Postcards from Stanland

by David H. Mould

  After years of travel in Central Asia, I have learned that you refuse food at your peril. Central Asians pride themselves on their hospitality, and even the poorest families feel both the duty and pleasure of entertaining guests, even if they do not have enough food for their own needs. Although it was acceptable to halt the supply of bread, cheese, sausage, and kasha from the canteen, I could not refuse food at a more formal occasion. And Semey State had apparently planned several for me. On the first day, I joined Yerlan Sydykov, the rector, and his five vice-rectors for a traditional Kazakh feast, with besh barmak, potatoes, and carrots, soup, salads, balkhash (a traditional fried dough), fruits, and sweets. The vicerector sitting to my right kept loading my plate with another traditional delicacy—horsemeat. When I protested mildly, he explained that there were several varieties, each with a different taste and texture, and I surely had to try them all. The eight people at the table ate a fraction of the food served. But that’s not the point. In Kazakh culture, you dishonor your guest if you do not prepare a huge spread. Sydykov told me that this tradition came from the days when his people were nomads, and visitors, bringing news from other places, were rare and welcomed.

  I expected a farewell lunch on my final day, so I did my best not to think too much about it, particularly about the part of the sheep, which (according to tradition) is presented to the guest of honor. The head duly arrived—very well cooked—along with a kitchen knife and instructions to cut pieces for all the guests. I’m not much good at carving the Thanksgiving turkey, and this was a more formidable task. I struggled for a few minutes while the vice-rectors looked on nervously. “Ot sebya! [away from you],” one urged, as the knife slipped. Fearing that my next trip would be to the hospital, they passed the task on to another guest who expertly extracted the meat. I was expecting to be offered the eye (as I had been at Issyk Kul), but I guess they’ve had dinner with enough Westerners to know that may be asking for too much cultural sensitivity.

  Lunch was in the university’s formal dining room. The decor was 1970s Las Vegas—walls painted in red, blue, and black, making the place look more like a night club than a dining room. It’s probably the right atmosphere because few evening affairs go by without karaoke, dancing to loud music, and vodka. Fortunately, my lunchtime send-off was more sedate, with the usual series of toasts and short speeches. I was touched by the warmth and hospitality of everyone I met, and the vice-rectors were generous in their thanks. They also felt warmly about the United States, which several had visited. One spoke about his stay at the University of Nebraska agriculture college. “Sredniy zapad—nastoyashaya Amerika [the Midwest is the real America],” he said several times. After many toasts and pledges of friendship, I was presented with gifts—a basket in the shape of a yurt, Kazakh-language books about the university and its symbolic founder, Shakarim Qudayberdiuli, a T-shirt, cap, and pen. The most impressive gift was a crimson velvet coat with yellow embroidery, the traditional dress of a Kazakh nobleman, and the pointed felt hat, called a kolpak (also found in Kyrgyzstan).

  I posed for pictures, packed up the coat and hat, and then set off by car to the next event—a concert by the Kazakh tenor Shakhimardan Abilov at the Semey Pedagogical Institute. As a foreign guest, I was expected to sit in the front row. I wasn’t expecting to sit in the front row dressed as a Kazakh nobleman, but my hosts insisted that I show up in my formal dress. I felt pretty conspicuous, but no one seemed to pay much attention. There are people in traditional dress at every cultural event.

  Shakhimardan is a national hero, who has toured internationally and devoted himself to teaching younger singers. He sang mostly in Kazakh, serious songs about Qunanbayev and funny songs about village life and courtship. He also sang in Ukrainian and Italian. The rector of the institute presented him with an honorary degree, and then there were more group photos with the recently minted Kazakh nobleman trying to hide behind the tallest person in the shot.

  I had met Shakhimardan the previous evening at a dinner given by Rector Sydykov at the university resort. He was an engaging character—“Just call me shark,” he said, baring his teeth. As the guest of honor (this time, he got the sheep’s head), he sat at the head of the table, and I was seated next to him. After a couple of toasts, he was invited to sing. I’ve never been that close to an opera singer before, and it was a powerful, moving experience. One of his protégés, sitting at the opposite end of the table, also sang and played the dombyra.

