

The same is true about the medical personnel – many report that they have to buy protective clothing themselves, for which a package typically costs around $50 (a monthly salary of a nurse).

Activists and volunteers provided considerable help to medical personnel, by giving protective clothing and food. At the same time, following harsh criticism over potential corruption in the dissemination of international aid, President Rahmon ordered the authorities to closely monitor aid dissemination and prevent corruption.

People have become highly responsible in their actions also – with most trying to avoid crowds, wear masks when out, follow the hygienic recommendations to their best capacity, and stay home in general. A mild quarantine, forbidding crowding, is in place until mid-June, but the official data shows some decline of the rate of infections. As of beginning of June, Dushanbe is slightly returning to its normal routine with crowds reappearing in the evenings and people with no masks on their faces.

Green, yellow and red: life in Uzbekistan is gradually returning to its normal

In early May, Uzbekistan began to mitigate the quarantine regime introduced in mid-March. Shops and services, one by one, opened doors for visitors and customers and parks and alleys slowly filled with people. But the quarantine is still maintained, even if in milder forms, including wearing a mask, avoiding groups of people, and keeping a safe distance.

This is still a much milder version of the strict quarantine introduced ever since the first case of coronavirus was registered on March 15th. Almost everything was shut down, including many grocery stores and markets. Reportedly only under a fifth of the working population were able to work remotely, more than one third had to go on a forced leave.

The peak of the epidemic came in mid-April, when official statistics reported a daily increase in the number of infections at 100-150 people per day. Within a month and a half from \ the first case of coronavirus in Uzbekistan, by the end of April, about 2 thousand cases of infection were detected, and the mortality rate remains one of the lowest in the world – 0.4%. But, the coronavirus in the country is still not defeated and this forces people to maintain basic precautions, i.e. quarantine in a milder form.

An interesting measure that defines the Uzbek approach is regional classification according to the degree of coronavirus spread. The areas where COVID-19 has spread is still alarming. Here, this is highlighted in red, whereas yellow is used in the areas where the situation is normalizing, and green indicates a favorable situation. Thus, the map of Uzbekistan appeared in three colors, in which each region is shaded depending on how good or not so good the situation is with the spread of coronavirus. “Red” regions still have some activities reopened, but a list of permitted activities is shorter than those with “yellow” and “green” areas.

Tashkent has been identified as part of the “yellow region”. Businesses are allowed to serve customers in special clothes and masks; at the entrance to the premises (where the services are provided), clients’ hands should be sanitized with alcohol gel. Similar requirements apply in retail banks. The requirements in newly opened clothing and household goods stores are much simpler, here only sellers are required to wear the masks.

People who have been quarantined for a month and a half greet the opportunity to be outside and walk with children. The noticeable psychological effect of quarantine mitigation is evident, in that people feel less fearful of a pandemic (they believe that the situation is improving).

The requirement to wear a mask is not universally observed. There are a lot of so-called “half-masks” on the streets, in which the mask is lowered to the chin. But law enforcement is no longer so strict in relation to those and even those who walk without a mask. Rather, the requirement to wear masks is strictly observed by conscious citizens who understand that danger has not yet passed.

There is no previous liveliness on the streets, probably, this is “hindered” by the daily statistics on detected cases of infection. It shows fewer cases than before, but they are still being revealed.

On May 30, the quarantine in Uzbekistan was extended until June 15. The commission also announced the expansion of the list of permitted activities in red, yellow and green zones, allowing weddings and family celebrations, opening hotels, children’s camps, sports and fitness clubs in the “green” areas.

Almaty continues to live, albeit not as active

To curb the spread of coronavirus in Kazakhstan, the authorities introduced a state of emergency in the country, which lasted almost two months – from March 16 to May 11. Despite the fact that the state of emergency in Kazakhstan was lifted on May 11, quarantine restrictions continue to apply in all cities and regions of the country. Residents of other regions can enter Almaty only with a special pass, while cafes and restaurants remain closed and many organizations have sent their employees on unpaid leave.

During the quarantine period, Almaty continues to live, albeit not as active. You can meet people on the streets, some even play sports in deserted parks, cars drive on roads, and public transport continues to work (strictly buses and metro, but there are very few passengers there.)

Many residents try to comply with the quarantine regime and do not leave their homes without special need, while they do not deny that they really want to return to normal life.

There are cafes and restaurants in the city – offering food and drinks for take out. On weekends, people leave their homes to order food and dine in the fresh air, particularly choosing deserted places so as not to catch the eye of the police. According to the plans of the city authorities, starting from May 18th, cafes and restaurants can open up on the street, but they are subject to all safety standards. “Of course, there is much less work,” says Diana, a waitress at a city cafe. – “Salaries have been cut by half, but we hope that quarantine will end soon and we will begin to work at full strength.”

Policemen continue to keep order in Almaty – they patrol the streets, remind pedestrians to keep their distance or not to go out onto the street unnecessarily. People whose work is considered essential — doctors, policemen, public utilities staff, grocery store employees, food delivery couriers — can freely move around the city. This list also includes journalists.

But for violating the quarantine regime, administrative penalty may follow – either a fine of $63, or arrest for 15 days. While the author was walking around the city with a camera, police patrols stopped him several times and questioned the purpose of the walk and photographs. When they found out that they had a journalist in front of them, they simply recommended that he follow the safety rules. “Usually we stop citizens, we want to know where they are going, we recommend returning home and not walking around the city unnecessarily. If a person resists, is rude, or is in a state of intoxication, we deliver him to the police station, where we issue a fine or arrest him”, – says one of the policemen.

A screening center for testing residents for coronavirus was opened in Almaty – only drivers of the cars can take tests for COVID-19 there, but you may not leave your car. The testing cost is $37. “Mostly people come for testing as they need a certificate confirming that they are not sick with the coronavirus,” – says Dr. Almira Sarsembaeva. – Typically, such certificates are required when applying for a job, before flying to another country, or in order to go to the hospital. A few days later we will open another screening center, only for pedestrians”.

The tests, according to the doctors, are sent to the laboratory, where specialists will find out the test result after six hours.The authorities of Kazakhstan do not exclude the possibility of a second wave of coronavirus infection this summer, so the weakening of quarantine may be temporary.

