Post-Soviet Chaos: Violence and Dispossession in Kazakhstan (Anthropology, Culture and Society Series)

225 Pages·2001·1.32 MB·English

by  Joma Nazpary

POST-SOVIET CHAOS
Violence and Dispossession
in Kazakhstan
JOMA NAZPARY
P
Pluto Press
LONDON • STERLING, VIRGINIA
First published 2002 by Pluto Press
345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA
and 22883 Quicksilver Drive,
Sterling, VA 20166–2012, USA
www.plutobooks.com
Copyright ©Joma Nazpary 2002
The right of Joma Nazpary to be identified as the author of this work
has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs
and Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Nazpary, Joma.
Post-Soviet chaos : violence and dispossession in Kazakhstan/
Joma Nazpary.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0–7453–1503–8 (hbk) — ISBN 0–7453–1597–6 (pbk)
1. Kazakhstan—Social conditions—1995– 6.
Post-communism—Kazakhstan. 3. Alienation (Social
psychology)—Kazakhstan. 4. Capitalism—Kazakhstan. 5.
Women—Kazakhstan—Social conditions. I. Title.
HN670.23.A8 N38 2001
306'.095845—dc21
2001000156
ISBN 0 7453 1503 8 hardback
ISBN 0 7453 1597 6 paperback
Designed and produced for Pluto Press by
Chase Publishing Services, Fortescue, Sidmouth EX10 9QG
Typeset from disk by Stanford DTP Services, Towcester
Printed in the European Union by TJ International, Padstow, England
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements vii
Note on transliteration viii
Glossary ix
1. Introduction 1
The Aims 1
Chaos 3
Chaotic mode of domination 4
The dispossessed 13
Structure of the book 16
2. People and places 20
Method 20
Almaty 26
Kazakhstan 28
3. Bardak: Elements of chaos 33
Accumulation of wealth in a few hands 33
Violence 43
Feelings of loss 49
Conspiracy theory 58
Conclusions 60
4. Networking as a response to the chaos 63
Definitions 63
Reciprocity and networking as strategies of survival 64
Networking 81
The negative effects of change on networks 85
Conclusions 88
5. Women and sexualised strategies: Violence and stigma 90
Finding a job 90
Finding a sponsor 96
Finding a husband 99
Sex work 103
Stigma and violence 120
Conclusions 126
vi Post-Soviet Chaos
6. Construction of the alien: Imagining a Soviet community 127
The negative construction of the Soviet identity 127
Consumerism and the dispossessed 139
Wild capitalism as an element of the alien 142
Conclusions 143
7. Ethnic tension 146
Kazakhification of the state 146
The struggle for urban space and the fragmentation of Islamic
identity 171
Conclusions 174
8. Conclusions in a comparative perspective: Whose transition? 176
Notes 195
Bibliography 200
Index 209
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
My foremost gratitude goes to those people in Almaty who helped me in
conducting the research which led to the writing of this book. Although I
cannot mention any name for ethical reasons, this book would not have seen
the light of day without their generous support. Many children, men and
women, from different walks of life and from different ethnic backgrounds
sheltered me, included me in their circles of reciprocity, protected me
against dangers, shared with me knowledge and taught me how to find my
way in the social-cultural labyrinth. I hope this book will convey their
feelings about their plight to the reader and thereby encourage her/him to
take part in the struggle against the global capitalism, which is the prime
cause of such a plight.
I am also grateful to the following people: Nancy Lindisfarne advised
me on my research at different stages; her intellectual and moral support
was indispensable. John Gledhill made thorough and thoughtful comments
on an earlier draft. Sarah Ashwin also read an earlier draft and made stim-
ulating comments. Caroline Humphrey, Stuart Thompson and Richard
Taper have also made critical comments on various chapters. Jonathan
Neale carefully edited an earlier draft. Fiona English taught me how to
improve my English and her sympathetic attitude towards my research was
a great moral support.
I also have received moral, intellectual and editorial support from Bernice
Alcock, Jeanne Cannizzo, Vahid Ghazanfari, Celyan Heaton, Tim Ingold,
Hoshang Noraiee, Lena Ryen, and Andrew Turton.
I am also very grateful to the members of the Department of Social
Anthropology, the University of Edinburgh and the Royal Anthropologi-
cal Institute for awarding me the Leach/RAI fellowship to complete this
book.
Finally, many thanks to Pluto Press, particularly Roger Van Zwanenberg
for his enthusiasm and encouragement.
vii
NOTE ON TRANSLITERATION
I have used the modified Library of Congress Transliteration, used in The
Slavonic and East European Review.
viii
GLOSSARY
aul smallest unit of the Kazakh traditional society; a group
of nomadic families who moved together
bardak chaos (lit. brothel; metaphorically: extreme disorder)
bednye poor/dispossessed
blat personal influence
Buryats a minority group of Mongolian origin, living in the
Russian federation
Chengizid assumedly descendants of Genghis Khan
CIS Commonwealth of Independent States
dikii kapitalism wild capitalism
Eighth of March International Women’s Day
glasnost openness
INGO International Non-Governmental Organisation
Karavan local Almaty newspaper
Khoje assumedly descendants of Mohammed
