A Kazakh Teacher’s Story: Surviving the Silent Steppe

Author(s): Mukhamet Shayakhmetov

Location(s): Kazakhstan

Genre(s): Fiction

Era(s): 1945

Beginning where the Silent Steppe left off, it is early 1945, and the author, Shayakhmetov, still recuperating from serious war injuries, has travelled thousands of miles back to his village on the eastern Kazakhstan steppe. There is joy at any soldier’s safe return, and yet literally every family is grieving the loss of a loved one killed at war. Shayakhmetov endeavours to pick up the pieces of his pre-War life, working hard to support his extended family, marrying, continuing his education and embarking on a life in teaching dedicated to the next generation and the future of the Soviet experiment in which he himself had lost faith. Through his insightful portraits of local party bosses, district officials, bureaucrats and tales of daily life, a harrowing picture emerges of life under Stalin and his pervading shadow decades on.The author s moral integrity, stoicism and profound respect for the struggles of the common people stand out in this memoir of a life of self-effacing dedication.

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