  The guest list—it was a strictly all-male affair—was a who’s who of the power brokers of Semey. Besides Sydykov, there was the rector of the pedagogical institute, a former minister of health (now rector of the Semey Medical Institute), a two-time mayor, the current mayor, and two leading local businessmen. The former mayor, who had once served as Nazarbayev’s security chief, kept wagging his finger at me. “You are CIA, you are CIA,” he jested. “Well, I guess that makes you KGB,” I answered. In the corner, the DJ cranked up the music every time a toast was made, while the staff filled the glasses with vodka and whisky. About two hours into the evening, Sydykov announced that it was time for a break. This was the cue for karaoke and billiards. The sport is popular in Semey, with many cafés and bars advertising billiards, but that night (after many toasts) no one was shooting very straight.

  Strong Leader, Successful Country

  On the drive out of town, I had asked Sydykov about his life. He grew up in a village in the Polygon and worked as miner before going to college and on to a career in academia and national politics. Sydykov said that almost every family in his village had at least one member who contracted sickness from radiation; his own brother died. He said one aboveground test took place less than twenty miles away. Along the road, he pointed out the secret clinic where Soviet doctors conducted tests of local residents for radiation.

  I had not expected to find much in common with Sydykov. He had recently gained less-than-positive Western news coverage for leading the campaign for a referendum to abolish presidential elections and make Nazarbayev president for life. The referendum initiative was thrown out by Kazakhstan’s Constitutional Court, but it earned Sydykov a national political profile. I had expected to meet a rabid nationalist and party loyalist, but instead I found a smart, urbane, and open-minded man who genuinely believes Nazarbayev’s continued presidency is best for the country’s economy and political stability.

  In some ways, it’s difficult to argue with that position. Kazakhstan is the most stable and prosperous country in Central Asia, with the highest average standard of living. No wonder the opposition parties are small, weak, and divided. Most people seem to accept that Nazarbayev will be in power for a long time, and they put their economic well-being and safety ahead of their political rights. A large banner in Semey’s central square summed up public opinion. Nazarbayev is shown in the archetypal leader-at-work pose, with his jacket slung over his shoulder. The slogan reads “Sil’niy lider—uspeshnaya strana [Strong leader—successful country].”

  Sydykov genuinely shares Nazarbayev’s vision of Kazakhstan as a modern nation, where peace, stability, and economic growth are more important than individual rights or democracy. His support also doesn’t hurt his career prospects. We said good-bye at the regional headquarters of Nazarbayev’s Nur Otan political party. He had taken time off from his duties as rector to head up Nazarbayev’s presidential campaign in Eastern Kazakhstan oblast. “Moy otpusk [my vacation],” Sydykov joked. Nazarbayev won the April election by the usual landslide, and Sydykov’s star has continued to rise. In 2012, Nazarbayev promoted him to be rector of ENU in Astana.

  You Are Kazakh, No Matter Where You Were Born

  I had one more cultural experience in Semey—an invitation to the traditional Russian banya. In the sauna, a large fire heats stones in a fireplace. Your companion douses the stones with water, creating hot steam. As you lay on the bench, he beats you with the leaves of birch branches to help the steam circulate through your body. Then you either go roll in the snow—not recomm
ended, in this case, because of pedestrians and traffic—or jump into a small pool. Then you eat horsemeat, chicken wings, nuts, and fruit, drink vodka, play billiards, and do it all over again. If you’re a regular at the banya, you keep going back for more steam and beatings. I could do it only twice because the steam was incredibly hot. I finished with a massage and slept very well.

  I talked with my banya hosts about our lives and families. When I explained that I was born in the UK, have lived in the United States for more than half my life, have dual citizenship, and do not feel a strong sense of identity, one looked puzzled. “If your father was Kazakh, you are Kazakh, no matter where you were born or where you live,” he said.

