In TransitTraditional and Soviet Influence in KazakhstanA resurgent traditionalism and ghost of the USSR have made a paradox of the Kazakhs' political, religious, and social character.
I see no sign on the trackless steppe: "You are leaving the world's largest republic." From the berth of the train, all that is visible of the countryside are spikes of shrubbery jutting out of parched earth. It could easily pass for New Mexico, but the grazing camels and yurts dotting the landscape leave a deeply Asian imprint on the scene. In medieval times, swarthy, bearded Mongols roared across this land, leaving a wake of destruction. Life couldn't seem more peaceful, though, as we pass herds of sheep and camels lazily foraging through the sparse vegetation between villages. The massive arteries of this rail system sprawl between Russia on the north, China to the east, and the other "stans"&-Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan&-to the south. Although Kazakhstan is the ninth-largest country in the world, it is also one of the least densely populated, with just seventeen million people inhabiting a region the size of western Europe. As we pass through the severe, desertlike topography, I am reminded why there are only two people per square kilometer. The name Kazakh-not to be confused with Cossack-means literally "free rider, adventurer, outlaw." The Kazakhs were originally nomadic shepherds who viewed land ownership with suspicion. Today Kazakh land is ironically considered an asset of international interest, attracting a host of foreign investors like Coca-Cola and Lockheed Martin. Chevron has just signed a $20-billion, forty-year deal on the Caspian coast, hailed as the biggest oil venture since the Alaskan pipeline. Risk-hungry investors are getting wind that storehouses of oil, gas, silver, gold, and plutonium make Kazakhstan per capita the richest country in the world. And not unlike the Alaskan gold rush, they are coming in droves to stake their claims. Aggressive hospitalityA lmost a year earlier, soon after my arrival in Kazakhstan, I was waiting anxiously in rural Ak Shakur with a colleague. Our hosts could hardly contain their excitement. It was our first time, we confessed, having a traditional Kazakh meal. They studied our faces as a group of seven or eight young girls dressed in vibrantly embroidered costumes sang for us and strummed the dhombra, the two-stringed national instrument. Then they hastily brought out a silver water pitcher and towel and proceeded to wash our hands. After leading us inside the dome-shaped yurt, they motioned for us to sit on the stuffed corpays (cushions) hiding the floor. It took a minute to adjust to the sharp decrease in light, but our pupils soon dilated, welcoming a brilliant explosion of color: sequined blankets stacked to the ceiling, ornate velvet robes hanging from a wooden frame, brightly hued storage boxes stacked all around.I can understand why many traditional Kazakhs continue to live in yurts. These highly portable dwellings are cool in summer and warm in winter&-ideal for pastoral living. The amply padded corpays were comfortable as we dug into the first round of culinary delights. Kazakhs serve first and ask questions later, a form of reception known as "aggressive hospitality." This concept has a few significant differences from its Western counterpart. "In our culture, it is rude to ask a guest if he wants tea," said Gulnara Aiturova, a somewhat traditional Kazakh who works as an interpreter in a large joint-venture oil company. "You just serve it to him," she elaborates, adding, "maybe he is a shy person who really wants tea but is afraid to ask." True to form, a friend of the host scooped a healthy portion of meat onto my plate. I gulped to hide my surprise when I found that this warm, tangy substance was actually horsemeat sausage. As I washed it down with the cream-colored beverage shabbat, they watched my expression. The fermented camel's milk tasted like carbonated buttermilk. Kazakhs consider hospitality the touchstone of their culture. "We Kazakhs have a proverb," said an elderly teacher from a nearby university. "If a six-year-old child comes from afar, a sixty-year-old man must come and greet him." For our main course, we were to have sheep's head, which is a great honor. The head is served only on the most special occasions, and custom dictates that the eldest male should carve it and distribute the pieces among the group. Often, the pieces are doled out in ritual: "the tongue, so you may be a clever speaker"; "the eye, so that you may see decisions clearly"; "the ears, so that you may listen to your elders." The name of the dish is bish pannak, and it is the national meal. Literally, it means "five fingers"&-a meal meant to be eaten with your hands. I was given some of the cheek and brain and found them an ample trade for the six long inches of blackened tongue that passed by. We did our best to clean our plates, only to learn that a clean plate is a sign that one wants more. Like clockwork, they filled the empties with additional foodstuffs, and only when we were unable to finish completely did they believe that we were truly satisfied. I chuckled quietly at what my mother had wrought in teaching me to always clean my plate. The meal was interspersed with long toasts honoring the host and friendship between our two countries. I was unused to sitting in the lotus position, so I shifted my legs to the side. Surprisingly, the move attracted immediate attention: "Mark sits like a Kazakh girl," said one loudly, while the others laughed. I had to laugh, too, but was able to regain my composure enough to come up with another toast. Finally, a round of tea was served, symbolizing that the afternoon had come to a close. We said hearty good-byes and headed home. Aqtau e take a taxi ten miles into Aqtau, a city of 170,000. As we make our way across the steppe, a mountain of high-rise tenements juts up against the
horizon. The architecture is uniform, offering little variation in its brown, blocky stone, save the cleanly printed number on the upper corner of each
building. Soviet architects were not known for their aesthetic savvy.