As of June 2, 2020, there are 11571 cases in Kazakhstan, 4013 in Tajikistan, 3718 in Uzbekistan, and 1845 in Kyrgyzstan (see a live dashboard here).

Text and photos from Bishkek: Medet Tuilegenov, photos from Tashkent: Yuriy Korsuntsev, other contributors preferred to remain anonymous.

Situated in the center of Kazakhstan, ALZHIR (Акмолинский лагерь жен изменников родины, “the Akmola camp of wives of traitors to the homeland”) was a notorious prison for thousands of women during its nearly two decades of operation. Behind the barbed wire, the women had to renounce their family and loved ones in order to submit to the will of the “leader of all nations.” But they remained unconquered, and they maintained spirits of love and loyalty that are still visible in the expositions of the ALZHIR Museum in today’s Kazakhstan.

ALZHIR and its daily life

In December 1937, in a village near today’s Nursultan (Astana), a small camp consisting of several clay huts, four towers, and barbed wire had been built and the first group of women—with children from one to three years old—arrived in Akmolinsk on January 6, 1938. The name “ALZHIR” – “Akmola camp of the wives of traitors to the motherland” – was actually coined by the prisoners themselves, while the official name was the Akmola special unit of the Karaganda camp system of the NKVD. During January and February, prisoners were supplied almost continuously. Sixteen hundred women arrived from Butyrka prison alone. Women were brought to ALZHIR from all over the country: from Moscow, Leningrad, Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia, and Central Asia.

There was not enough space for women prisoners. So the new prisoners had to build their huts themselves, whether it was a harsh steppe winter, heat, or rain. Instead of mattresses, straw was thrown onto a wooden floor. To heat the barracks, women cut reeds—which was the main type of fuel for two winters—and even then the temperature in the huts did not exceed 6-8 degrees Celsius.

Once in the camp, a person would lose their surname, nationality, and often their civilian profession as well. The title for all was the same: the enemy of the people, the traitor to the Motherland. People were distinguished by numbers sewn on special stripes on the clothing over their back, sleeves, or knees, and these numerals also served as targets in case of escape. But, despite all the tragedy and absurdity of the situation, the prisoners of the camp were young, beautiful women, many with children—some even with infants. Behind the barbed wire, they had to renounce their beloved and dear ones in order to submit to the will of the “leader of all nations.” But they remained unconquered, maintaining spirits of love and fidelity through it all.

Prison replica

The first years of the camp’s existence were the most difficult for the prisoners. Not only did the prisoners suffer from a lack of space and difficult life, but they were also considered by the authorities to be “especially dangerous” prisoners, which restricted their miserable lives even more. Only in May 1939 was the attack against the wives of the “traitors to the homeland” eased, and the camps were downgraded from “special restricted mode” to more general conditions. This meant some major changes in the life of the ALZHIR prisoners. First, they were allowed previously forbidden correspondence with the outside world. Many were able to learn of the fate of their husbands and their children. Some of these tearful letters are exhibited in the museum today, revealing the tragedy of individual lives.

The daily routine of the ALZHIR prisoners was depressing. They had to get up early in the morning for a general call out, and for breakfast they got a cup of watery oatmeal. Hunger was their constant companion. One serving of black bread, a scoop of plain soup, and a cup of oatmeal; this was their daily menu from month to month.

Women had to work hard during the day, producing clothing and other items for the soldiers during the war years, and for big cities such as Moscow, Leningrad, Kharkov, Kiev, Novosibirsk, etc. Some women still applied their creativity in their work.

Artists Stepanova, Pokrovskaya, Isaeva, and Sitrina created various drawings. Some women also worked in agriculture, the selection of seeds, and general farming. They grew melons, apple orchards, and flowers but all that went to the needs of the outside world, and prisoners could hardly enjoy the taste of seasonal fruit.

As one of the prisoners, K. Maltseva, recalls: “First, we had to work on 18 hectares of land, we plowed and planted vegetables, and everything was done manually using shovels. I was the watering foreman, I got up at 4 in the morning when everyone was still sleeping, and I returned late in the evening. We worked in the garden for 14-15 hours a day. When the vegetables ripened, we would sneak carrots and tomatoes into the barracks and distribute them to children and sick women.”

Rather unexpectedly, they found support among local residents. Next to the camp, straight behind the lake, there was a Kazakh village called Zhanazhol. People were sympathetic to the women. They brought some fish, dairy, and bread in the wintertime. A story tells us about an incident when local people threw little white stones at the prisoners. Women were first deeply hurt with such an attitude, but then they discovered that the little white stones were kurt, or dry sour milk balls that are traditional in Kazakh diet and supply calcium and other nutrients to help the body sustain itself through the harsh winter.

Nonetheless, the camps still had a high mortality rate. Between 1940 and 1950, 10,000 prisoners died in KARLAG. In 1943, a peak mortality year, hundreds of people died every month. The extent of deaths can be judged by the number of cemeteries scattered in the Karaganda and Akmola regions—both places of mass detention and exile.

Today’s museum

ALZHIR is a witness to one of the great human tragedies of the twentieth century. The women’s lives are commemorated by the “ALZHIR” museum-memorial complex of victims of political repression and totalitarianism, which opened on May 31, 2007 as part of an initiative of President Nazarbayev.

Designed by architect Saken Narinov, it is surrounded by steles and obelisks dedicated to the victims and martyrs of mass terror. While the camp itself was demolished in late Soviet times, the memorial complex consists of the following: the main building, a train car from Stalin’s time that was used to bring new prisoners, a monument called the “Arch of sorrow,” a watch-tower, two sculptural compositions (“Despair and Weakness” and “Fight and Hope”), and a memory wall.

The “Arch of sorrow” monument represents a woman grieving for her dead husband and lost children. The arch is made in the form of a helmet and an ‘ak zhaulik,’ or a woman’s headdress, together symbolizing male strength and female innocence and purity. The two colors, black and white, represent accord and harmony between peoples, religions, and cultures of different ethnic groups, as well as the permanent existence of both good and evil in our life.

The museum building is in the shape of a truncated cone. This is a custodian of sorrow. Notice that the building has no windows. But inside, the light spills over the exhibits, as though something secret were being made known. The museum begins with a tunnel to reflect the difficult time in the development of the life of Kazakh people during the years of repression. The exhibition poignantly evokes the camp’s horrors, displaying a transportation wagon, a replica guard post, and photos and possessions of the prisoners, as well as explanatory material on the Gulag system in Kazakhstan.

