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Kazakhstan
// THE STEPPE MACHINE
The journalists from Dengi (Money) magazine and the NTV program Namedni (The Other Day) who visited Kazakhstan last week made no attempt to find Soviet-era brands here. The Soviet leadership regarded the second-largest Soviet republic as a giant steppe laboratory. Today, the main value in the country of Baikonur, the virgin lands, Semipalatinsk, Arap, the world’s largest open-pit coal mines, and labor camps is stability. The Soviet experience has been turned into Kazakh reality.
Millions of Tonnes to the Surface
Kazakhstan has hardly any brands of its own except singer Roza Rymbayeva and Kazakhstan cigarettes, which smokers preferred over the Javanese Java brand. This lack of brands is only natural, since in Kazakhstan no one was concerned about such foolishness. There was Dzhezkazgan copper, Karaganda metal, Ust-Kamenogorsk uranium and rare metals, which were brands when Soviet Kazakhstan’s main function was to be a major raw materials base for building Communism. Finally, there is Ekibastuz coal, one of the few others.
Mining at Ekibastuz, with its enormous reserves of power-generating coal, began in the time of Abylai Khan in the mid-18th century. National hero Abylai Khan told the Russian empress that he was a Chinese subject and told the Chinese that he was Russian, and so Kazakhstan remained independent for 40 years. Then coal began to be mined on the steppe. Following the end of a war with Abylai Khan’s successors, the Kazakh wing of the Basmach movement [an anti-Soviet movement in Central Asia], Ekibastuz came under control of the USSR.
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| This East German excavator has been digging in the Ekibastuz open-pit mine for more than 20 years |
However, the Soviet authorities showed little interest in it until the mid-1960s, when they needed Northern Kazakhstan for other experiments of a “social” nature. Entire nationalities and other groups of people were exiled here to see what would come of it. The first were kulaks [wealthy peasants] from Siberia and the Urals in 1927–1934. The only places where conditions were harsher than in their homelands were in Kazakhstan. Koreans from Primorye in the Soviet Far East joined them in 1937, because the NKVD suspected that 53% of these Soviet citizens were Japanese spies. By that time, Uighurs and Chinese Muslims had also fled there voluntarily from China. Azerbaijanis followed in 1939, although not voluntarily. They in turn were followed in 1940 by Poles, Germans, and Belarussians from the western borders of the USSR; in 1943, by Chechens and Ingush; and from 1947 on, by saboteur doctors and “homeless cosmopolitans” of Jewish nationality.
There is a three-way fork on the road from Ekibastuz to Pavlodar. To the left is Ekibastuz State District Power Plant #1 (Ekibastuzkaya GRES #1), famous for the fact that here in 1980 zeks [prisoners, especially those in Soviet labor camps] had built the world’s tallest smokestack, which was entered in the Guinness Book of Records. The plant itself is the world’s largest. To the right is Ekibastuz State District Power Plant #2 (Ekibastuzkaya GRES #2), whose daily construction routine was described by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in his book One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. Local residents prefer to go straight ahead and then turn off toward the resort of Bayan-Aul 20 km further on.
Billions of Kilowatts for Russia
The Bogatyr open-pit coal mine at Ekibastuz is the world’ largest and is also entered in the Guinness Book of Records. In 1972, the Bogatyr railway junction handled nearly 4000 cars per day. There might have been just as many today, except that first, the Russian Ministry of Communication Means is not very good at returning cars and second, demand for coal has fallen to about half.
Whereas Karaganda coal mainly goes to produce metallurgical coke and to the Ispat-Karmet Steel Works (Ispat-Karmet MZ), Ekibastuz coal is used in power generation. All of the Ekibastuz pits were developed for the sole purpose of supplying coal to the Urals and Siberia and with a view to burning it in Kazakhstan to supply electric power to Russia. However, in 1991, says Stanislav Kurzhey, the former general director of the Ekibastuz coal complex, everyone was infuriated, because Russia was starting to debate whether it needed Ekibastuz coal at all or whether it could get by with its own coal.
Privatization of the Ekibastuz pits began in the mid-1990s. The Bogatyr mine and a few others went to Bogatyr Akses Komir (BAK), a company with American capital. They began to compete with one another on both the Russian and Kazakh markets; but Russian coal mine operators faced with decreased demand for coal began to lobby for a ban or at least restrictions on coal deliveries to Russia. And it was really all Chubais’ fault, as a Kommersant correspondent learned.
Adding spice to the situation was the fact that RAO UES of Russia (RAO EES Rossii), the main consumer of Ekibastuz coal, owned GRES #1 and one of the pits. Therefore, as a Russian patriot, it was in the company’s interests to support restrictions on the use of Kazakh coal, but as a consumer, it was more advantageous to support liberalism. Just to be on the safe side, RAO kept silent about the Ekibastuz problem. Passions reached the boiling point, because no one knew whether Russia would buy any more coal or even whether it would return the cars.