The first thing I notice about daily life is the lack of water. It's 6:00 ^p.m.^ when I turn on the bathroom faucet. Nothing. This is a familiar ritual that the people here anticipate: Most use their bathtubs as storage tanks. Today, rusty water makes the tub look as if it's filled with Orange Crush. My hosts immediately point to a cleaner bucket of water next to the sink. They explain that the desalination plant fueling the city's pipes is slowly dying; it lacks pressure to feed so many conduits. Sometimes it works fine. Sometimes it doesn't. But it always keeps the people guessing. Ironically, coastal Aqtau nestles against the Caspian, the world's largest saltwater lake. Like Coleridge's Mariner, its people keep drawing at the well and finding "water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink." After washing up, the Azanbayev family grins eagerly as they usher me toward a table spread with food. They insist I take the seat farthest from the door, reserved for the eldest male or honored guest. They are to be my hosts for the duration of my teaching stint at Aqtau University, where their son Karim is a student. He seems excited to get more practice in English, and his mother seems eager to teach me Kazakh. I stumble through our first language session, an ad hoc dinner course: "Ka-sukh, " she says, pointing to a teacup. I repeat after her. "P-shock," she says, pointing to a knife. I botch some of the utensils, but it's still all smiles and a few laughs. I am endeared by their sense of hospitality and the warm welcome. After tea, Mrs. Azanbayev lays out a corpay for me. I sleep soundly. A new creed"Spit! Spit! You must spit!" says Karim's mother, demonstrating. In my avuncular zeal for coo-cooing cute babies, I had inadvertently broken one of the cardinal rules of Kazakh etiquette: never compliment a child's beauty. Traditional Kazakhs such as the Azanbayevs are superstitious. They believe that a compliment directed at a child can be a door for the "evil eye," a curse inviting sickness or death. Compliments usually bring frightened looks followed by the spitting ritual, which is believed to drive away the evil spirits. Karim pulls me aside and explains the tradition in more detail, confessing that he had a younger brother who died as an infant, and that both he and his family believe that a passerby's spell was responsible for the death. In an attempt to prevent further tragedy, the Azanbayevs decorate baby blankets with small, eye-shaped ornaments, talismans designed to ward off evil intentions.The name of Karim's irresistibly cuddly nephew means "slave of Allah," a corporeal tribute to the family's religious heritage. I find the name surprising, considering the seventy-year Soviet assault on religion. Although most Kazakhs call themselves Muslims, not all are as devout or superstitious as the Azanbayevs, and many are atheists. Ancient nomadic Kazakhs were pantheists who worshiped the sun and the sky. In the eighteenth century, after meeting with Sunni Muslims of the Hanafi school, a majority became Islamists. Under Soviet rule, formal atheism classes were mandated. The ongoing metamorphosis of Kazakh culture has birthed a syncretism of religion, irreligion, and superstition that is the popular creed. One corporate oil worker I met went so far as to say: "I am a Muslim, but I do not believe in God." In the middle"Communism is the perfect system," argues 28-year-old Ablai Semigaliyev, using the present tense. With an army term in Moscow under his belt, he is a self-styled jingoist. He prides himself on reading the original Soviet writers and gets frustrated that so many Westerners see communism only in caricatured form. Ablai is proud, passionate, and articulate. He grows earnest in defending the old way: "Under communism, people had worth, respect. Today all people care about is money. ..." Life was better then, he says. "Every family had their own flat and anything they needed. The salary was regular, and there were no beggars in our system."As we talk, a young student walks in, listens for a moment, then interrupts. "He's not speaking to you about the charms of communism again, is he? My grandfather, he worked hard. He had a cow. He had a house. They said he was a bad man for having a cow, that he liked capitalism. Then they stole the cow and my grandfather disappeared&-I think he was in jail. That's communism." It is hard for me to believe that this is the way of life they have known until just a few years ago, and I am intrigued to hear their recollections of the mysterious world behind the Iron Curtain. Another student adds his perspective: "You'd stand in line for hours," he recalls, "but the line moved too slowly. You are very tired and everyone is angry. Some people are quarreling and using very cruel, bad words, and when you get close to the front of