Shayakhmetov himself was expelled from school and his family could not find work or accommodation. Shayakhmetov’s father was forced into exile as a kulak and his family was tainted by the same brush.
Repeated visits depleted them of all their animals and possessions even the bed upon which an invalid family member was sleeping was taken from under her.
Branded as kulaks for ostensibly possessing too many animals and being well off, the Shayakhmetov family was reduced to dire poverty as Communist officials demanded payments for unforeseen taxes. The author appears on the cover (at left) at age seventeen in 1939.Īt age 84 Shayakhmetov wrote about his life as part of a nomadic herding Kazakh clan and the devastating end to his family’s lifestyle as Kazakhstan was transformed from these generations-long traditions and forced into the new experiment of collective farming. I came across the title in the bibliography in Sovietistan.
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