It’s difficult to blame ENU, the journalism faculty, or the Soviet legacy for all my challenges. And maybe I could have pushed harder to make a difference. But there’s one more culprit—a US embassy more interested in maintaining relations with a politically powerful university than in improving journalism education. “You’re causing a lot of trouble,” the embassy cultural affairs officer scolded me. “We need to maintain a good relationship with ENU.”
I wanted to remind her that I was an academic, not an agent of US foreign policy, but I resisted. Instead, I said it would have helped if the embassy had explained the purpose of my six-month teaching fellowship to the ENU administration. “Well, I really don’t know much about higher education,” she replied. I could admire her honesty, but it did not bode well for US support of higher education in Central Asia.
nine
Coal and Steel
High Plains Country
Half an hour out of Astana by train heading southeast, the urban sprawl—factories, warehouses, shopping malls, apartment blocks, and residential subdivisions—peters out and the landscape opens out to the steppe. This is Kazakhstan’s High Plains country—eastern Montana, Wyoming, or the Dakotas, but even more thinly populated. The grassland stretches as far as the eye can see.
When we think of the steppe, we usually think flat. But the Kazakh steppe is not flat, at least not in the way that the glaciated agricultural regions of Illinois, Indiana, and my adopted state of Ohio are flat. The steppe gently undulates, and in places is broken by low hills. Most is grazing country; the climate is too arid, the soil too thin and poor in most places to support crops. It is almost treeless, except for the scrubby bushes clinging to life on the banks of streams.
The villages also seem to cling to life along the railroad tracks, although the train passes by without stopping. Herding families live in small, single-story stone and brick houses, the whitewash and paint weathered by the summer sun and winter snows. The houses have dirt yards, animal sheds, hay piled on the roofs for winter feed, and small vegetable gardens. It’s a world away from the high-rise architecture of Astana.
The train’s final destination was Zhezkazgan in central Kazakhstan, a twenty-four-hour trip from Astana. Ten minutes after departure, the two attendants in my car were distributing sheets, pillows, and blankets to passengers. On this Soviet-era train, there were no sleeping compartments—just sections with lower and upper seats for beds, with mattresses. An hour into the trip, some passengers were already asleep. Others were eating. You don’t go on a train journey in Kazakhstan, especially in winter, without bringing food because many trains don’t have a restaurant car. It’s customary to share food with fellow passengers. Hot water for tea and soup comes from a cistern heated by a coal stove.
The young couple sitting opposite offered me bread, sausage, and cookies. They both worked in Astana and were on their way to a village near Lake Balkash to visit relatives. We talked about travel. Train journeys across Kazakhstan can take as much as three or four days, and I asked them how they survived long trips. The question surprised them. Most people in Kazakhstan traveled by train, they said. “You are from the United States, another large country. Don’t people travel by train there?”
I didn’t need the bedding because I was getting off at Karaganda, 150 miles from the capital and almost four hours on the train. It’s faster by bus or marshrutka, but some people prefer train travel in winter because icy conditions or snowdrifts make driving dangerous.
Half an hour from Karaganda, the landscape changed again. Lines of freight cars in railroad sidings. Trucks waiting at railroad crossings. Half-demolished factory buildings and warehouses with broken windows, rusty metal pipes, and abandoned heavy machinery. The air was cloudy with smoke from factories and coal-fired power plants. The land was dotted with artificial hills—coal tipples, partly covered by the snow. In the distance, mine elevator towers with conveyor belts extended like tentacles to the railroad tracks and service roads. The train stopped briefly at a way station, and attendants filled buckets with coal for the furnaces heating the cars and the hot water stoves. We were in coal country.
The Middle of Nowhere?
