The Hungry Steppe: Famine, Violence and the Making of Soviet Kazakhstan
Arizona State University (ASU), Narxoz University and Nazarbayev University held the first ever public discussion between the U.S. and Kazakhstani higher education communities about the Kazakh famine of 1930-1933.
The famine was part of a radical social engineering scheme that is estimated to have killed the highest percentage of any ethnic group in the Soviet famines of the early 1930s. It is considered one of the most catastrophic parts of Kazakhstan’s and the Soviet Union’s history in which 1.5 million people died, including up to 42% of the native Kazakh population and many other ethnic groups, including Russian peasants.
About 60 people attended the livestreamed forum at ASU, in Kazakhstan and online worldwide. The event is part of Narxoz Global’s international seminar collaborations with partners around the world in coordination with the Narxoz School of Society, Technology and Environment and the Narxoz Eurasian Center for Economic and Legal Research.
The collaborative event highlighted Dr. Sarah Cameron’s book, 'The Hungry Steppe' (Cornell University Press, 2018), which critically analyzes the famine and its connections to contemporary society, as well as Dr. Cameron’s research focus on genocide, crimes against humanity, environmental history and the societies and cultures of Central Asia. Dr. Sarah Cameron is a professor in the Department of History at the University of Maryland in the USA.
Russian and Kazakh translations are available through NLO. The Kazakh translation is forthcoming with Dossym Satpaev’s Risks Assessment Group. Sarah Cameron can be reached at scameron@umd.edu.