Making Sense of Catastrophe: Experiencing and Remembering the Kazakh Famine in a Comparative Context

The Kazakh Famine of 1930–3 is one of the least-known tragedies of the twentieth century even though it took 1.5 million lives. Although more than three decades of scholarship have provided substantial literature on the political and economic dynamics of the famine, the myth that there are only a few eyewitness accounts of the Kazakh famine persists in Western historians’ studies. By covering hundreds of survivor testimonies, mostly in Kazakh, this article debunks that myth. This article provides the first cultural history of the Kazakh famine by focusing on how survivors experienced and made sense of this catastrophe. I focus on meanings associated with the tragedy of mass starvation and show how survivor memories bear the imprint of death and are shaped around the images of ultimate horror. These images of ultimate horror that appear time and again in survivor accounts had come to symbolize the ruthlessness of the catastrophe and the meaning of survivors’ experiences. Through these images, survivors emphasize how all forms of solidarity collapsed amid mass starvation and how dehumanization brought by famine marks a rupture in their lives without a tangible connection to their previous and subsequent lives.