I asked Stanislav Kurzhey for his opinion about BAK’s owners: the company is American, and its owner is Leonard Blavatnik, a Brooklyn émigré and oligarch. Weren’t all of Ekibastuz’s current problems the result of capitalism?
-- “Really!” said the Hero of Socialist Labor, holder of two Orders of Lenin, winner of the USSR State Prize, and honored pensioner of national standing. “I know Len Blavatnik very well. He has a head on his shoulders and understands everything perfectly. We’re lucky to have the owners we do. As for a ban on importing Kazakh coal to Russia, let me tell you…”
Subsequent talk about the actual founder of the present-day Ekibastuz complex was full of unparliamentary phrases. The Kazakh Interior Ministry said more or less the same to the Russian Interior Ministry, but in diplomatic language. Ekibastuz was built by the entire USSR to supply Russia with coal and energy. Abandoning it was paramount to devaluing the labor of millions of people and condemning those remaining in Kazakhstan to poverty.
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| The Medeo skating rink was built in honor of the 50th anniversary of the formation of the USSR. It was renovated for the 11th anniversary of Kazakhstan’s independence |
No political passions boil in the unbelievably vast pit of the Bogatyr mine—it’s too cold. Coal is cut by a rotary excavator made in East Germany and loaded into railway cars. When the 50-m machine is chewing into a coal seam, it’s impossible to talk. Conversation is only possible when it stops if a snowstorm covers up a freshly exposed seam.
--“It became easier to work,” said the excavator shift foreman. “Of course, quality requirements are higher. Before, it was just ‘come on everyone, fulfill the plan’. There’s more order with the new owners and better discipline. There are medicals before a shift so you don’t go to work… in bad shape.”
It turned out that the foreman had colleagues who worked on the same machines in Krasnoyarsk. Many had left for Russia in 1991–1994 when everything here was bad. However, work never stopped even for a minute—three shifts a day without any days off. Kazakhstan supplies Russia with 12% of the coal it consumes. It doesn’t matter that Ekibastuz produces only 45–50 million tonnes compared to the former 90 million, when Russia produces less than half.
Big Yields Per Hectare
Another Soviet experiment not only turned Kazakhstan into a world-scale economy, but also gave it a new capital. Before 1998, Astana was called Akmola, and earlier still, Tselinograd. Sixty percent of the steppe lands ploughed up during the opening of the virgin lands are in Kazakhstan. In 1954, Komsomol [Young Communist League] members came here from all over the USSR to solve the wheat shortage problem in one fell swoop. The statistics obliged, and the USSR began to produce twice as much wheat per capita as the West. Which didn’t stop it from buying wheat from Canada.
In Kazakhstan’s State Museum of History, the only reminder of the virgin lands is a 1924 tractor made at the Kirov Works (Kirovskii zavod) in St. Petersburg. They don’t like to remember this history here, because it came at too high a cost. Suffice it to say that in Kazakhstan they nearly starved because of the need to supply the Komsomol volunteers with food.
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| All harvesting equipment is maintained in an order rare in Russia |
One of the main grain-producing divisions of Agrocenter-Astana (Agrotsentr-Astana), Kazakhstan’s largest agricultural holding, is located in the village of Raevka. At the entrance to the village, there is a sign in Russian and Kazakh that reads, “Kazakhstan—our mutual home.” At least three more languages could have been used: like many village residents, Lyudvig Genrikhovich, the head of the grain-growing enterprise in Raevka, is a Pole; we were shown around the former (now millionaire) state farm by its manager, Aleksandr Valterovich, a German; and the enterprise includes two other neighboring villages, one of which, Gulyai-Pole, is Ukrainian.
--“Hardly anyone remembers the virgin lands,” said Aleksandr Valterovich. “That’s all in the past! Anyway, most of the land we work today was broken up before the virgin lands.”
Today, 50–60% of the lands ploughed up during the campaign of 1954–1964 are sown under wheat. The rest is not really needed, although so far Agrotsentr-Astana has not surpassed the Soviet figures: current yields are 1100–1400 kg per hectare versus 1500 during Soviet times. However, this is enough for independent Kazakhstan. The country has never bought grain, although it exports wheat to Russia, Western Europe, Iran, and many other countries. The only difficulty is in selling wheat to China, but work in this direction is already underway.