The Russians call it Karaganda, the Kazakhs Qaragandhy. However you spell it, no one—not even the most enthusiastic local booster—would claim that this blue-collar city of almost half a million in the northern industrial belt is a tourist destination. It has the economic base of an Akron or an Allentown, but without an inspiring industrial history of individual enterprise or collective struggle. The first edition of The Lonely Planet Guide uncharitably described the city, halfway between Moscow and Beijing, as “a bleak place on the steppe surrounded by iron and steel works and microregions of apartment blocks, and beset by the typical problems of a post-Soviet industrial city. No one comes here who doesn’t have to.”1 Its reputation as a remote, inhospitable, and polluted place, honeycombed with mine tunnels, surrounded by coal tipples and inhabited by convict labor, made it the punch line in Soviet jokes. In the prepositional case, ver Karaganday (in Karaganda) rhymes with a different Russian word and the final syllable with the word for where (gde). Depending on the context, it can mean “in the middle of nowhere,” “in a bad place,” or something much too rude to print here.
Coal mining began in 1857 to supply a copper smelter, but the industry remained small until the late 1920s when the bituminous coal reserves of the Karaganda basin were developed to supply industrial plants in the Urals. Mine labor initially came from the kulaks, peasant landowners who had resisted the forced collectivization of agriculture. Dispossessed and disenfranchised, they were sent to the northern forests or industrial areas of Central Asia. The first wave of prisoners arrived in Karaganda in 1930–31. Many more from all over the Soviet Union were to follow. The city became the center of a vast penal colony, much of it directly controlled by the NKVD secret police (officially the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs) in Moscow.
In its early years, Karaganda consisted of several dozen mining settlements, scattered over an area of about 300 square miles. Soviet planners wanted to build an administrative and cultural center, with wide streets, parks, and monumental public buildings, but it was too risky to start construction over mine tunnels. No apparatchik wanted to report to Moscow that the local Communist Party headquarters had suddenly disappeared into a big hole in the ground. A site south of the mining area was selected for the “New Town” with construction beginning in 1934.
The city expanded during World War II when the Soviets moved factories, machinery, and workers east to prevent them from being captured by the Germans. Karaganda’s prizes included the giant Parkhomenko coal-mining machinery works from the Donets basin of Ukraine. New iron and steel works supplied munitions for the front. Cement plants and food-processing industries were established. Kazakhstan has the largest coal reserves in Central Asia. In the late 1980s, it was supplying 25 percent of the Soviet Union’s coal and generating 27 percent of its electricity from coal-fired power stations. Kazakhstan’s growing economy has increased demand for electricity, and new coal-fired power plants have opened or are under construction.
Although many of the public symbols of Soviet ideology have been quietly removed since independence, those to mining and miners have been preserved. The Miners Palace of Culture is a major landmark in Karaganda’s “New Town.” The Russian word for mine is shakhta, and it’s the root of the name of several districts—Shakhtan, Shakhtinsk and Shakhtersky—a homage to industry rivaled only by the less picturesque name of the Tsemzavod (cement factory) district. Fans of the city’s Premier League football team, Shaktyor Karaganda (the Karaganda Coalminers), are as loyal as any from Manchester or Glasgow. The coal miner is still a symbolic worker-hero. A billboard on the highway to Astana proclaims, “All honor and glory to coal miners.” Another shows a miner peering into a misty (and noticeably unpolluted) future, with the slogan “From the energy dream—to the energy reality.”
Like all industr
ial cities, Karaganda has its seamy side. When the economy tanked after independence, industrial cities were hit hardest. Factories and mines closed, throwing thousands in Karaganda out of work, with little prospect of new jobs. Some left for Russia or Germany. Some who stayed turned to private enterprise, which, at least in the early to mid-1990s, was sometimes indistinguishable from organized crime.
As a major road and rail transshipment point, Karaganda was well placed to participate in the underground economy. If you were making money at that time in Central Asia, you were probably in the import-export business, bringing in truckloads of cheap Chinese clothes, electronics, and kitchenware, and better-quality goods from Europe. Your retail outlet was the bazaar or often literally the back of a truck parked at the bazaar.
In the mid-1990s, Karaganda’s ethnic German population briefly opened a new branch of the Silk Road to Germany, using their contacts, relatives, and language skills. The big-ticket items were used autos purchased (or sometimes stolen) in Germany, driven more than 4,000 miles across several borders (with bribes to customs officials) and then resold on the used-car lots of Karaganda. No certificate of title required. At that time, most cars in Central Asian cities were Soviet-era Ladas, Moskviches, and Nivas. Most of the foreign-made cars were German—Audi, BMW, Mercedes. “Where did you buy your car?” I would ask a driver. More often than not, the answer was Karaganda.