But the most touching displays are the personal belongings of the women that the museum shows: their neat dresses, white shawls, small leather handbags, love letters, beautiful drawings, and written stories for children to open up their hopes for better lives—hopes that never ceased to exist in this place.

Soviet architecture in Central Asia, as the name tells, is a fusion of Soviet modernity with traditional Central Asian culture that remains remarkable to this day. Persian and Islamic motifs can be still found among Soviet buildings in Dushanbe, Tashkent, Almaty, and Bishkek. But these buildings are becoming exceedingly rare as this architecture is being systemically removed in Dushanbe and Tashkent, and it similarly remains at risk in Almaty and Bishkek. This eradication is taking place to modernize the Central Asian capitals, make them look like financial centers, and free up a new national space that is less linked with the Soviet past and ideology while embodying the new era of sovereignty. This problem has been identified since at least 2012, when the 19^th Vienna Architecture Congress made an appeal to all governments, NGOs, and cultural organizations of former Soviet states to acknowledge the value of Soviet-era historical buildings and preserve them for the future generations. Yet, many of these historical architectural landmarks have still been demolished, and several others are still pending government decisions in each of these independent states.

In this overview, we look at the specifics of the process that takes place throughout Central Asia.

Author

Xeniya Mironova

Xeniya Mironova is an independent scholar, translator, and writer with research interests in Central Asia. She has been researching the Soviet-era architecture of Central Asian countries for the past five years.

The drastic reassessment and replacement of Soviet architecture in Dushanbe began in 2007. Since that time, the image of the city has changed greatly. A substantial amount of Soviet-era buildings have been demolished and replaced with wasteland. For example, the Mayakovsky Theatre and Jomi Cinema located in downtown were both demolished in 2016. Since that year, only wasteland remains.

A very popular spot among locals, the Shohmansur market (“Green market” or “Zelenyi bazar”) was demolished in 2017. One can find a very large plot of wasteland there too. 

A very unique symbol of the achievements of the Tajik nation, a Stele with the Arms of the Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic, was destroyed in 2015 and replaced with a clock tower made in Turkey.

The creator of the destroyed Stele had planned that apart from the already created 4 stone carvings, a free space which had been left on the stone would be replaced by the next generation with additional historical achievements of the Tajik nation.

The myriad of other Soviet-era historical buildings, murals and monuments which have been already destroyed include the Dushanbe Central Post Office, the City Administration building, the Movie Theatre Named After the 8 of March, the Farogat Tea House, several buildings with oriental arches (Leningradskie doma or Doma s arkoi), Soviet and oriental murals, and many others. Additionally, there is a long list of downtown Soviet-era historical buildings that are waiting for their demolition in the nearest future. And only 15 Soviet buildings of Dushanbe were promised by the government to remain untouched. It was planned by the Tajik state that in Dushanbe, most of the destroyed buildings would be replaced with a giant parliamentarian complex funded by the government of China.

In the previous years, no public discussions of the new reconstruction plans have been conducted in Tajikistan, and no direct access to the final 2017 municipal redevelopment plans of Dushanbe and other cities (General’nyi plan) have been provided so far. Faced with this massive destruction of Soviet-era buildings, Dushanbe dwellers signed a number of petitions for the historical buildings, murals and monuments to be preserved for the future generations. A local branch of an international organization called the “Bactria Cultural Center” has launched an initiative called “Mapping Mosaics in Dushanbe” which seeks to preserve the historical memory surrounding Dushanbe’s murals. Tajik historian Gafur Shermatov regularly publishes photos of old Dushanbe and articles on the importance of preservation of the historical sites of Tajikistan.

Under Islam Karimov, the capital of Uzbekistan lost a large amount of its Soviet-era historical buildings as they were either demolished or dramatically reconstructed. But even today, the rest of Tashkent’s Soviet architecture is also going through different transformations. Some of the buildings have been covered by the construction of reinforced-plastic structures, so their image has been changed tremendously; others require repairs and further inclusion into the list of architectural landmarks of Uzbekistan. Tashkent’s activists prepared a list of 100 Soviet buildings to be preserved in Tashkent and provided it for consideration by the government of Uzbekistan. The demolishing of the buildings caused protests across Uzbekistan, a country that has traditionally been ruled by an iron grip that would not allow any form of discontent. In response, the authorities announced that a municipal redevelopment plan for Tashkent would be developed, but only so far as the citizens of Tashkent do not have any information on what kind of renovation changes Tashkent will face in the upcoming years.

Observatory of a Cultural Heritage of Central Asia: Alerte Heritage, an independent non-governmental international association aimed at protecting the cultural heritage of Central Asian countries, created a database and on-line map of Tashkent which contains information about the demolished and reconstructed Soviet-era historical buildings of Tashkent and the ones at risk. It speaks out about the requirements necessary for preservation of the historical memory of Tashkent’s demolished Soviet-era historical sites and the rest of the city’s architectural landmarks.

Soviet architectural works previously demolished in Tashkent include the Pavilion of Cotton-Growing of the Exhibition of Economic Achievements (Pavilion “Khlopkovodstvo” VDNKh), the Yubileinyi Stadium (Dvorec sporta “Yubileinyi”), the Khamom Bathhouse (Banya “Khamom”), the Palace of the Pioneers (Dvorec pionerov), the House of Cinema (Dom kino), the House of Foresters (Dom lesovodov), and many others. These architectural landmarks were constructed in the Stalinist Empire style, brutalist and modernist styles, and in the style of oriental modernism. Later, the construction of an international business center, ‘Tashkent city’, was launched in the same place where the House of Cinema, the Palace of the Pioneers, and the House of Foresters had been located. The Khamom Bathhouse was replaced with a multistory parking garage; the Yubileinyi Stadium was replaced with a trading center; and the Pavilion of Cotton-Growing of the Exhibition of Economic Achievements was not replaced with anything (there is a Victory park there not far from the previous location of the Pavilion).

The low-rise Soviet buildings of Almaty looked organic. There was no environmental resistance, and the city’s architecture coexisted in tune with the nature around it. However, over the last decades, the building boom in the city has been chaotic, and many new buildings and reconstructions have replaced the traditional look of historical sites.