Right now, it’s winter in the former virgin lands, and the grain is in the elevators and the machinery is in the machine yard in an order rarely seen in Russia. Real agricultural reform began in Kazakhstan in 1998, two years earlier than in Russia, and large agricultural holdings were formed then. However, grain production is not considered to be Kazakhstan’s main prospect. The large oil reserves of the Tengiz and Karachaganak fields in the Caspian Sea, which hold the promise of billions of dollars in profits, are much more important. In expectation of this oil, the ports of Aktau and Atyrau have already been transformed into the country’s most promising cities. As far as agriculture is concerned, they just try not to overburden it: taxation levels for former collective farms are five times less than the analogous turnover tax on industrial enterprises. Then let them grow wheat, whether they be Komsomol members or capitalists.
Grain—the Master of All
--“The workers in the virgin lands did their job,” said Aleksandr Petrov, Agrotsentr-Astana’s general director, in his office. “Private companies produce grain just as well as in the days of the virgin lands, but with less fuss and bother.”
The company’s office is in the same building that once housed the main supply for the virgin lands (Tselinglavsnab). The private company Tsesna-Astyk owns one of the huge elevators. It’s only on the way to the elevator that you understand that both virgin land workers and capitalists accomplished a real feat in Northern Kazakhstan just by not leaving the territory. On the Kazakh steppe, you begin to doubt that the Earth is round, because everything there is absolutely flat. And, unlike in Moscow, the winds that blow over it can rock cars and knock a person off his feet.
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| In Kazakhstan, everything is huge, from distances to apples |
The weather on the steppe changes frequently in winter: it might be +6ºC in the morning but -38+6ºC at night. There’s nothing poetic about it—birds freeze on the wing. There’s a local joke about the distances here: a motorist is lost and asks a Kazakh in the middle of the steppe where the nearest store is. “What day is today?” asks the Kazakh. “Tuesday? Drive east. Turn right on Thursday and on Saturday you’ll get to the store.”
--“It was hard here in the days of the USSR,” admits the director of the elevator. “There were six directors of this complex in six years. It was like New Year’s—the plan wasn’t fulfilled, so they brought in a new director—until the next New Year. It was always, the plan, the plan, and again the plan. Now quality is the most important thing. We send our flour to Almaty, where they take it because of its quality. The amount isn’t important.”
Nevertheless, when the director was told that in Malaysia they had built a grain complex 100 times larger than this elevator, he was offended. This couldn’t be, because he knew that the largest of everything had been made in the USSR.
The former Tselinograd gained rather than lost from the collapse of the USSR. The new capital of Kazakhstan is being built to Western standards. Although there aren’t any skyscrapers, it is probably the most modern city in the CIS; however, Tselinograd is still visible in the five-story apartment buildings of the Khrushchev era and the huts of the noble virgin land workers that stick out among the bank offices.
Sports and Vitamins
Heavy industry in the midst of the great Kazakh steppe may be the pride of the independent republic, because it allows Kazakhstan to maintain the second-highest standard of living among the CIS countries. However, people don’t like to talk about industry here. They hold the harsh but beautiful environment in much more esteem. They talk about it like a local Texas, about Dzhambul and Chimkent, where they produce the karakul that was so highly valued in the former USSR, or about the beauty of the Alatau mountains that begin right in the southern capital with Medeo and Chimbulak.
Most residents of the former USSR probably remember the word “Medeo,” the name of one of the world’s best known high-altitude skating rinks. Medeu is the proper Kazakh name for the gorge where this rink is located. It is actually a huge park of culture and recreation for all of Almaty located at an altitude of 1700 m above sea level.
Sailaubek Esimbekov, the director of the Medeu sports complex, says that you couldn’t build a stadium like this today for less than $25–30 million. In fact, it would cost a lot more, because developing the gorge and protecting it from mudflows and avalanches would cost so much that it’s difficult to calculate.
The stadium, which still holds many records for skating sports, is open winter and summer, although it was closed last year. The government has allocated $4 million for new equipment for the rink, and they promise that the repairs will be finished in time for December 16, Kazakhstan’s Independence Day.
--“It’s not only President Nazarbaev who comes here often; all the presidents of the CIS countries have skated here too. Lukashenko skated for a long time, “ the director told us. “Putin? He was here, but he didn’t go out on the ice.”
Actually, Vladimir Putin was skiing a kilometer higher at the resort of Chimbulak. Many other Russian skiers prefer it as well, because the slope drops one kilometer from the top, a rare occurrence in the former USSR. All the rooms at the Chimbulak hotel are booked right through March.
Medeu is probably the only official Soviet consumer brand in Kazakhstan. No one really considers the Baikonur space center, the half-dry Aral Sea, or the Semipalatinsk firing range to be brands!
However, there is an unofficial brand known to everyone who has ever visited Kazakhstan: the large apple variety Alma-Ata Aport, the only thing worth taking out of the country. You could consider it the standard for apples. Local residents say that the apples have become smaller, but this is all nonsense. Go to the bazaar and see for yourself that Alma-Ata apples are as beautiful and unique as ever.
by
Dmitry Butrin
All the Article in Russian as of Dec. 17, 2002
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