On 31 May each year, Kazakhstan holds a solemn day of remembrance for the millions who perished during the Soviet-era famine and political repression. This year, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev laid a wreath at a memorial ceremony, underscoring that the nation's 20th-century tragedies must not be forgotten.
The Great Famine and Collectivisation
By the 1930s, the Bolsheviks had consolidated power and embarked on an aggressive industrialisation drive through forced collectivisation. In Kazakhstan, this meant the wholesale confiscation of livestock from nomadic herders. Andrey Drebezgov, head of the Exhibition Department at the KarLag Museum, explained: “When people were herded into collective farms, enormous herds would be concentrated in one place. This led to deaths from lack of food.” The Red Army later slaughtered much of the remaining cattle, unable to feed them. Herd numbers collapsed from 40 million to just five million. For a people whose primary sustenance came from cattle, this triggered widespread starvation.
Out of a population of six million Kazakhs, approximately two million died of hunger, and another 600,000 fled to neighbouring Soviet republics, as well as China, Iran, and Afghanistan, seeking to escape a similar fate.
KarLag: Kazakhstan's Largest Labour Camp
Kazakh intellectuals who criticised the government's excessive policies were arrested, exiled, or executed. Between 1920 and 1953, more than 100,000 people were convicted in Kazakhstan alone, with 25,000 sentenced to death. The Karaganda Corrective Labour Camp, known as KarLag, was one of the largest in the USSR, spanning 20,800 square kilometres — an area once compared to the size of France. From 1931 to 1959, about one million people passed through its gates. While some 5,500 were shot, the majority died from harsh conditions, including extreme cold and overcrowding.
Personal Stories of Persecution
For some, the outcome was immediate execution. Rakhat Amanbayev’s grandfather, Amanbay Kaspakbayev, served as secretary of the Central Executive Committee of the Kazakh Soviet Republic. “In October 1937, during regular dinner, NKVD officers came in, brought charges, and took him away,” Amanbayev recalls. Documents obtained after the Soviet collapse show Kaspakbayev was accused of being a fascist, a Trotskyist, and of helping suspected dissidents. He was sentenced to death and executed on 27 February 1938. His wife, as the spouse of a “traitor to the Motherland,” was arrested and sent to the Akmola Camp for the Wives of Traitors to the Motherland (ALZHIR). After eight years of hardship and abuse, she retrieved her children from a relative and moved away, as their village resented the family of an “enemy of the people.”
Another prominent figure was Saken Seifullin, a Kazakh poet, promoter of the Kazakh language, and former head of the Kazakh Republic. He ensured official documents were written in Kazakh and helped restore the historic name of the Kazakh people (previously incorrectly called Kirghiz Kaisak). For this, he was accused of nationalism and anti-Soviet activity — ironically, he was a revolutionary and a Bolshevik. “It was Sunday, 24 September. Two men came for him and went into the house. They showed him a paper, and Saken Seifullin immediately turned bright red, and then suddenly black,” said Altay Kussainov, grandson of Seifullin’s only surviving younger brother.
Seifullin’s young son died on a train during deportation; his daughter had died earlier. His father and older brother were also executed. His younger brother survived only because he was too ill for the NKVD to bother with. From 1937 to 1957, the Seifullin family lived under the label “enemy of the people.” Kussainov recalled: “My mother still remembers how they pulled her hair at school. And then there was this constant fear that one day, God forbid, someone would report them and something might happen.” No university would admit the child of an “enemy of the people”; when she finally gained entry to the Zoological Institute, a denunciation forced her to complete her studies in secret. Her father struggled to hold a job for 20 years, dismissed each time his connection to Seifullin was discovered.
Rehabilitation and Legacy
After Stalin’s death in 1953, many were amnestied and rehabilitated. Both Seifullin and Kaspakbayev were rehabilitated in 1957. In 1993, independent Kazakhstan adopted a law on the rehabilitation of victims of political repression, restoring their reputations and compensating their families. The annual remembrance on 31 May serves as a stark reminder of the human cost of ideological extremism and the importance of preserving historical memory.