There are some historical buildings which were demolished and replaced with modern, more profitable construction. For instance, the Palace of the Pioneers—built in the style of modernism in 1962 and later used for sport activities—was demolished in 2005 and replaced with a hotel; the Ministry of Industry of Construction Materials (Minpromstroymaterialov), built in the style of neoclassicism in 1949, was demolished in 2014 and replaced with a business-center; a movie theatre called “Alatau,” built in the style of modernism in 1958, was demolished in 2015 and replaced with a McDonalds restaurant. Some other demolished Soviet-era construction built in the Stalinist Empire and modernist styles include: the hotel “Zhetysu,” the Eparchial community hall, the building of the State Plan (Gosplan) of the Kazakh SSR, the bus station “Sayahat”, and others. Additionally, some of the historical sites of Almaty have gone under reconstruction, and in most cases their original image is being completely changed by the builders.

In Almaty, the idea of losing historical buildings, monuments, and sites has led to a significant public response, which is why a group of young people led by local activists developed a project called “ArchCode – Almaty,” which is aimed at archiving the city’s “architectural DNA.” The project promotes the preservation of Almaty’s architectural legacy and encourages stakeholders to keep the identity of the city unchanged. For instance, in order to preserve several historical sites of Almaty, an idea to convert a car-oriented street into a pedestrianized street was recently presented to a large audience. This idea received stakeholders’ support; however, further approval from the akimat of Almaty is required.

Online versions of the municipal redevelopment plan of Almaty are available on the website of the akimat of the city of Almaty. Citizens of Almaty were informed about the new redevelopment plans through mass media, but no public hearings have been conducted. Additionally, by 2020 the state plans to demolish more than 800 dilapidated houses in Almaty, and new housing will be provided to the citizens. An online map with the list of streets with dilapidated housing is publicly available. Moreover, Almaty seeks to impress with its 3D municipal redevelopment plan, which was recently presented to the architects and representatives of the different relevant agencies of Almaty and Nur-Sultan.

The current approved Almaty list of historical monuments and cultural sites includes 120 historical subjects to be preserved by the state. Six of them were already removed by the akimat, but the akimat of Almaty recently urged the population to identify the buildings that are most important for the history and culture of Almaty. These historical sites will be considered by experts and the akimat, and public hearings on renewal of the list of historical monuments will later be conducted in Almaty. Moreover, “ArchCode – Almaty” developed a map of Almaty containing more than 700 Soviet-era historical buildings. This map was presented to the akimat of Almaty along with the buildings’ age map, which contains more than 250,000 objects.

Thus, though the groundwork has been laid for a potential situation in which previously defined historical sites may lose their status and be demolished together with dilapidated housing of no historical interest, recent changes in the behavior of Almaty’s akimat indicate a positive sign that there is still hope for more of Almaty’s historical landmarks to be preserved in the future.

In comparison with the other capital cities in Central Asia, Bishkek is not as drastically strict when dealing with the Soviet architecture. It was only in 2016 that a draft law was proposed on the demolition of low-rise old buildings in the downtown of Bishkek built before 1996. After conducting the public hearing, this draft law did not gain any support from the population, and it was subsequently scrapped. Since that time, the transformation of Bishkek’s urban space, which was formed during the Soviet time, has continued to be ambiguous; the city has been growing rapidly and chaotically.

Nevertheless, contemporary influences in Bishkek have already started to gain pace, and the city is already trying to shift its policy towards applying a stricter approach on the reconstruction of Bishkek’s urban space. For instance, in 2018 the state developed a city plan which has been largely criticized. Since that time, this city plan has still been waiting for approval by the Parliament. Citizens of Bishkek do not support this plan, as it is undeveloped and lacks easily understandable information; for instance, the plan contains special technical terminology and symbols that are only understandable for architects. It is also unclear how this city plan will protect the historical landmarks of Bishkek. According to the authors of this city plan, if reconstructions or demolitions of Bishkek’s downtown historical-cultural sites are required, such changes will be a subject to approval by the Ministry of Culture and general population.

Despite that, a privately owned Soviet-era building located in downtown Bishkek called the“Erkin-Too” printing house was demolished this month. Its status as an architectural monument was deprived by the state without any explanation. The Ministry of Culture stated that this historical building, which previously had the status of a cultural heritage site, was not a subject to restoration because it was not repaired by its owner. It is planned that the printing house will be replaced with a high-rise hotel.

Many other historical buildings and architectural landmarks in Bishkek are dilapidated. For instance, the building of the Union of Artists, the Bishkek Theatre for Young Spectators, the Russian Drama Theatre, the Kyrgyz National Drama Theatre, the Ministry of Culture building, etc. From time to time, some of these buildings are partially renovated by the artists working there. However, the constant support of the government, along with these buildings’ inclusion in the list of protected historical sites of Bishkek, is also required. This list currently contains 255 historical subjects—however, 23 of them are already marked as “lost.”

The Bishkek Theatre for Young Spectators looks good only in the front. Source: Kaktus. Media News Agency

One of them—a restaurant called “Naryn,” built in the style of Soviet modernism in 1987—was demolished in 2017. Its demolition became a matter of great concern for not only the local population, but also among international experts; Swiss architects made an appeal to the government of Kyrgyzstan and asked for Naryn not to be demolished, as it would be a great loss for world architecture. They also assessed the historical architectural value of Naryn and provided the government with their recommendations on how to renovate the city and preserve the historical sites of Bishkek. However, these measures did not help to save the building. The government eventually announced that Naryn would be replaced by a park.

In their appeal, the Swiss architects named many other Soviet-era historical buildings to be preserved in Bishkek: the Circus, the National Museum of Arts, the Palace of Sports, the Philharmonic Hall, the Parliament building, all Bishkek theatres, and others. Today, as Bishkek is still at a crossroads as it decides “to destruct, or to preserve,” it is still unclear whether or not the government of Bishkek will follow this appeal.

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English transcript of the video presentation below

Today I am going to talk about one particular type of traditional Kazakh clothing: the headdress of a bride, called a saukele.

Presenter

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Inga STASEVICH, Senior Researcher at Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (the Kunstkamera). Her area of expertise includes ethnography of peoples of Central Asia, study of traditional material and spiritual culture, regional specifics of Central Asian Islam, gender aspects of culture, and modern ethnic processes, in particular forms of traditional culture adaptation in today’s world.