kolkhoz collective farm
Komsomol the League of Communist Youth (Soviet)
liubovnitsy mistress(es)
mejles parliament
menbet rural, provincial (derogatory)
MVD Ministry of Internal Affairs (Soviet)
narod the people
novye bogatye new rich
Nuvroz New Year
OBEP Organisation against Economic Crime (Russian abbrevi-
ation)
tenge Kazakhstan currency (from 1995 to 1996 the exchange
rate dropped from $1=53 tenge to $1=70 tenge).
verny faithful
vziatka bribe
yurt tent
zhuz tribal confederation
ix
1 INTRODUCTION
THE AIMS
Most people I met in Kazakhstan described the post-Soviet change as chaos
(bardak) and described themselves as dispossessed by this change.
Two young Kazakhs describe below aspects of what people called chaos.
A young Kazakh man:
The life stinks here. Everybody has become a Raskolnikov without his
conscience. He killed an old woman but went mad for that. In
Kazakhstan today you can kill a person for $100 in the morning and in
the evening drink the money with a prostitute in a restaurant without
having any regret. You will sleep without nightmares. The next day you
are prepared to kill anybody again for $100. This is our life. It is not only
what our elite and mafia do but everybody has the same mentality. Our
people (nash narod) are starving but they are building their villas in
Medeo,1 buying their Mercedes and spending money on prostitutes in
restaurants.
A young Kazakh woman:
Before, in the Soviet time, there were moral limits and the authorities
looked after them. There were high moral standards and the party took
care of them. ... But today people have become like savage animals. They
behave according to the law of the jungle. Everybody who is strong hits,
rapes, murders and robs everybody else who is weak.
A Russian worker gave an illustration of chaos and dispossession by
commenting on the following event. On 9 October 1996, Aleksaner
Petreovich Terletskii, a 56-year-old Russian worker, poured a bottle of
petrol over himself, and set light to himself and burned to death in front of
the office of the Belgian multi-national company Traktebel. The event
received high coverage in the Russian-speaking media and great attention
in my neighbourhood. The man was working as a driver in one of the
Almaty energy stationswhich were bought by the Belgian multi-national.
Somebody had stolen his wallet, which contained his driving licence and his
1
2 Post-Soviet Chaos
salary. He said to a colleague that he would go to the police station to make
a report. After making the report he went to work, but was told by the
manager of the station that he was sacked for leaving work without
permission. He resorted to the other authorities without any result. Finally,
he became so desperate that he burned himself in protest. As result of this
event Traktebel, already feared and hated in my neighbourhood, was dis-
credited further. People were particularly furious because the man had been
working for the station for a long time and had only two years to go to his
pension. A Russian unemployed electrician, who gave me the news first,
was of the opinion that directors in the privatised companies treated workers
as slaves. Then he added: this is chaos (Eto bardak).
Bardak, which literally means brothel, was used as a metaphor for
complete chaos. It was used to describe different elements of the current
situation such as corruption, cynicism, violence, the mafia, lawlessness and
arbitrariness of state officials, the dissolution of the welfare state, the dis-
possession of a wide range of people from economic and social rights,
alcoholism, prostitution, ethnic conflicts, despair, suicide and fear of the
future. Another key word which was interchangeably used with chaos was
wild capitalism (dikii kapitalism). Bardak is a metaphor with multiple inter-
related meanings. It generally connotes the extreme legal and moral
disorder in the social life. When it is used to describe a field of social
relations it means that the interaction between people is based on illegal
and immoral ways such as chicanery, corruption and use of force. The very
arbitrariness inherent in the current situation is described as an absolute
disorder (chaos). It is used to describe disorder and lack of control in a
person’s mind or life as well.
But the chaos is seen by the dispossessed to affect different people in
different ways. Those who are already powerful use these arbitrary methods
to subjugate those who are weaker. The dispossessed used the words poor
(bednye (plural), bednaia (feminine), bednyi (masculine)) and poverty
(bednost) to depict their own dispossession and lack of power in general as
a results of the chaos. What the dispossessed describe as ‘chaos’ are the cir-
cumstances of their plunder: a situation which they think has been
deliberately created by members of the former Soviet elite and a variety of
Westerners.
The aims of this book are to describe and analyse the main elements of
the post-Soviet ‘chaos’ in Almaty, Kazakhstan, from the point of view of
the dispossessed and their responses to it. All names in this book, except
those publicly known, are pseudonyms.
My focus is the way in which dispossessed people understand and react
to what they term ‘chaos’ and their own dispossession and the variety of