the line, you feel the pressure increasing. Finally some old man can't stand it and has a heart attack. ..." But the present, he says, is worse: "There are a lot of people, but money is short. There are lines for money. Sometimes the pressure in the lines is so high, you can't breathe at all. Sometimes people press against the wall and push you away with their feet." Even dyed-in-the-wool capitalists have a hard time finding a poster child for the new market economy. Although perestroika allowed a massive influx of quality Western goods, many people cannot afford them. Ablai laments the breakup of the USSR: "It was sad for everyone. It was unexpected because no one knew about the future, what would happen to us tomorrow. Everyone was scared. It was the same for everyone, because we were one country." My host Karim is equally sentimental about the glory days: "Communism was like paradise for me," he states intently, and he proceeds to describe the cheap prices and structured regularity that composed his paradisiac world. "Now we are not communists. We are not capitalists. I don't know what we are. We are in the middle." Tradition and RussificationDespite his nostalgia, Karim, like millions of Kazakhs, is struggling to step out of the shadow of the USSR. He is a more traditional Kazakh who speaks the language and follows the customs, and he must fight off feelings that those of his own nationality who don't know the language and traditions are turncoats."I don't like it when I ask a Kazakh something in Kazakh and he says, `Ya nue znaiyou Kazaksky' (Russian for `I don't know Kazakh')." Language and traditions are a sensitive issue, and it's difficult keeping pace with the rapid changes his people are undergoing. Just a few years ago, Kazakhs were made to feel inferior and publicly shamed when they spoke poor Russian, but a turn of events spawned a curious role reversal, and today, many Kazakhs are insulted publicly for not speaking good Kazakh. Karim's people sometimes use the derogatory term shala, meaning "half, dirty, or not pure," to describe Kazakhs who adopted the Russian language and traditions. These Kazakhs have a different outlook and see little or no ethnic difference between themselves and Russians. Many wanted the prestige associated with Russification and sent their children to Russian schools or migrated to Russian-dominated urban areas. Timur Chubaev, a young Russian who grew up in a village, describes the process of Russification: "They wanted to make the USSR like America&-a big melting pot&-to erase our differences, to make a new communist nation, a Soviet people without roots. It wasn't popular for young Kazakhs to speak Kazakh; it seemed old-fashioned to them. Even the older Kazakhs took Russian names or communist names&-even such curious names as `Marx' and `Tractorbek' (during collectivization, a tractor was a symbol of Soviet power). Now the Kazakhs who took Russian names are changing them back." Russified Kazakhs&-who generally live in larger cities, have more education, smaller families, and a Western worldview&-continue to quarrel with traditional Kazakhs, who toe the opposite side of the line. Since the fall of the USSR, the question: "What is a Kazakh today?" has haunted the average Kazakh. Even if they find an answer, it may differ significantly from that of the inevitable follow-up question: "What will a Kazakh be tomorrow?" Changed facesNiaz Tobisch is another victim in the cultural cross fire. Like Karim, he is searching for an identity. Niaz is a traditional Kazakh who fled to Iran during the Soviet regime to practice his native Islam. As a recent returnee to his home republic, Niaz feels handicapped not knowing Russian in a society where Russian is still prevalent. Sitting cross-legged around a table of bish pannak, he tells me how difficult it has been returning to a country that has changed faces. After dinner, he insists on walking me to the street to help me catch a taxi, but he offers this caveat. "If the driver is Russian, you must speak to him, for I do not know Russian."Russian was the official language from the Bolshevik Revolution until December 1991, when Kazakh, part of the Turkic-Mongol linguistic family, supplanted it as the new national language. A host of tumultuous changes occurred during that time. First, the communists changed the Kazakh language from Arabic to Latin script to keep Kazakhs from reading religious materials. Then, in 1941, Stalin demanded the language be changed from Latin to Cyrillic script. Now President Nazarbaev is considering switching back to the Latin alphabet, along with countries (like Turkey) that are part of the same linguistic family, to keep pace with rapid modernization. After the revolution, higher education was conducted completely in Russian. Thus, many parents sent their children to Russian