The video material has been produced by Doroga Ludei, (“The Way of the People”), a project that combines a series of documentaries and video lectures from the scholars and specialists in the field of history, philology, literature and philosophy. The project is devoted to the problems of the history of the Central Asian region.

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The wedding dress was always very important, as a girl had to be properly dressed when leaving her parents’ home for the house of her future spouse. For the wedding, a girl had to wear all the jewelry that she had, as each piece of jewelry had its own symbolic meaning. So the saukele itself had many implicit mythological symbols, and in my talk I want to decipher the world of these mythological symbols and how they fit into Kazakh culture.

Just as every culture is unique, so too are its objects of decorative and applied art, oral and folk art, and original customs and rituals. Today we will talk about traditional Kazakh culture, and we will turn to one particular item of the traditional Kazakh culture: the saukele, the headdress of a Kazakh bride. We will touch upon issues related to its origins and try to ‘read’ this item.

The saukele is a richly decorated headdress, and it was not affordable for all. In the end of the 19^th and beginning of the 20th century, it could cost as much as 5000 silver rubles. A saukele had to be ordered in advance of the wedding, usually one or one and a half years prior—after the matchmaking (engagement) was already completed and the girl had become a bride waiting for a wedding. At that moment, her family would order a saukele from the jeweler.

There are no two identical saukele. Each jeweler adorned and decorated this headpiece in their own way. Some saukeles have region-specific characteristics, so, for instance, a western Kazakh saukele is distinguished by the massive, often anthropomorphic metal linings in the central part of the headpiece. In the southern saukele, its textile decoration elements were more visible. And yet, saukeles always had universal elements of design and decor, which were repeated from time to time. For example, the cone-like, high shape of the headdress is a hallmark of the piece and the hats could reach a height of 70 centimeters. They were usually made of white felt because it was considered a good quality and expensive material, and the felt was sheathed on top with other fabrics such as cloth, velvet, or silk, but always red in color. Why red? The red color has always been a symbol of fertility; it is a sign of a woman at the peak of her fertile age, and it signifies a wish of many children for a young bride.

Inside each saukele, there is a three-lobed quilted cap, very similar in shape to the lining under a helmet, which we will explain a little later. An embroidered strip behind the saukele is usually quite long and richly decorated. Some researchers believe that this strip is a nakosnik, a triangular decoration hung on the end of the braid. It’s true that, in ancient times (as the saukele traces its history back to quite ancient times), women had to hide their hair after they got married, ensuring that no stranger could see it. Unmarried girls and women could walk with their hair loose or with braids, but after marriage, they had to hide it. So with time, the nakosnik—which covered the braid behind the saukele—has become an embroidered strip, or a false nakosnik. On the both sides of the saukele, there are surprisingly richly decorated pendants called jahtau. They always include precious stones and beads such as coral, pearls, and glass. Behind the saukele we see a scarf called a jelek. This is a veil that covers the shoulders of the bride, and sometimes her face.

The saukele has an amazing, unique shape not seen in other cultures, as it has a cone-shaped form, and in some ways, it reminds us of ceremonial helmets.

Additionally, there is another detail in a woman’s dress, a swing skirt called a beldemchi (although this skirt was worn by a married woman), which would also bring to mind a man’s military skirt, like those seen in epic texts and worn by the Turkic military. Some written archaeological sources suggest that these pointed, conical headdresses were characteristic of the Scythian-Sarmatian time. The images of men’s tall headdresses from that era are very similar in shape to the saukele. Even a well-known golden man found in the Issyk mound and dated back to 9^th or 10th centuries BC was wearing a kulah, a high conical headpiece richly decorated with gold plates in a three-part structure of decoration, like saukele.

This even led some researchers to believe that the Issyk golden man is in fact a woman who is dressed in a ceremonial military costume.

Is there any explanation to this? Why are the wedding hats so similar to men’s military hats? Perhaps it relates to the fact that the upbringing of Kazakh girls had been somewhat Amazonian. In various cultures of Kazakshtan, we see an image of an epic virgin warrior. She challenges her potential fiancé to a fight, and only after securing victory over the girl did the groom gain the right to marry this female warrior. A victory over the girl was almost the same as the consummation of marriage, or the deprivation of a girl’s virginity. Even if this remains a legend, the upbringing of the Kazakh girl has always been liberal enough, as she had to become a worthy wife by matching her husband in bravery and skills. Girls had to be good in the saddle, participate in competitions, stand up for themselves, and be confident in musical and oratory challenges on an equal footing with young men. Simply consider the historical competition known as kyz kuu, in which the young man had to catch the young woman on a horse, and a young woman has always been the leading character in these types of competitions.

This certainly reminds us of an Amazon, a free girl on a horse. But the freedom ends with the moment of marriage, as the girl is deprived of this freedom. She then has to be submissive and respectful towards her elders and be a proper kelin, or daughter-in-law. There are several prohibitions for her, both verbal and behavioral. These prohibitions are undoubtedly difficult, and last, as a rule, about a year before the birth of the first child. During the first year of marriage, a young woman traditionally should give birth to the first child. Childlessness has always been perceived by Kazakhs as a great source of grief. What is childlessness? It is the end of the family. In order to continue the line of generations, a woman must bring a new life into the world, bring a new soul by giving birth to a child. And for this reason, the semantics of all the saukele images that we see are aimed at protecting the young girl from various harmful forces, from evil spirits, and from the evil eye. The girl should maintain her fertility to become a mother and realize her destiny, which will then allow her to acquire a higher status in the family.

Look at the decoration of the saukele. Its ornamental composition has three parts, and the upper part or upper ‘world’ is usually somehow distinguished by metal or other similar material. According to traditional Kazakh ideas, the top of the head is, like the liver, the concentration of vitality, kut. It was through the top of the head that the goddess Umai, a Turkic goddess of children and women, sent the soul of a young child to a young woman. This is the upper world—the world inhabited by spirits, populated by gods. The next part of the ornamental composition is the middle world, the world inhabited by people. We see it especially brightly on West Kazakhstan’s variant of the saukele, where the ornamental plates remind us of the figures of women giving birth. Some researchers believe that this image is of the goddess Umai, who was seen as a link between generations and a protector of women. The lower world in the saukele is always decorated with the fur of animals that live in the water: beaver or otter fur, or in later saukeles, fox fur. So what are these three worlds? This is primarily the construction of the universe, the harmony of all three worlds, which offers its protection for the young girl from all the bad things that can happen to her. The saukele was worn for a year before the birth of the first child. Only after the birth of the first-born would the woman put on a kimeshek, the headdress of a married woman. If a woman did not have a child, of course, she was eventually allowed to wear a kimeshek when she reached a certain age, but it was always seen as a great tragedy for the entire family.

