A Kazakh Teacher's Story: Surviving the Silent Steppe

by Mukhamet Shayakhmetov

Description

This book begins where 'The Silent Steppe' left off. It is early 1945, and the author, Mukhamet, still recuperating from serious war injuries, has traveled thousands of kilometers back to his home village in the eastern Kazakh steppe. As he encounters scenes of desperate poverty, he quickly realizes the immense sacrifices made by local people, particularly women, while the able-bodied men were away fighting. Mukhamet endeavors to pick up the pieces of his prewar life, working hard to support show more his extended family, marrying, continuing his education, and eventually embarking on a life in teaching dedicated to giving young people the best education possible. Through his insightful portraits of local party bosses, district officials and bureaucrats, and tales of the vicissitudes of daily life, a broader, more personal picture emerges of life under Stalin and of 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. show less

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meggyweg 1,128 reviews

I didn't find this book nearly as good as Shayakhmetov's earlier memoir The Silent Steppe: The Story of a Kazakh Nomad Under Stalin. Frankly, a lot of the time it was boring. The Silent Steppe is full of pretty perilous situations, i.e. Shayakhmetov trying to survive the famine, then serving at Stalingrad, etc. This book is just him settling down into marriage, children, and a career as a teacher. Just like everyone else's life.

In the first book, Shayakhmetov covered the first 18-ish years of his life in 360 pages. This book covers the last 60 years in less than 200 pages. It's just not as detailed. He talks mostly about his job, but he didn't go into enough detail about it to make it seem interesting to me. Mostly he complained about show more incompetent officials and getting jerked around by the bureaucracy. Well, that's hardly unique to the Soviet Union.

I would recommend this only if you were really, really interested in finishing the story of Shayakhmetov's life. He died in 2010, age 88. show less

Jun 12, 2013

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