Divorce by text message, boiling people alive, and renaming the days of the week after the supreme leader’s family members – just a sample of the terrifying yet fascinating things going on in the former Soviet states of Central Asia, brilliantly described in Erika Fatland’s travel memoir “Sovietistan” (translated from the original Norwegian by Kari Dickson). Readers of my blog will be familiar with my interest in morbid history mixed with complex political issues and gripping narration, and this book perfectly fit into my obsession with that genre.
“Sovietistan” is about the time Fatland spent traveling in Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan. Despite the title’s seemingly dismissive treatment of the region, the actual content is far from the usual generalizations about “the Stans” that have shaped most people’s understanding of the region. Fatland goes deep into the unique history, politics, and culture of each country, and I am very satisfied with the depth of knowledge this book has given me. She excels in explaining Soviet policies in each country and how they have shaped their demographics, economies, and cultures to this day. I was particularly fascinated by how Kazakhstan’s ethnic diversity is a result of Stalin-era deportations of people opposed to collectivization and state-enforced atheism, how the retreat of the Aral Sea was a result of Soviet obsession with cotton exports in Uzbekistan (continued to this day by the current government), and how the Soviet regime brutally cracked down on individual identities and cultural heterogeneity. These history lessons were taught through a combination of quoting some fascinating historical sources and drawing on Fatland’s own experiences, entertainingly and powerfully narrated. Her description of the Yaghnobis– an ethnic group who were isolated from other communities until the 1970s, whose language is the last connection to the ancient Sogdian language, and who preserved some of the region’s pre-Islamic, Zoroastrian traditions– was haunting and left a deep imprint on my mind. When Fatland visited, she was unable to find anyone willing to admit cultural differences between Yaghnobis and Tajiks, as their individuality and pride as a people had been beaten out of them by Soviet repression.
“When my son was born, I asked the nurse to write Yaghnobi under nationality,” said one of the men who had not spoken until now. “She didn’t listen to me, and wrote Tajik, and I’m very glad of it now. If she had done what I said, my son would probably have faced countless unnecessary problems.”
These rare people, of whom there are only a few thousand left in the world, whose language is modern day scholars’ only link to the extinct Sogdian language, insist that they are just like the Tajiks. Perhaps the lack of pride and confidence in their own people can be traced to the Soviet Union’s policy on minorities: there were not enough Yaghnobis for them to be given the status of separate nationality. Following the deportations in 1970, the Soviet authorities went as far as to delete Yaghnobi as a separate ethnicity from all registers. They simply decided that the Yaghnobi people no longer existed. All Yaghnobis were instead registered as Tajiks.
The tragedy of Soviet totalitarianism is powerfully highlighted through the stories of people Fatland met. One memorable example was her conversation with an elderly Yaghnobi man who had just finished building a house in 1970 when the government forced him to relocate to a collective farm, where three of his four children died in the first week since their isolation in the Yaghnob valley had prevented the development of immunity to lowlands diseases; by the time he returned to the Yaghnob Valley, after 11 years on the collective farm, his home had been destroyed by the elements and he had to rebuild it and start from scratch, emotionally broken by the loss of three children.
“When I left, my beard was black,” Mirzonazar said. “When I came back, it was white.”
“Now I only go back to Zafarabad to visit the children’s graves,” he said. “Sohibnazar was very special. He was an intelligent boy and did well at school. When he came to ask for ten roubles to buy a notebook and pen, I always gave him twenty, I was so fond of him. Buy yourself some biscuits or pierogi with the extra ten roubles, I told him.”
Fatland’s book is full of these heartbreaking stories of the atrocities resulting from Soviet totalitarianism. She does an excellent job explaining the Soviet-era history both at an intellectual level and also making readers feel the impact in their hearts through stories like this one. Many issues from the Soviet era are discussed, including the deportations of ethnic minorities, collectivization, dekulakization, environmental destruction, and nuclear weapons tests. She also effectively shows how the Soviet-era atrocities and mismanagement, and the resulting consequences in society, politics, and the environment, continue to shape the history of the region today.
