The Hungry Steppe: Famine, Violence, and the Making of Soviet Kazakhstan

Product Description

The Hungry Steppe examines one of the most heinous crimes of the Stalinist regime: the Kazakh famine of 1930–33. More than 1.5 million people, a quarter of Kazakhstan’s population, perished. Yet the story of this famine has remained mostly hidden from view. Sarah Cameron reveals this brutal story and its devastating consequences for Kazakh society.
Through extremely violent means, the Kazakh famine created Soviet Kazakhstan, a stable territory with clear boundaries that was an integral part of the Soviet economy; and it forged a new Kazakh national identity. But ultimately, Cameron finds, neither Kazakhstan nor Kazakhs themselves integrated into Soviet society the way Moscow intended. The experience of the famine scarred the republic and shaped its transformation into an independent nation in 1991.
Cameron examines the Kazakh famine to overturn several assumptions about violence, modernization, and nation-making under Stalin, highlighting the creation of a new Kazakh national identity and how environmental factors shaped Soviet development. Ultimately, The Hungry Steppe depicts the Soviet regime and its disastrous policies in a new and unusual light.

Review

“The Hungry Steppe offers a valuable contribution to the historical record by providing the first painstaking, English-language examination of the Kazakh famine.” ―
Eurasianet

“A valuable addition…. An important first step in ensuring a proper, nuanced account of this neglected event in Soviet and Central Asian history.” ―
Asian Review of Books

“A good work of scholarship can accomplish several things: inform, expand the boundaries of what we know on a subject, make us wiser, and sometimes even move us. Sarah Cameron’s excellent book on the Kazakhstan famine of 1930–33 does all these things and more.” ―
The Russian Review

“Cameron is articulate and eloquent, and this is an excellent, lucidly written book.” ―
Choice

“In The Hungry Steppe, Sarah Cameron presents a well-researched and well-written history of the famines and other traumatic experiences that Kazakh pastoralists endured during the first two decades of Soviet rule.” — Mark B. Tauger, West Virginia University ―
SLAVONIC AND EAST EUROPEAN REVIEW

“Sarah Cameron’s book is a significant and timely contribution to the historiography of Soviet Central Asia and the debates about the nature of Soviet modernization and nation-building in the national peripheries. Clearly structured and written in a highly accessible style, the book follows the unfolding of one of the worst famines in human history.” ―
Ab Imperio

Review

“Sarah Cameron provides the first scholarly account of the murderous famine of 1930-31, perhaps the central event in modern Kazakh history. Told with empathy and dignity, The Hungry Steppe recovers for historians a little-known tragedy of Stalinism.” — Adeeb Khalid, Professor of History, Carleton College, author of
Making Uzbekistan

About the Author

Sarah Cameron is Associate Professor of History at the University of Maryland.