Surviving genocide, ethnocide, ecocide and linguocide: the 20th century through the eyes of a Kazakh

For those who dream of returning to the USSR, believing that this was truly a “family of fraternal peoples”, it would be good to know exactly how these peoples relate to their “bloodless” conquest and absorption first by the Russian Empire and then by the Soviet regime. It would not be bad, instead of empty dreams, to realize the historical responsibility of Russia to the conquered peoples, be they Kazakhs, Estonians, or Chechens. And it is this history that should be taught in Russian schools, along with the history of tsars and general secretaries. So that children write essays from the point of view of these people. And as an example, cite the post of the Kazakh blogger Chingiz Ibragimov:

“Nowadays, a publication called “Imagine You were Born in 1900” is gaining popularity on the Internet. And then there is a story about how a European born in 1900, who survived the plague, the Nazis, the Vietnamese war, lived his life.

And it ends with an edification to those who were born in 1985.

But there is another version. More rigid and harsh.

Kazakh version.

Imagine that you were born in 1900 in an ordinary Kazakh family.

You could not go to a madrasah or school, because the tsarist policy destroyed education, spirituality and enlightenment. You were born in a time of brutal colonial oppression. The best lands, pastures, access to drinking water were taken from your family. You were simply pushed out of the shore of the lake and at the foot of the mountain towards the arid and wild steppe with one well for the entire village.

When you turned 10, you were constantly struggling with the effects of drought and jute. Every day you thought about how to survive this barbaric oppression.

When you turned 16, you unwittingly became a participant in the national liberation uprising, which grew into interethnic clashes. Cossacks and the imperial punitive army simply chopped down with sabers and shot them with rifles.

When you turned 18, your country was mired in a viscous and dirty civil war, when brother went against brother.

When you turned 20, you and your family were subjected to the policy of war communism and the weaning of food for the needs of the revolution, because of which you and your family had to survive from hunger, cold and disease. You saw with your own eyes the mountains of corpses when one in five died.

When you turned 28, a second wave of plundering expropriations and marauding requisitions unexpectedly began in the country, which forced you and your family to fight death again over the next five years. You again took up arms to protect yourself from looting and robbery by the authorities. Some of your loved ones left for the cordon as beggar refugees. You buried your parents, loved ones, children who died the most terrible death in the wildest torments. You even had to eat carrion, surrogates, cats and dogs. And sometimes dead and human flesh. You have lost at least 60% of your people in a short period of time.

When you miraculously turned 33 years old, you were herded as livestock and animals to a collective farm, where there was nothing but a cesspool for biological waste.

By the time you turned 35, concentration camps with barbed wires had already been built up throughout your homeland. You went to plow a quarry, a combine, a railway road, where no one paid you anything.

When you turned 37, the Great Terror and mass repressions had already begun throughout the country, when anyone could simply be taken and shot without trial. And you saw your loved ones, relatives, friends, acquaintances and neighbors shot dead.

When you turned 41, you were thrown into the very heat of the front like cannon fodder, having issued one gun for a hundred people and a saber against a tank. But you survived there, despite all the circumstances. On your return, you were sent into exile in Kolyma for hard labor.

When you turned 47 years old, the country was again gripped by a ruthless famine. Even the most eminent Kazakh wrestler died in complete poverty.

When you accidentally turned 50, they started throwing nuclear bombs on your head like the world had never seen before.

When you turned 55, you were subjected to a policy of segregation and living on a reservation with no access to cities.

After retiring and moving to the city, you began to fight poverty, stood in lines for a loaf of bread and a carton of milk. In addition, he endured the bullying of the chauvinists, who insulted you in every way.

Throughout your life, you have experienced genocide, ethnocide, ecocide and linguocide. They tried to burn out national identity and originality from you with a hot iron. Your language, culture, traditions, religion, history and writing were taken away from you.

As an experiment, they tried to create a new species of living creatures out of you - Homo sovieticus.

You have undergone such trials that you can erect a monument for your endurance and desire to survive.

And with all this, you have preserved humanity in your heart and kindness in your soul.

You have died a thousand times and reborn a thousand times.

A child born in 1985, a resident of a developed Western state, has no idea what kind of hell the Soviet Union was for someone who was born in 1900 in an ordinary Kazakh family..."