The last of the Kazakh herders
Witness History
BBC
4.5 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 14 October 2020
⏱️ 10 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Many of the nomadic herders in Kazakhstan left the USSR and moved to China in the 1920s. They feared being forced into collective farms by the Soviet state. Then in the 1950s many of them moved back again. Monica Whitlock has been listening to the story of Nazylkhan, a Kazakh herder and matriarch of a huge extended family, who lived through those epic journeys and who died in 2018.
Photo: members of Nazylkhan's extended family, and friends. Credit: BBC.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know. |
| 0:04.7 | My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds. |
| 0:08.5 | As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable experts and genuinely engaging voices. |
| 0:18.0 | What you may not know is that the BBC makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars, |
| 0:24.6 | poltergeist, cricket, and conspiracy theories and that's just a few examples. |
| 0:29.7 | If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, find your next podcast over at BBC Sounds. |
| 0:36.0 | You're listening to the witness history podcast from the BBC World Service with me |
| 0:47.6 | Monica Whitlock. Today we're in Kazakhstan near its remote border with China. |
| 0:55.0 | And our witness is one of the last Kazakh herders who fled her ancestral lands for China in the 1920s, |
| 1:08.0 | when Lenin decreed that nomads must settle in collective farms. |
| 1:12.0 | Her name was Nazlehahn. And her story is |
| 1:16.4 | told here by her family during a two-day feast in her honor. They have slaughtered |
| 1:22.3 | a horse and four sheep to feed the hundreds of relatives grandmother. |
| 1:43.0 | She was around 100 years old when she died last year. |
| 1:47.0 | Nasulhahn was born here on this spot. |
| 1:52.0 | But when the Soviets came to power her family crossed the border |
| 1:56.7 | to China. It was 1928. |
| 2:01.1 | The 28. |
| 2:04.8 | The reason why they fled. |
| 2:06.9 | When the Soviets came to power, even before anyone saw a Russian, there were rumors that they'd make everyone eat dogs meat and make us give up our Muslim faith. |
| 2:17.0 | And then came the news that all their flocks and herds would be taken away, according to Lenin's decree. |
| 2:28.0 | Hearing all that, our whole family decided to flee at once. |
... |
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