A young bride needed protection. This protective symbolism is seen in the materials that were used in the decoration of the saukele. For example, a semi-precious stone such as carnelian would protect against the evil eye, while coral, according to the traditional views of the Kazakhs, would help a woman to have many children—and pearls were also associated with the miracle of childbearing. The saukele was a rather expensive item, and by the end of the 19th century, it was rarely used. But less wealthy families would replace it with embroidered skullcaps or shawls, and in the end of the 19^th century it was often Russian shawls.

After a year, a woman would take it off. Of course, she had to take it off even within a year, as it was a heavy hat. She wore it on solemn occasions, for example, when receiving guests. After she gave birth to a child and put on a kemeshek, she passed the saukele on to her daughter, and if not to her daughter, then to the women of her husband’s family. By this she gave her grace, her goodwill, and good wishes for the birth of numerous offspring. The saukele was kept in the family as a symbol of the family’s history. We see that saukele were often renovated by the means of the family as well—for example, they tried to replace the thread of the coral with glass beads. Some saukeles would show missing pendants, so old saukeles would display quite diverse decorations and were obviously renovated. Unlike the rest of her dowry that went to the groom’s family, the woman kept the saukele. And if for some reason the woman left her husband’s family, she had the right to take the saukele with her.

But let’s go back to the 21st century. Today, we still see saukeles in wedding salons, which means that the traditional headdress is in demand. And it is the Kazakh youth who are interested in this headdress; it is the girls who want to marry in a traditional costume with a traditional headdress. Of course, modern saukeles differ in both their design and in the richness of their decoration, but nevertheless, this respectful attitude to the country’s culture and national costume indicates that the symbols of Kazakh culture and traditional Kazakh culture continue to strive in the modern world; they are alive and in demand.

All images (except for Golden Man) are reproduced here with a written permission of the Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (the Kunstkamera). No further reproduction by third parties is possible without proper authorization from the museum.

An estimated one million people, mostly Muslim minorities, are being held in detention centers across the Xinjiang region in China.

Common reasons for detention include studying Islam and praying or having family members who live abroad. China maintains that these detention centers are “vocational education centers,” although numerous reports say they are harsh internment camps. Uyghurs and Kazakhs who are not detained are placed under house arrest, have their passports confiscated, and are denied permission to leave Xinjiang. 

Author

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Iris Oppelaar

Iris Oppelaar is a multimedia journalist who covers stories focused on human rights and migration in Central Asia and Russia. Iris holds an MA in Politics, Security and Integration from the School of Slavonic and East European Studies (UCL, United Kingdom) and a BA in European Studies. Her recent multimedia work WILDNESS has been awarded with the 2nd price for the 2019 International Photography Awards (IPA).

 www.irisoppelaar.com

The family members of those missing or detained remain behind in Kazakhstan, lost between hope and fear.

“The last time I spoke to my mother (Nurzada Zhumaqanqyzy) was two or three years ago. She was detained in June 2018. She was first taken to a camp. From December onwards, we have heard many different rumors about the whereabouts of my mother. In June 2019, we heard that my mother was sentenced to 20 years in prison and sent to a women’s prison. The official verdict reads ‘using superstition to subvert the rule of law.’ My mother studied religion with a local imam for a few months back in 2005. Praying and teaching others how to pray is the reason for her detention.”

“My brother (Aitugan Turlan) was studying in China. After that, he worked in the Karasu village government office and was responsible for religious affairs from 2011 to March 2018. He’s a graduate of Tarim University. Currently, he is in a re-education camp.”

“This is my relative Tursungul Omerjan. She is an ethnic Uyghur. She was detained in March 2018 and sent to a camp in Xinjiang province. She has three children. Her husband has not been detained, so he might be taking care of them, but we don’t have contact with him. Whenever we try to reach them, there is no response.”

“My older brother is an official Imam. Recently, in June 2019, he was sentenced to 20 years.”

“In May 2017, my wife (Gulnar Muratqyzy) went to China with our 1-year-old son (Abduzahir Zhumagali). Their passports were confiscated. This was more than 2 years ago. The authorities are requesting that I come to China, but I won’t. A few days ago, the police came and told her they would let her go in October.”.

“We moved to Kazakhstan after his retirement. My husband, Zharqynbek Qasymbai, worked in China for 36 years for the local government as a party member of the agricultural department. In 2017 my husband traveled to China to extend his visa. He never returned. Instead, he was sentenced to 20 years in prison in July 2017.”

“Four times I have traveled to Xingjiang to look for my husband (Sarsenbek Akbar). Once, I was also interrogated. He had been transferred to another camp. I finally got to talk to my husband. I thought that if I showed the guards how hard it is for me, they might feel remorse.”

“The detention centers are worse than camps. Torture is common there…. In September 2017, my brother (Symagul Qusmanbek) was arrested. He was the head of the local administration in a small town. They now accuse him of things he supposedly did during his time as the head of administration. The rumor is that he was sentenced to three years in prison.”

”Family is very important in Kazakh society. Our families are very close. My nephew (Shalkar Tursynaly) and Tileuzhan Adilbekuly are both 26 years old. They were sentenced to 15 years in prison. A few years ago, they attended a religious course for a few months. The last time I saw my nephew was in 2017 when I went to visit him in China.”

”My brother-in-law used to work as a security guard at the mosque. This is probably the reason for their detention. The rumors are that my sister and her husband have not been sentenced and imprisoned, but they are in a camp. They have 2 children. We don’t know where the children are or who is taking care of them. Maybe some relatives. There is no communication…”

“My mother (Gülsinai Babahumaer) and father (Sultan Aqyn) are both in China. My mother is under house arrest, but my father was arrested—and the rumor is that he was sentenced to 11 years in prison. He went to Mecca a few years ago…. That is the only reason I can think of for his prosecution. My mother is crying every day… What can we do?”

