Dark Shadows: Inside the Secret World of Kazakhstan

Description

“Dark Shadows is a compelling portrait of Kazakhstan, a country that is little known in the West. Strategically located in the heart of Central Asia, sandwiched between Vladimir Putin s Russia its former colonial ruler which sees Kazakhstan as its own backyard and Xi Jinping's China the rising global superpower on its eastern borders this vast oil-rich state is carving out its place in the world as it contends with its own complex past and present. Journalist Joanna Lillis paints a vibrant picture of this emerging nation through vivid reportage based on 13 years of on-the-ground coverage, and travels across the length and breadth of this enigmatic country that lies along the ancient Silk Road and at the geopolitical and cultural crossroads where East meets West.Featuring tales of murder and abduction, intrigue and betrayal, extortion and corruption, this book explores how a vainglorious president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, transformed himself into a potentate and the economically struggling state he inherited at the fall of the USSR into a swaggering oil-rich twenty-first-century monocracy. A colourful cast of characters brings the politics to life: from strutting oligarch to psychotic presidential son-in-law, from principled politicians to striking oilmen, from crusading journalists to courageous campaigners. Dark Shadows explores how Kazakhstan grapples with its Russian imperial and Soviet past, with survivor testimony recounting a dramatic history of revolution and war, famine and flight, terror and trauma that left the Kazakhs battling for their very survival as a people. One elderly lady recounts her forced march to China to escape famine as a child; another tells of her deportation to Central Asia as a newborn; a third recalls how Stalin's Terror despatched her grandfather to the firing squad and her grandmother to the Gulag. There are heartrending stories about life in post-Soviet environmental disaster zones: victims of nuclear testing around the site where the USSR exploded its first atomic bomb; fishermen left stranded in the desert as the Aral Sea shrinks; villagers in the snow-bound north afflicted by a mysterious sleeping sickness. There are quirky snapshots of life in far-flung corners of Kazakhstan, from the Russian Old Believers harbouring 500-year-old grievances to the maverick atheist who refuses to back down in a clash of principles with the state. There are inspirational tales of labours of love: from the nuclear-physicist-turned-ostrich-farmer tending his brood of gangling bipeds on the southern plains to the minister-turned-viticulturalist reinventing a dilapidated Soviet collective farm as a boutique winery. Traversing dust-blown deserts and majestic mountains, taking in glitzy cities and dystopian landscapes, Dark Shadows conjures up Kazakhstan as a living, breathing place, full of extraordinary people living extraordinary lives” Contents Map of Kazakhstan Kazakhstan historical timeline Note on transliteration and names Introduction I. The Making of a Potenta 1 Arise, Kazakhstan 2 A Family Affair 3 Don’t Mess With the Boss 4 Fault Lines in the Feel-Good Factor 5 Publish and Be Damned 6 Trials and Tribulations 7 Bread and Circuses 8 Back to the USSR 9 Stop the Presses II. Identity Cris 10 Kingdom of the Kazakhs 11 Mother Russia 12 Death to the Past 13 The Gulag Archipelago 14 Exile of the Innocents 15 Sparks of Tension 16 December of Discontent 17 Lure of the Land 18 Homeward Bound III. Stories from the Step 19 Keeping the Faith 20 Opium of the People 21 Culture Wars 22 The Curse of Corruption 23 The Shrinking Sea 24 The Wasteland 25 The Ranch 26 The Slumbering Steppe 27 The Collective Farm Notes Bibliography Acknowledgements Index