schools to ensure they spoke good Russian. This was one of the major factors in the cultural amnesia that occurred during the Soviet era. Another key element was that Russian was considered a more refined language and brought about better jobs. Mass numbers of rural Kazakhs migrated to the Russian-dominated cities and accepted Russification as a worthwhile trade-off for the advancement opportunities it offered. Many Kazakhs still do not know their own language. They seemed instantly surprised and respectful that I could speak a few phrases in their native tongue. Taxi drivers sometimes insisted on waiving my cab fare, and vendors gave me free products at the bazaar to show their appreciation. For Niaz and his wife, however, knowing Kazakh in lieu of Russian offers no such rewards. He has learned to live with the handicap, though, and as he finally hails me a taxi, he shrugs off his plight with a smile: "It is not difficult for us," he says. "It is not easy for us, however ..." Where there's payNiaz throws up his hands in frustration. "Books, books... no books!" As a middle-aged teacher at a lycée for gifted students, he must try to make do with a dearth of educational resources, a plight typical of the pedagogue in Central Asia. I found the same quandary at the university, where I was teaching American literature with one set of books borrowed from America. A colleague of mine, recalling his attempt to teach class with the provided texts, laughed: "I'd look up Mark Twain and the text would read, `a popular nineteenth-century humorist.' Then it would say, `Mark Twain was also a member of the Communist Party. ...' "Higher education is plagued with a different problem: corruption. Administrators are trying to keep teachers' hands out of the students' pockets, but the system has developed an unfortunate motto: "Where there's a will, or there's pay, there's an A." One university junior at the top of his class remarked, "I got a four [a "B"). My teacher didn't like me too much ... he wanted money, to tell you the truth. Bribes are common here. You give the teacher your student's book, where the teacher writes your marks, and there'll be money inside it. Some `special' students, `spy' students, act as middlemen between the students and teachers. "Bribes were a common thing in Soviet culture," he continued. "You can still get a job if you manage to give your money to the proper man." Some Kazakhs contend that teachers are forced into corruption because they are not paid enough. But the system already reaches into empty coffers to pay the existing salaries. Honest teachers like Niaz struggle to survive irregular checks and budget cutbacks. It's a tough life. But he states proudly, "I was born to be a teacher. I have been teaching all my life." Big dreamsBack on the train, the incessant hum of rolling steel wheels becomes hypnotic. The sun drops below the snow-covered steppe, drawing a pinkish curtain over the changing land. I know that only a few hundred miles from the grazing camels lies the site of the former Soviet space program. Accountants in the cities work late at Big Six accounting firms, while small vendors pack up their black-beaded abacuses and go home. I know that New Kazakhs kick their seven-series BMWs into gear as average citizens pull their groceries through the snow on steel-railed sleds. I look out at the new republic, both Islamic and atheist, communist and opportunist&-seven years old going on two thousand. But the one common denominator that remains unchanged in the midst of transit is the hospitality of the Kazakh people. Once again, it warmly greets me."Would you like some tea," a voice bellows from below. "Da," I answer, looking down to see a generous spread of bread, jellies, cookies, and candies. Friendship for all Kazakhs begins around the tea table, and as I step down to the floor, a friendly face smiles as a hand motions me toward the small window table. They wait for a moment and then lift cups in toast. When it comes time, I also offer a toast, remembering an old Kazakh poem I learned: Dream, my son, dream.
Additional ReadingAnglo-Caspian Services, Caspian, Stephens and George, London, September 1995.Neal Bemards et al., The Soviet Union, Greenhaven Press, St. Paul, Minnesota, 1988. The Complete Guide to the Soviet Union, St. Martin's Press, New York, 1991. Glenn Curtis, ed., Kazakstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan (country studies), Federal Research Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., 1997. Ruth Daniloff, "Waiting for the Oil Boom," Smithsonian, January 1998. Paul Goble, "The Party's Over; The Nomenklatura Isn't," RFE/RL Newsline, December 29, 1997. "Notes From a Dying Spaceport," Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, October 1993. Klara Serikbaeva, Kazakhstan, Flint River Press, London, 1995. |