“My daughter and son in law were detained in November 2017. They were detained without any reason and sent to a concentration camp. I only heard about their detention in May 2019. I wrote petitions to the Kazakh government. The Kazakh government told me they are Chinese citizens and there is nothing they can do.”

“Four of my family members are detained (Duisen Ahmethan, Qanigul Qanibek, Zhenishan Zhanbirbai and Lazzat Qanibek).’’

Duisen Ahmethan was sentenced to 10 years in prison. Zhenisan was detained in January 2018 and later sentenced to 6 years in prison. Lazzat went to China in August 2016 and had her passport seized; she spent 16 months in a concentration camp and was then given a 10 year prison term. Qanigul went to China in August 2016 and had her passport confiscated. She was later taken to a camp where she spent 2 years before being given an 8 year sentence.”

“My brother, Birlesbek Ermekbai, is an Imam. I just learned that he had been sentenced to 11 years in October 2018. Most likely he is in a camp. I haven’t talked to him since 2015. I was afraid to contact him because people who had relatives abroad were in danger, so I stopped any contact with him after I moved to Kazakhstan in 2015.”

“My brother, Myrzan Baqythan, has been sentenced to 14 years. He was a government approved Imam. I talked to my sister-in-law yesterday. I haven’t talked to my brother since his detention. The official reason for his detention given on his incarceration notice is: ‘advancing religious extremism.’”

“My friend Erbolat Baiken has been detained along with with his 2 brothers and father. They were given a sentence between 3 and 15 years. The reasons for their detention have been numerous. In fact, they are leading figures in society and successful businessmen who also bought real estate in Kazakhstan.”

“My brother (Bekzat Bolathan), was born in 1985. He was detained in April 2017 and sentenced to 17 years in prison. The reason for his detention and sentence is unknown. I am just an ordinary farmer; the authorities haven’t told me anything about his sentence. My parents are in China. They are free but we have no communication. Their WeChat account was closed. I have heard that my father went to look for my brother in prison, but they didn’t allow him to visit. He was once able to bring clothes and medicines and money.”

“My two brothers (Amangul and Estai Agymolyda), sister (Rabekan Agymolyda), and sister in law (Yrysgul Qaztai) were sentenced to between 11 and 14 years in prison in June 2019. They have been transferred from camps to prisons. Even though the authorities say they are releasing people, the number of detainees in camps is decreasing while the number of people in prison is increasing.”

“Two years ago, I became a Kazakh citizen. My wife (Qaisha Aserbek) and our daughter (Inzhu Arshyn) are not able to travel to Kazakhstan. They are Chinese citizens and their passports have not been issued by the Chinese authorities, which is preventing them from leaving Xinjiang and traveling to Kazakstan.”

All photos and text by
Iris Oppelaar

In a world where the visual is becoming an integral part of knowledge, visuals can also express scholarly knowledge.

As such, for the 2019 conference, the Central Eurasian Studies Society (CESS) organized its first-ever photo contest under the title: “The Researcher and His/Her Fieldwork in Central Eurasia“. In the gallery below, scholars and journalists present photos that reflect on the relationship between the researcher and the object of research and illuminate the different faces of fieldwork.

Photos by:

Abel Polese, Aksana Ismailbekova, Alexandru Badarau, Assel Choibekova, Cara Kerven, Kasia Ploskonka, Christian Kelly Scott, Everett Price, Jennifer Murtazashvili, Katerina Zach-Kozlova, Liliya Karimova, Matthew Brown, Moira O’Shea, Rashid Gabdulhakov, Farit Gabdulhakov, Snejana Atanova, Verena La Mela, Nyani Quarmyne, Laura Salm-Reifferscheidt and Talant Sultanov.

Abel Polese

Aksana Ismailbekova

Alexandru Badarau

Assel Choibekova

Cara Kerven

Christian Kelly Scott

Everett Price

Farit Gabdulhakov

Jennifer Murtazashvili

Kasia Ploskonka

Kateřina Zäch-Kozlová

Liliya Karimova

Matthew Brown

Moira O’Shea

Rashid Gabdulhakov

Snejana Atanova

Nyani Quarmyne

text by Laura Salm-Reifferscheidt, submitted by Talant Sultanov

Verena La Mela

Dinmukhamed Kunaev was a leader of Soviet Kazakhstan. As the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan he was in office from 7 December 1964, to 16 December 1986. The house opened as a museum on January 12, 2012, Kunaev’s birthday, and displays almost the entire heritage of its owner, creating an authentic atmosphere of the recent, but at the same time already distant past.

Kunaev’s niece Jannet Serikbayeva, head of the research unit of the museum, guides visitors around the last home of the prominent leader.

All the possessions in the apartment, carefully looked after by his descendants, seem to carry the warmth and spirit of their former owners. Rich bookcases and shelves are full of valuable historical artefacts, books, and albums gifted to Dinmukhamed Kunaev by famous people and statesmen from all over the world. He resided in this house for 30 years (from 1969 to 1993). These years were filled with epic events, fateful encounters, and family joy.

Jannet welcomes us to the study of Dinmukhamed Kunaev. Its walls are filled from bottom to top with books, including rare editions, complete works of various authors, magnificent art albums, and multi-volume encyclopedias, as well as souvenirs.

– Leonid Brezhnev was the one to initiate this building’s construction. Once, Dimash Ahmedovich (D. Kunaev) called Brezhnev to his previous house during the latter’s visit to Alma-Ata in the 1960s. Kunaev used to live on the corner between Kommunisticheskaya and Kirov Streets. Brezhnev was surprised to see that the Kazakhstan Republic’s First Secretary lived in a humble three-room apartment. He said: “Members of the Politburo live differently at our end.” He thought that the leader of such a big and rich republic should have lived in more comfortable conditions. Later, he insisted that Kunaev move to a larger apartment. The party officials wanted to build an entire mansion for this purpose, but Dimash Ahmedovich adamantly refused. He asked to build a multi-apartment block instead. However, security considerations for the first state official had to be taken into account. Thus, a nice living block with three entrances was built and D. Kunaev moved there in 1969 with his spouse.

Was Brezhnev so thoughtful? Well, he worked as the second secretary of Kazakhstan in 1954 (and as first secretary in 1955). Perhaps their characters matched on some level. Dimash Ahmedovich respected Brezhnev a lot and did not like jokes about him. He used to say that by over-presenting Brezhnev with awards, people around him were just using Brezhnev’s poor health in his later years.