Today, most business in Karaganda (including the auto business) is aboveboard, although the underground economy chugs along, petty corruption persists, and tax evasion is common. The same could be said of every city in Central Asia, so Karaganda is by regional standards a pretty normal place. But some locals take perverse pride in the city’s criminal record, just as Boston, Chicago, and New York residents boast about the rough, tough neighborhoods where they were raised.
“Igor is from the ghetto,” my interpreter Irina Velska told me with almost a straight face as she introduced her boyfriend. The word seemed out of place in Karaganda, an ethnically mixed city with no discernible residential segregation or ethnic enclaves. In Russian, the word has largely lost its ethnic associations and simply refers to an economically depressed, high-crime urban area. In Karaganda, the “ghetto” is Mikhailovka, a district of dreary, Soviet-era apartment blocks with a high incidence of street crime and drug use.
Igor nodded solemnly in agreement, informing me that Mikhailovka was well known in criminal circles in Moscow. Then his face broke into a broad smile. If I ever wanted to visit Mikhailovka, he would come along and provide protection. He knew the mean streets of the ’hood.
Igor is no street thug. He has a university degree and works as a graphic designer for a company producing magazines and brochures. But he’s stocky in build and looks as if he’d be on the winning side in a street or bar brawl. I made a mental note to take him along if I ever needed to go to Mikhailovka.
Karaganda may never be able to shake off its reputation for crime and grime, but by 2009 Lonely Planet had revised its “bleak place” description. Karaganda was “a pleasant city, with avenues of trees and a large central park providing greenery, and the downtown revived with shopping malls, cafes and restaurants.”2 That’s the Karaganda I know. I like the city partly because it’s so different from Astana. In its made-for-government-and-business new city, Astana’s modern architecture seems to serve only two purposes—to house government ministries and their staffs, and to impress foreign visitors. By contrast, the factories and mines of Karaganda produce stuff, even if they create dirt and smoke doing so. Karaganda is a working city. It has a reason to be.
TV Star of the Hostel Cafeteria
My first visit was in mid-March. Karaganda was still firmly in the grip of winter—deep snow, average temperatures minus 10 to minus 20 Celsius and a bitter wind blowing off the steppe. It may be a few degrees warmer than in January or February, but it doesn’t feel that way.
I had come to teach at the journalism kafedra (department) of Karaganda State University (KarGU). My hosts had booked me a room at the gostinitsa universiteta (university hotel). It turned out not to be a hotel but the hostel where new students stay for a few days while they look for permanent housing. The building doubled as the student medical center (sanatoria), so at least it was clean, but it reminded me of the dreary obsh’ezhitiyi (dormitories) where most university students live. I had a small single room with a short bed, a chest of drawers, a rickety writing desk, and one electrical outlet that hung dangerously out of the wall. At least there was hot water in the shared bathroom. I stuffed a sock in the hole in the window frame to keep out the cold and slept in my long johns.
At least I didn’t go hungry, because my hostel package included breakfast and lunch. Breakfast was always kasha and tea. It’s a challenge to make porridge look appealing, but the cooks did their best with the aid of food coloring. Each day, the kasha was a different color, albeit within a limited chromatic range from beige to yellow. The taste did not change with the color, but it was satisfying and warming—the right stuff to prepare me to tramp through the snow to class. Most days, I returned for lunch, which was almost always mutton and noodles. It did not vary in color.
Foreign professors are a rare sight in the hostel cafeteria, and the cooks were friendly and curious. “I saw you on TV last night, Channel 5 News,” one said, as she served me. I asked if she remembered what I said in the interview about journalism education. She said she didn’t, but that I looked very nice on TV. I guess this supports media research studies that suggest it’s the image that’s recalled—not the content of the message. The next morning (after another TV interview), another cook said she had seen me on Channel 7. I figured it wasn’t worth asking the same question again so I just made a joke about doing too many TV interviews and thanked her for the kasha.