  Even as society changes in Central Asia, family membership continues to carry both rights and responsibilities. One of my hosts told me that five hundred people (almost all family members) were expected at his father’s upcoming sixtieth birthday party, and that he and his brother each had to commit $1,000 as a birthday present. On the other hand, if he had financial or personal difficulties, all family members would help as much as they could.

  In the traditional herding economy, people traveled as a family unit and lived in a yurt. In the modern economy, based on oil, gas, natural resources, and commerce, more people move away from their families to find work. As the percentage of the population living in urban areas and working for salaries and wages increases, maintaining the ties of tribe, clan, and family is becoming ever more difficult.

  eleven

  Wheat and Oil

  Is This How Russians Live?

  As the train pulled out of Astana, Valery opened the first bottle of cognac and was figuring out how much alcohol our compartment would need for the fifteen-hour overnight trip to Kostanai. It was only 4:30 p.m., and, with several hours of daylight left, I wanted to look out the window, not drink. But to be sociable, I agreed to a couple of shots.

  Half an hour later, I escaped to the corridor for an hour before returning to the compartment. Valery and his friend Igor were already almost through bottle number two and had bought another bottle of vodka from the drinks trolley. The restaurant car served vodka and cognac by the glass, but for those who want to drink in compartments, a vendor plies the corridors.

  Sensibly, Valery and Igor were also eating—dark bread, cheese, sausage, piroshky, and strong Russian mustard. Valery slapped mustard on a slice of bread and cheese and passed it to me. I felt as if my head was going to explode. “Good for your health—you won’t get a cold,” Valery laughed as I gasped and turned red. “Here, have more vodka.”

  As the evening wore on and the alcohol took its toll, the conversation became more animated and difficult to follow. Valery and Igor were on their way to Kostanai oblast in northern Kazakhstan for a hunting and fishing trip. I must have skipped the chapter on winter outdoor sports in the Russian textbook because most of the vocabulary was new to me. There was a lot of extending of arms and simulated “boom boom” gunshot noises as virtual ducks fell to earth.

  Valery, who said he loved all sports and was wearing a David Beckham T-shirt, wanted to know why I had never served in the military. He was reluctant to accept my explanation that there was no military service requirement in the UK and that I had arrived in the United States too late to be drafted for the Vietnam War. Military service was compulsory in the Soviet Union, and Valery served in Afghanistan. “A useless war,” he admitted, yet he still seemed to resent those who, in his opinion, had not served in the military. My argument that there are other ways to serve one’s country did not impress him.

  By 10 p.m., everyone had settled down for the night. Then the snoring started. It didn’t bother me while we were moving because it was drowned out by the sound of the train, but it woke me when we stopped at stations, as we did four or five times after midnight. At 3 a.m. at an isolated town on the frozen steppe, there’s no traffic and no people. Only snoring.

  At 6 a.m., the attendants knocked on the doors to tell passengers we’d be arriving in Kostanai in an hour. Valery swung down from the top bunk, opened a bottle of beer and offered me another. I politely refused. He smiled. “Now you know kak russkiye zhivut [how Russians live],” he said, with a smile. I wanted to say I hoped not all Russians lived that way but recognized the sincerity of the hospitality. It was another warm memory of a cold winter.

  On the Northern Border

  The city of Kostanai (population 215,000) is on the northern edge of the steppe where it meets the pine and birch forests that stretch for thousands of miles across northern Kazakhstan and southern Siberia. Kostanai is 90 miles from the Russian border, and about 220 from the industrial city of Chelyabinsk, which grabbed world attention in February 2013 when an 11,000-ton largest meteor, the largest to fall to earth since 1908, exploded overhead. Almost 1,500 people sustained injuries, mostly from shattered glass, and 3,000 buildings were damaged. The meteor was seen by Kostanai residents, with one of the most widely circulated photos taken from a dashboard camera in a car on the Kostanai-Chelyabinsk highway.