Kunaev’s unique book collection contains up to five thousand volumes. These include world literature; Russian, Kazakh and Soviet classics; science and specialized books; and various encyclopedias, including history of art volumes. He read each of these books many times.

– His father, Menliahmed, would always tell him: “The reputation of a person must be like a white atlas, so that not even a water stain can be spotted on it!”, – says Jannet

Dinmukhamed would always bring art albums, which he very much appreciated, back from his travels abroad. Kunaev considered cultural envoys the foremost representatives of a country’s real image. Therefore, he strongly supported them. Starting in the 1960s, he helped organize full-length tours of Kazakhstan by the best Soviet theater and art groups.

Jannet accompanies us into the center of the spacious study and continues her narrative:

– This is Dimash Ahmedovich’s desk. It is arranged just the way it used to be during his lifetime. These are his manuscripts, clock, eyeglasses, calendar, and stationery. We added to it folders with letters from politicians and ordinary citizens with gratitude, thoughts, and requests, as well as his business card holder.

On the left, we see an elegant miniature depicting birds of paradise in a frame sitting on top of a cabinet. This was a gift from the Shahinshah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, given to Kunaev during his visit to Iran. To the left we see a sophisticated clock built into a decorative jug—a gift from the Kazakh diaspora presented to Kunaev in 1992 in Turkey, where he fled after being released from house arrest.

One of Kunaev’s biggest hobbies (apart from his passion for hunting) was collecting lighters and miniature books. He had an impressive collection of lighters, including 467 rare items. He smoked until 1974 but quit after the fourth heart attack. However, he continued to add to his collection all the same. During official visits, statesmen were given gifts to commemorate their stay in the country. Having learned about Kunaev’s hobbies, the British prime minister Anthony Eden gave him a lighter in the form of a two-volume book of Shakespeare in 1956. The one with a built-in figure of a geisha was a gift from the Japanese prime minister, Yasuhiro Nakasone. Another, shaped like a sitting camel, was presented by the president of Egypt, Gamal Abdel Nasser. Brezhnev also gifted him a lighter—this one had a built-in clock.

In 1977, Kunaev headed up the USSR parliamentary delegation to the UK Communist Party Congress. He was also invited to a reception hosted by Queen Elizabeth in honor of the 25th anniversary of her reign. She gave Kunaev two cups, now placed on the upper shelf of the cupboard. There is also a miniature depicting the sixteenth U.S. President, Abraham Lincoln, given to Kunaev in 1960 by then-President Dwight D. Eisenhower during his visit to the United States. In his diary, Eisenhower later wrote, “Today I met a great man. This is a deep politician, a person who has fully mastered people’s wisdom and a rare person in the Soviet Union.”

As a diplomat, Kunaev held negotiations with leaders with complicated characters. They included China’s Mao Zedong; North Korea’s Kim Il Sung; the Shahanshah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pehlevi; the president of Algeria, Houari Boumédiène; the president of Egypt, Gamal Abdel Nasser; and the Cuban leader, Fidel Castro.

Kunaev contributed substantially to the development of the capital – Alma-Ata. A significant amount of public funds were allocated to build Alma-Ata, called the Mecca of architectural art in the Soviet Union. He fought personally for each project and each building. He also put a lot of effort into getting funds from Moscow to build the Medeu dam that then saved the city from destruction by a mudflow. The explosion plan was carried out based on calculations made in 1938 under Kunaev’s leadership.

Dinmukhamed Ahmedovich had been inviting eminent architects from all over the USSR. He did not simply check on the running of the project; he would select places for construction and make sure that each building would be in harmony with the environment. The city had been developing for decades and centuries, and while the change is inevitable, it should not be dissonant with time. Therefore, none of the buildings constructed during his time in office was out of place. This was also how Kunaev raised the image of the state.

Jannet now takes us to a spacious dining room with a giant table for 12 people with a snow-white tablecloth on it.

This is where the owners had welcomed their big family, celebrated happy occasions, and hosted guests, treating them to overseas fruits sent from Cuba by Fidel Castro and from North Korea by Kim Il Sung.  Jannet proudly shows us the furniture:

– Note that all the cupboards in the living room and the bookshelves in the study are proof that many factories and plants operated during Kunaev’s time. These cupboards and shelves were all mass-manufactured in the local Merey furniture factory.

To the right of the table, we see an exclusive Romanian walnut hunting buffet with bronze fittings, Tuscan marble worktops, and crystal (used instead of glass). This work of art was made on the special order of Leonid Brezhnev for his friend. It features exotic figurines and objects, gifts from the state leaders of Eastern countries.

In 1955, when Dimash Ahmedovich became prime minister and chairman of the Council of Ministers of Kazakh SSR, the prime minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru, a politician with massive international prestige, visited our country. Alma-Ata was the only city besides Moscow to enjoy a visit from such a high-ranking official, suggesting that Kazakhstan was known internationally long before its independence in the early 1990s. During his visit, the Indian prime minister gave Kunaev this statue of an elephant.

Upon Kunaev’s resignation, Moscow under Gorbachev launched a criminal investigation, accusing him of tribalism and nepotism. Over 20 of his associates were arrested. Moscow sent a high-profile investigator, V. Kalinichenko, to Alma-Ata. However, the latter could not find anything on D. Kunaev. He had no villas, no cars. All he ever had was one state apartment, a state summer cottage, and souvenirs. He also gave all particularly valuable souvenirs to the state and kept all the receipts for purchases made abroad. This is what saved him in 1986 when he was accused of bribery!

Diyar Kunaev, his nephew, who lived in the apartment after Kunaev passed away, adds, concluding the story:

When Dimash Akhmedovich retired, Olzhas Omarovich Suleimenov gave him the idea to write his own memoirs. As a philologist, I offered him my services. He sat down and produced numerous texts. And I would type them on a typewriter. In his book, he analyzed his path, recognizing his own mistakes and the crimes of Stalin’s regime.

He could not stay still without doing any work for long. In 1992, D. Kunayev created a charity foundation that would provide assistance to veterans and the disabled. Soon he was driving around the regions of Kazakhstan like in his earlier days. But on August 22, 1993, his heart stopped beating…