The journalism department at KarGU has the third-largest enrollment in the country with about 120 students in a four-year program. The teachers were worried about a proposal from the Minister of Education to close all journalism departments at regional universities. Only KazNU in Almaty and ENU in Astana (where I was officially assigned) would offer journalism majors. It was presented as a fiscally responsible plan to avoid duplication of programs and reduce costs. Given the government’s reputation for unnecessary spending, no one bought that line. The teachers saw it for what it was—a thinly disguised attempt to seize control of journalism education. In the view of some officials, the goal of journalism education should be to prepare students to work in government media and corporate public relations. The rectors of regional universities, most of whom are political appointees with lobbying clout, opposed the proposal, and most people I talked to thought it lacked the support to be implemented. Still, I got a round of applause from students and teachers when I said that centralizing journalism education would be a disaster—both for higher education and the profession.
Meiran Zhumabekov, the young chair of the department, invited me home for dinner. Meiran, his wife, and two young boys lived in a new apartment in a sprawling high-rise development, partly financed by government subsidies to keep prices affordable. Until they bought the apartment, they had lived with his mother and other relatives—eight people in an apartment with two bedrooms and a living room. Many other families in Central Asian cities live with relatives because of the housing shortage and the cost of rents and mortgages. Meiran apologized for the lack of furniture but explained that, even with two incomes and a subsidized mortgage, the family was struggling to make ends meet.
The meal was traditional Kazakh—besh barmak (boiled lamb and noodles) with salads. Meiran said the meat was from a freshly slaughtered sheep from his wife’s village near Lake Balkash. We also enjoyed fresh, sweet butter made by her mother. As is customary, Meiran offered me vodka and cognac but did not seem offended when I limited myself to one glass.
Welcome to the Karlag
QUESTION TO ARMENIAN RADIO: Is it true that conditions in our labor camps are excellent?
ANSWER: It is tru
e. Five years ago a listener of ours raised the same question and was sent to one, reportedly to investigate the issue. He hasn’t returned yet. We are told he liked it there.
Although the Soviet Union claimed to protect the rights and cultures of ethnic minorities, in practice the leadership feared ethnic and religious unrest. In the 1930s and during World War II, thousands from Karelia to the Caucasus were deported to labor camps (gulags) in Siberia and Kazakhstan. Collectively, the deportees were known as the Trudarmiya (Labor Army). The zeks (convicts) were forced to work in agriculture, factories, and mines.
The word gulag has come to signify isolation, back-breaking labor, and systematic physical and mental oppression, connotations that are largely absent in its original etymological form. The Soviets had the habit of using long, pretentious (and sometime innocuous-sounding) bureaucratic phrases for state institutions. In ordinary speech, no one wanted to use the full phrase (even if they could remember it) so acronyms and compound words were developed. GULAG is short for Glavnoye Upravleniye Ispravitel’no-trudovykh Lagerey (Main Administration for Corrective Labor Camps). “Lager” was imported (in a minor historical irony) from the German, where it also means “camp.” KARLAG, the collective name for the prison labor camps of the Karaganda region, has a similar etymology—the Karagandinskiy Ispravitel’no-trudovoy Lager’ (Karaganda Corrective Labor Camp). It’s not difficult to imagine how the term Karlag carried other, more sinister, overtones. In Russian, the verb karat’ means “to punish.” In Kazakh, kara simply means “black.”
Volga Germans made up the largest ethnic group in the Karlag, and their descendants have documented the experiences of those who survived and died in written and oral testimonies. The Karlag system consisted of about seventy-five camps, some designated for specific groups or purposes. Intellectuals, scientists, and artists were sent to the Dolinka (little valley) camp, thirty miles from Karaganda. Ajir, thirty miles from Astana, was reserved for “The Wives of Traitors of the Motherland,” housing women and children after their husbands were executed as “enemies of the people.” The most notorious camp was Spassk, known as the Camp of Death because of its high execution rate and large population of sick prisoners.
Postcards from Stanland Page 26