  Within a few hours Russian bloggers and tweeters were offering their own spins on the phenomenon—that the Americans were testing a new weapon, that it was a Kremlin or opposition plot, or that it was “the lighting of the Olympic flame—space giving its blessing to the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics.” In Russia, Chelyabinsk is often the butt of jokes for its pollution and harsh living conditions. One blogger commented: “The asteroid’s inhabitants watched in horror as they approached Chelyabinsk.”

  Although there were no injuries or damage in Kostanai, its majority ethnic Russian population sympathized with Chelyabinsk residents. The two cities have close ties. Because food and other items are cheaper in Kazakhstan, many Russian citizens cross the border to shop. For most residents, Russian is their first language, and little Kazakh is heard on the streets.

  The city was founded on a trading route on the Tobol River which runs north to the Irtysh, and then joins the Ob, the second-longest river in Asia, at the Russian river port of Omsk, flowing north to the Arctic Sea. Since the 1950s when Khrushchev launched the Virgin Lands program, Kostanai has been a center of the northern wheat belt, storing and shipping grains. The region has large deposits of iron ore and other minerals, including bauxite, gold, silver, and nickel. As the administrative capital of the province, Kostanai has a diversified economic base, with universities and technical institutes, hospitals, government offices, and cultural and sports facilities. It’s a quiet, friendly, and clean city, with boulevards, parks, theaters, and museums.

  Kostanai State University, a former teachers’ college, has about 12,000 students. Like other universities, it is officially named for a national hero—Akhmet Baitursynov, a writer, translator, and teacher, noted for his adaptation of Arabic script for the Kazakh alphabet. Like many Kazakh intellectuals, he was active in politics and a fervent nationalist. In 1909, he was arrested and exiled, returning after the 1917 revolution to join the Alash Orda political party. After the Soviets reasserted control, he worked on education reform but was arrested in 1937 for harboring “bourgeois nationalist sentiments” and summarily executed. He is not some distant historical figure; his writings are part of the national high school curriculum; university administrators in Kostanai mention him in almost every discussion; an annual conference is held in his honor; and most students seem to know who he was and the values he represented.

  The rector, Askar Nametov, told me he was under pressure from the Ministry of Education and Science to meet “international standards.” Nametov was most concerned about research productivity. In its effort to establish itself as a leader in science and technology, Kazakhstan wants its academic researchers to publish in Western peer-reviewed journals. Kostanai State University has strong departments of agronomy and veterinary science and is doing research on algae as biofuels, reckoning that the more than five thousand lakes in the province can be an important future source of energy. It will be an uphill battle. In the Soviet era, research in most disciplin
es was published in slim, cheaply produced paperbacks, often without outside review. At regional universities, scientific researchers lack equipment and funding, contacts with Western colleagues, and English-language skills. “We are traveling in a plane but we need a rocket,” said Nametov. Or maybe a meteor.

  Don’t Mess with the Restaurant Critic

  The deputy editor of Kostanai’s Nasha Gazyeta (Our Newspaper), Timur Gafurov, had attended my curriculum workshop in Astana in 2010. Nasha Gazyeta, which is about as independent a newspaper as the local authorities will tolerate, was doing pretty well, judging by the number of advertising column inches and its coverage of business and social issues. It has to be cautious in its political coverage, but still manages edgy, sometimes critical, tongue-in-cheek reporting. In Kazakhstan, all regional officials are appointed, and the 2011 presidential election provided an opportunity for Nazarbayev to shake up subordinates and build alliances. When Prime Minister Karim Masimov showed up to announce the appointment of the next akim (governor) of the oblast, Nasha Gazyeta ran a front-page picture showing the current akim, Sergey Kulganin, and Masimov, seated at a table with an empty chair, with the headline, “The Secret of the Third Chair.” “Only Nazarbayev knows who the next akim will be,” Timur told me. “It’s always a big secret.” However, no one was really surprised when Kulganin was reappointed, making him one of the country’s longest-serving akims. He’s not that popular in Kostanai, but evidently Nazarbayev was happy with his performance. He was just made to sweat for a few weeks and no doubt reaffirm his loyalty.