Darya Bukhtoyarova presented this talk as a part of SHSS Seminar Series at Nazarbayev University in Astana, Kazakhstan. Darya was trained as an anthropologist and now works as a reference librarian at Nazarbayev University Library.

1. 1990S IN KAZAKHSTAN:
COUNTRY CHANGED,
LIVES CHANGED.
Darya Bukhtoyarova
SHSS Seminar Series
March 2012

2. DECEMBER 1991 – DISSOLUTION OF THE
SOVIET UNION
Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP
Boris Yeltsin and Mikhail Gorbachev, 1991

3. KAZAKHSTAN IN 1991 – THE LAST TO
LEAVE USSR
• Lithuania – March 11, 1990 Referendum in March 1991: 94.1%
• Latvia – May 4, 1990 of population voted for remaining in
• Georgia – April 9, 1991
the Soviet Union
• Estonia – August 20, 1991
• Latvia – August 21, 1991
• Ukraine – August 24, 1991
• Belarus – August 25, 1991
• Moldova – August 27, 1991
• Azerbaijan – August 30, 1991
• Kyrgyzstan – August 31, 1991 “independence… thrust upon
• Uzbekistan – September 1, 1991 Kazakhstan” (Bhavna Dave, 2007)
• Tajikistan – September 9, 1991
• Armenia – September 21, 1991
• Turkmenistan – October 16, 1991
• Kazakhstan – December 16, 1991
• Russia – December 24, 1991

4. ETHNIC
DIVERSITY
http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/commo

5. LARGEST CITIES
CIA Map of Kazakhstan 2001

6. SHYMKENT IN 1991
• 3d largest city in the country
• population = over 600,00 (735,000 as of 2010)
• developed industrial center: oil, metallurgy,
rubber, concrete, pharmaceuticals, consumer
goods, etc
• regional center but still a periphery compared
to Almaty
• higher percent of the population ethnically
Kazakh than in other oblast’; large percent of
ethnic Uzbeks
• high rural population, constant migration to
the city
• often stigmatized in the rest of the country,
nicknamed…
• “Texas”

7. CRISIS OF THE 1990S
• Industrial production decreases dramatically: by
40% between 1991 and 1996
• Unemployment skyrockets: 12% in 1996, 24 % in 1997,
35% of population lives below the poverty line in
1996
• General sense of uncertainty: political, ethnic,
economic…

8. DOESN’T THIS REMIND YOU OF
SOMETHING?...

9. RESEARCH QUESTIONS
• How did Kazakhstani residents perceive and
experience the 1990s in general? How is this time
described today?
• What were some of the major challenges and how
did people deal with them in everyday life?
• In dire economic conditions and with a rapid
change of an economic paradigm, how did
people in Kazakhstan make their living?
• How did factors like gender, ethnicity or class/family
background shape their experiences?

10. ANTHROPOLOGICAL METHODS
• 2 months of research in Shymkent in summer 2009
• 12 in-depth interviews – life histories with particular
focus on 1990s
• 42 - 71 years old
• 9 women and 3 men
• different ethnic backgrounds
• snowball sampling
• 20+ short conversations

11. FROM LIFE HISTORIES TO MAIN
THEMES
• “awful conditions:” lack of utilities;
• unemployment and professional change;
• change of personhood: importance of self-reliance;
• networking and mutual support

12. “ABSENCE OF CIVILIZATION
GOODS”
• Shymkent – problems with gas, electricity, heating
and water, especially in 1996-1998
• One of the most difficult aspects of 1990s, a
“monstrous experiment on people”
• Increased burden on women (cooking, washing,
ironing…)
• Metaphor for degradation and backwardness
• Electricity and heating become the most valuable
commodities
• But also humor and warmth when remembering
community life and mutual help

13. UNEMPLOYMENT AND JOB
CHANGES
• Unemployment: 12% in 1996, 24 % in 1997 (Vermer
1998; Isteleulova 1996), welfare – practically non-
existent
• 7 out 12 informants changed their work sphere after
1991, often more than once
• Bricolage – making creative and resourceful use of
whatever materials are at hand (Levi-Strauss 1961);
working a lot of small jobs
• Making non-professional skills into business: sewing
and knitting, cooking, cleaning, home repairs,
language skills
• Importance of small-scale trade (street, market,
door-to-door, direct sales)

14. GENDER-SPECIFIC PROFESSIONAL
CHALLENGES
• Women faced discrimination if they were pregnant,
had small children, or were simply young
• Men working in industrial sector were in a particular
risk group
• It was more psychologically difficult for men to
switch to petty trade or performing house chores
(seen as non-masculine) or even start earning with
their hobbies (manhood was very closely tied to
profession)
• Stories of families working in a join effort of surviving,
not individual professionals excelling in their careers

15. CHANGE OF PERSONHOOD
• Elizabeth Dunn: ethnography of Polish workers
becoming “self-activating, self-directed, self-
monitoring beings”
• Self-reliance became very important, especially for
those in business
• But many still feel a sense of nostalgia for certainty
of the Soviet era
• Neoliberal market VS controlling state – some sense
of agency, but it’s not complete

16. NETWORKS
• People in the city receiving help from auls and
“living on credit” from family (current financial crisis
in Greece – people also moving out to family farms
in the countryside)
• Professional networks
• Moral support and a sense of community

17. NARRATIVES AS CONSTRUCTIVE
• Nancy Ries: discursive world doesn’t reflect social
action, but helps construct it.
• Common themes show how people interpreted
and used these changes in Shymkent.
• The dominant narrative about the 1990s tells us
something about the world today

18. “STRANGE KIND OF NORMALCY”
• Nancy Ries’s 1995 visit to Moscow: a “ritualistic
transitional period has come to a close, and
Moscow life, however drastically rearranged, now
takes place on a plane of a strange kind of
normalcy”
• Experience of Shymkent residents – like, yet unlike
others in postsocialist world
• Ethnographic perspective is crucial to
understanding periods of change, uncertainty:
understanding large processes at work in everyday
life.

19. THANK YOU!
QUESTIONS?