Kazakh Nomads: Thousand-Year Routes, Environment and Political Oppression

Kazakhs were living the life of nomads when their herds were grazing in the vast territories of the Eurasian Steppe. Military and political domination of nomads in Eurasia have faded since the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries for various reasons as their controlled territories shrunk. The Russian empire started expanding in the eighteenth and was completed in the nineteenth century. However, Russian authorities during Tsarist times were not so heavily involved in the internal economic activities by the Kazakhs. Tax collection and land expropriation were the main instruments of colonization. Soviets dramatically changed the Kazakh nomadic lifestyle by forceful expropriation of cattle from them, forcing millions of people to die. Today, the nomadic way of living has changed and has even survived in some areas. In this chapter, we analyze Kazakh nomadic pastoralism in historical, geographical, environmental and current everyday aspects. First, we look at Kazakh nomadic practices before and in the late Russian colonization which was a continuation of the oldest routes and practices. Then, we look how the Soviets in the 1930s tried to totally destroy the life of Kazakh nomads by expropriation of their livestock. As a result of these actions more than a million Kazakhs lost their lives. In Kazakh tradition it is called a disaster of famine or Asharshylyq, similar to Ukrainian Holodomor. Soviets later revived nomadic practices as it was the only livelihood option in the steppe. Finally, we explore contemporary practices of nomadic pastoralism in environmental and economic contexts.