The great hunger: Stalin's famine in Kazakhstan

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***This programme includes interviews that listeners may find upsetting, including some that refer to cannibalism, violent death and harm to children*** Few people outside Kazakhstan know of the famine that destroyed nomadic life in the 1930s, and left more than a third of the population dead with countless families displaced to China and far beyond. Even within Kazakhstan you can meet people who know almost nothing about the calamity that touched every Kazakh family and still resonates today. The famine, called Asharshylyk in Kazakh, was among the most deadly man-made famines of the 20th Century, even more so, proportionately, than the much better known Holodomor in Ukraine during the same period. It resulted from the coming of Soviet power, the violent suppression of nomadism and forced settlement into disastrous collective farms. During the Soviet years, no one mentioned the Asharshylyk in public and it was never taught at schools or universities. Rose Kudabayeva's grandparents did not breathe a word to her about the Asharshylyk although they lived through the worst of it, losing several of their children. Now she travels through Kazakhstan trying to find out the story, meeting archivists, writers, musicians, camel farmers, and her own relatives. With Smagal Yelubayev, author of The Lonely Yurt trilogy and Bilal Iskakov, professor of traditional music at the Almaty Conservatoire. Special thanks to Sabit Shildebai, director of the Central State Archives of the Republic of Kazakhstan, and Zura Tolenova, Candidate of Historical Sciences, associate professor, head of the Centre for Advanced Research of the Central State Archives. Producer: Monica Whitlock (Photo: Yakhya Tajibekov and his daughter-in-law Aliya selling camel's milk near Shymkent, south Kazakhstan. Yakhya's mother, as a baby, was rescued during the famine of 1930-1933. Credit: Monica Whitlock)