This book did a great job revealing the tragedy of the region’s post-Soviet history as well. Fatland gave a dark but often amusing description of Turkmenistan’s cult of personality under its first two presidents – although totalitarianism is a heavy topic, there is also plenty of room for laughter because of dictators’ megalomania and general insanity, e.g. Turkmenistan launching a copy of their president’s ideological manifesto, the Ruhnama, into space in 2005, or the time their president fell off a horse in a race (Fatland was lucky enough to personally witness this) and the security services scrambled to scrub any footage from observers’ cameras (they failed and the world saw the video). She highlights the political environment of fear and terror, and the lack of freedom, but also these more amusing aspects of the dictatorship. She covers the history of the totalitarian regimes, human rights abuses, government corruption, failing economies and healthcare systems, ethnic violence between Uzbeks and Tajiks, the Tajik Civil War, bride abduction in Kyrgyzstan, suppression of religious expression, and the survival of somewhat democratic politics in Kyrgyzstan (now dying again unfortunately) and the bloody history that allowed it to happen. A book with tremendous scope that you will learn a lot from.
There are many interesting personal accounts of how this history has shaped people’s lives, and how people respond to forces of history too powerful for them to individually stop. Fatland describes conversations with one of her drivers, who has the courage to criticize the regime but always in a hushed tone, even in the middle of a desert miles away from civilization, and how he hopes the next generation will change things in Turkmenistan. But she also described some things that show just how dark the world can be, and how abject poverty and societal dysfunction can have devastating consequences. Some of her experiences in Tajikistan left me especially shaken:
A boy came over and sat down beside us.
“This is Rajabal, my second oldest,” Umrimoh smiled. “He’s fourteen.”
He was so small and thin that he did not look a day over eight.
“And what do you want to do when you grow up?” I asked. “Do you want to be a doctor, or a teacher, or maybe a football player?”
“I want to get married in two years’ time,” he said, without a flicker of a smile.
“I want him to study, but all he cares about is getting a wife and some cows,” his mother complained.
“Have you found a wife?”
“No, not yet,” the boy said, just as seriously. “But I’m keeping an eye out. I want a clean wife, the best. Maybe from Zafarabad or Dushanbe.”
“Whenever relatives come to visit from town, he studies the girls carefully,” his mother teased. “She has to be so pure, so clean, not like the girls from the village, who have cow dung under their nails!”
Umrimoh and her friend laughed heartily, but the boy did not bat an eyelid.
However, it is not all doom and gloom. Fatland also highlights the more humorous aspects of totalitarian regimes, the beauty of old Islamic architecture, the mysteries of Bronze Age archaeological finds at Gonur Depe, the story of the Russian artist and collector Igor Savitsky and his art museum in an Uzbek desert (this was one of my favorite parts of the book, Savitsky was an extraordinary person, and it was very inspiring to read how his project succeeded against all odds because of his tenacity), and some of the great achievements of Samarkand and Khiva in medieval times. There is a lot of diversity in subject matter that keeps the book constantly interesting.
This book also excels in immersion and helping visualize what Fatland was actually seeing. Massive kudos to Fatland’s Norwegian prose, as well as the talent of her translator Kari Dickson in losing none of its vibrance.
Here is an excerpt from the beginning of the book about her visit to the Darvaza Gas Crater.
I am lost. The flames in the crater have erased the stars and then drained all the shadows of light. The fiery tongues hiss and spit; there are thousands of them. Some are as big as a horse, others no bigger than raindrops. A gentle heat strokes my cheeks; there is a sweet, sickly odour. Stones loosen from the edge and tumble into the flames without a sound. I step back onto firmer ground. The desert night is cold, without fragrance.
And here is her description of the Karakum desert.
I had never imagined the desert could be like this. The Sahara is a sea of brown, umoving waves, enormous and timeless, but the Karakum Desert is full of colours. The sandy ground is covered in a delicate layer of grass. Scrubby bushes and small, twisted trees grow up the sandy hills; in their shadows, white and yellow flowers bloom. In the middle of the day, the sun in the cloudless sky is warm, but the evenings are cool and the nights just above freezing. No matter how many of the travel agency’s dirty military sleeping bags Murat gives me, I am still cold and lie in the tent longing for the camels’ morning bellow.
Overall, this was a very fun and informative book that had a deep impact on me emotionally. Fatland highlighted the diverse experiences of people in former Soviet Central Asian states, all the suffering they endured because of governmental and societal injustices, but also the strength and courage of individuals even when confronting the power of a totalitarian state. Beautiful writing, great content – 10/10, I would recommend you read this book.