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Paper abstract:

This paper explores the interplay between Soviet industrial development and nationalities policy in Temirtau, Kazakhstan, one of the numerous industrial monotowns within Soviet Eurasia. While the city’s population was predominantly Russian, the fact that it was located in the Kazakh republic allowed for the small Kazakh minority to assume a prominent role in the local community. Starting during the Second World War, Temirtau was built and populated along with the construction and expansion of the Karaganda Iron and Steel Works, one of the country’s largest plants of its kind. By the mid-1980s, it counted more than 230,000 inhabitants, less than four percent of whom were Kazakhs. In this regard, Temirtau reflected general Soviet industrialization patterns, which typically correlated with an influx of primarily Slavic workers. The local administration, school education, and other communal services were offered exclusively in Russian. Kazakhs who moved to Temirtau from other regions in search of work or higher education often encountered condescension and suspicion from locals, as their oftentimes lacking knowledge of Russian, their accent, and their customs made them stand out in this environment.

At the same time, the imperatives of Soviet nationalities policy also marked the city as distinctly Kazakh. Temirtau had a Kazakh name, local Kazakh myths, Kazakh hero stories, and Kazakh toponyms in the cityscape. While Kazakhs were subject to discrimination in Temirtau, those who managed to adapt to the Russian environment enjoyed particular attention and good career prospects. Kazakhs were vastly overrepresented in key positions and segments of the steel plant workforce and of the urban community at large. As token members of the republic’s titular nationality, they rooted a community that predominantly consisted of European labor migrants. Their visibility helped brand Temirtau as Kazakhstani, which emerged as a new form of identity, distinct from Kazakh, that was based on geography rather than ethnicity. The paper both reconciles and complicates established yet opposing narratives of a successful Kazakhization under Dinmukhamed Kunaev on the one hand, and of the exclusion of Central Asians from the Soviet industrial workforce on the other hand. It also highlights the origins of independent Kazakhstan’s efforts to create a civic rather than ethnic national identity to reflect the country’s multiethnic population.