From the Soviet Era to Today: a Look at Business

The 20th Century was always my favorite era to study in history classes in high school and college. On this trip I was very interested to see how Kazakhstan has changed since the Soviet Union broke up and how Kazakhs feel about their country's progress.

Kazakhstan is a country with vast open landscapes and, as a result, one of their most important economic activities includes farming and the raising of cattle, sheep, and horses. Many people moved to the region of Kostany (where we stayed with our host) during the "Virgin Lands" campaign. Nikita Khrushchev developed this plan in 1953 to boost the Soviet Union’s agricultural production because of massive food shortages at the time. Part of the strategy was to encourage young foreign citizens to move to the vast new "frontiers" to settle and create new communities (remember the term "frontier" APHG?). The campaign had mixed results: millions of hectares of "virgin" land was cultivated but housing and infrastructure (including repair shops, energy resources, and roads) could not keep up with the pace of people moving to the area. When soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev introduced Perestroika (a political movement to restructure the economy of the Soviet union) in the 1980's the widespread economic changes had a profound impact on local farmers and many people who arrived in Kazakhstan during the Virgin Lands Campaign moved back to their countries of origin. This created a dramatic population decline in the area and Kostany is only now starting to recover demographically. The Akim, or Governor, of Kostany joked with us that every woman in the region is encouraged to have 10 children to help boost the population.  My APHG students might note that this is not likely to happen; as Kazakhstan progresses through demographic transition it is unlikely the birthrate will increase dramatically.  However, there is demographic hope for the Akim; as the economy improves, people feel more inclined to have children, as evidenced in the population pyramid below. 


 In the pictures below you can see a farm we visited (the man is the picture owns the farm and kindly took us on a tour of his facilities).  Farms in the area produce a lot of cabbage, potatoes, carrots, and onions.  These items make up a good portion of many of the meals we enjoyed while in Kostany.