00:03Every year, on 31st of May, people in Kazakhstan remember millions killed in the famine and political persecutions of the
00:11early Soviet era.
00:13A solemn ceremony mourns the loss of innocent lives and a nation that could be.
00:21By the 1930s, having stabilized their authority, the Bolsheviks decided it was time to accelerate the country's industrialization.
00:30Their policy of collective farms forced nomadic Kazakhs to give up their lifestyle and surrender their livestock.
00:45The Red Army slaughtered the other half of cattle, unable to feed it.
00:5140 million turned to five.
00:52For a nation whose primary source of food was cattle, this meant a gruesome hungry death.
00:58As a result, out of 6 million Kazakhs, approximately 2 million died of starvation and 600,000 more relocated to
01:05China, Iran and Afghanistan, hoping to avoid a similar fate.
01:11Kazakh intelligentsia criticized the government for excessive policies that led to famine and mass deaths.
01:17For this outright rebellion, they were arrested, exiled and executed.
01:22This is Karlaq, one of the largest labor camps in the USSR, located in the middle of the Kazakh steppe.
01:29Its vast territory was once compared to the size of France.
01:32From 1931 till 1959, about a million people passed through the camp.
01:37For others, the outcome was even more immediate.
01:40They were executed.
01:41Among them was Rahat Amanbaev's grandfather, Amanbaev Kaspakbaev.
01:57According to the documents, which Rahat was able to get only after the collapse of the Soviet Union,
02:02Amanbaev was accused of being a fascist, atroskiist and helping suspected dissidents.
02:07On February 27, 1938, he was arrested for the punishment of Kashmir.
02:15He was arrested.
02:16My grandmother, Opa, as a wife of his family's family, was also arrested.
02:25He was sent to the punishment of Kashmir's family's family.
02:31After spending their eight years enduring hardship and abuse,
02:35she took her kids from their uncle and moved away to avoid discrimination and harassment.
02:44One of the prominent figures who faced such a fate was Saken Sifulin,
02:48a Kazakh poet, a promoter of the Kazakh language and once the head of the Kazakh government.
02:54He was championing Kazakh identity and attributes,
02:57for which he was accused of being a nationalist and an anti-Soviet.
03:01The irony was that he was a revolutionary and a Bolshevik.
03:05It was on February 24th.
03:09The two of them came to the house.
03:11The two of them came to the house.
03:13They said,
03:14you are Saken Sifulin.
03:16I said,
03:17you are Saken Sifulin.
03:17we will show you the paper.
03:19And Saken Sifulin,
03:20I said,
03:21it was very hard,
03:22and then it was very hard.
03:24Sifulin's little son died on a train when he and his mother were deported.
03:29His father and older brother were also executed.
03:31His younger brother survived by a miracle.
03:34From 1937 till 1957,
03:37the Sifulin family lived under the label of the enemy of the people.
03:41Until then,
03:42my mother reminded me that her hair was cut off from school.
03:45And then,
03:46the fear that,
03:47in some day,
03:48no,
03:49someone will bring something,
03:50something may happen,
03:53has always been there.
03:54No university wanted to admit an enemy of the people.
03:57When she finally got admitted to the Zoological Institute,
04:00someone denounced her,
04:01and she had to finish her education in secret.
04:04Her father,
04:05Saken's little brother,
04:06couldn't hold a job for 20 years.
04:08Each time someone found out he was an enemy of the people,
04:11and he was fired.
04:15When Stalin died in 1953,
04:17many people were amnestied and rehabilitated.
04:29Both Sifulin and Kaspakpaev were rehabilitated in 1957.
04:33In 1993,
04:35independent Kazakhstan adopted a law on rehabilitation of victims of political repressions,
04:39restoring their good names,
04:40and compensating the families.
04:43Kazakhstan is continuing to examine archival documents of the Soviet era.
04:47Just three years ago,
04:48a special commission rehabilitated 300,000 people.
04:52The country makes every effort to commemorate those who fell victim to the Red Terror.
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