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Introduction
Between 1931 and 1933, approximately 1.5 million Kazakhs died — roughly 40% of the entire Kazakh population. Another million fled the country to China, Mongolia, Iran, Afghanistan, and Turkey. In three years, Soviet policies destroyed what centuries of invasion and colonization had not: the Kazakh way of life.
The Kazakh famine was not a natural disaster. It was the result of deliberate Soviet policies: forced collectivization of livestock, forced sedentarization of nomads, and grain requisition quotas that left nothing for the people who grew the food.
IThe Destruction of the Nomadic Economy
The Kazakh economy had been based on pastoral nomadism for three thousand years. Kazakh herders moved their livestock — horses, sheep, cattle, camels — across seasonal pastures in a sophisticated annual cycle refined over millennia.
Soviet planners viewed nomadism as primitive and incompatible with socialism. Beginning in 1929, they implemented two simultaneous policies:
- Collectivization: Private livestock was confiscated and combined into collective farms (kolkhozes). Herders who resisted were classified as bai (rich) and deported or killed.
- Sedentarization: Nomadic families were forced to settle in fixed locations, ending the seasonal migrations that were essential to the livestock economy.
The results were catastrophic. Herders slaughtered their animals rather than surrender them to the state. Those who were forcibly settled had no agricultural knowledge and no infrastructure. Livestock numbers collapsed: from 40 million head in 1929 to roughly 5 million by 1933 — a loss of nearly 90%.
IIThe Famine
With their livestock gone and their nomadic economy destroyed, Kazakhs began to starve. The famine struck with particular severity in 1932-1933:
- Entire auls (villages) were found empty — everyone dead or fled
- Families ate leather, grass, and the bark of trees
- Reports of cannibalism reached Moscow but were suppressed
- Local Communist Party officials who protested were removed or arrested
The Soviet leadership knew what was happening. Filipp Goloshchekin, the Party boss of Kazakhstan, continued to enforce grain requisitions and confiscation quotas even as people died. When Kazakh Communist leaders like Turar Ryskulov and Smagul Sadwakasov wrote to Stalin describing the catastrophe and pleading for relief, they were ignored or punished.
The famine was not limited to Kazakhstan — Ukraine suffered simultaneously in the Holodomor. But proportionally, the Kazakh famine was even more devastating: roughly 40% of the Kazakh population died, compared to approximately 15% in Ukraine.
IVMemory and Recognition
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Keywords
famine1932GoloshchekincollectivizationsedentarizationSovietAsharshylykЕНТашаршылық
Sources
This article references 4 academic sources. Selected references used in preparing this article.
- 01
Sarah Cameron, The Hungry Steppe: Famine, Violence, and the Making of Soviet Kazakhstan (Cornell University Press, 2018)
- 02
Robert Kindler, Stalin's Nomads: Power and Famine in Kazakhstan (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2018)
- 03
Isabelle Ohayon, La sédentarisation des Kazakhs dans l'URSS de Staline (Maisonneuve & Larose, 2006)
- 04
Zhulduzbek Abylkhozhin, 'The Kazakh Tragedy,' Voprosy Istorii, Vol. 7 (1989)