A FISTFUL OF LIFE

For nearly six years, Kenesary’s nomadic encampments were located in the Turgai and Irgiz regions. During this time, both the size of his army and the number of aulsinomadic tribal communities that joined him grew significantly. In the spring, in the area between Tauip and Torgai, the khan’s forces not only grazed their livestock but also cultivated the land.

Based on records from the Aktobe Regional State Archive, we know that millet was cultivated in the auls of the Irgiz district as early as 1925. Following the Russian Revolution, starting in 1925, Soviet authorities began to study Kazakh auls in much greater detail. Official documents meticulously recorded aspects of daily life, clan relations, population numbers, the proportion of spiritual leaders and wealthy households, the structure of the economy, information about winter and summer pastures, and data on local trading points.

All this information served as a kind of groundwork, a reconnaissance perhaps, before the Soviet government launched its sweeping political and economic campaigns across the country.

In 1928, under the leadership of Kazakh Regional Committee Secretary F. Goloshchyokin, a campaign to ‘de-bai-ize’ was launched, the term being derived from the word bai, meaning a wealthy landowner, livestock owner, or merchant, as part of the USSR-wide fight against kulaks, or wealthy peasants.

A year later, a new program began, this time aimed at the forced sedentarization of nomads on collective and state farms. Archival records of these efforts contain a telegram dated 5 January 1930 sent in the name of F. Goloshchyokin to the Aktobe District Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) (abbreviated as VKP(b)), which states:

During the famine of 1931–33, and in the period that followed, the Soviet authorities most often distributed millet as rationed food aid. In the winter of 1930, at the height of popular uprisings against these government campaigns, the Aktobe District Committee made the following decision at one of its closed meetings:

During the famine of the early 1930s, people driven to desperation often ended up in court. At that time, the notorious Law of the Three SpikeletsiA spikelet is a small cluster of grain on the stalk. was in effect—the popular name for the 1932 decree issued by the Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR, aimed to protect the property of state enterprises, kolkhozes, and cooperatives, and to strengthen public (socialist) ownership. The system spared no one, not even mothers who carried away a few spikelets in their aprons after the harvest, nor the elderly.

Even before the Law of the Three Spikelets was enacted, many were sentenced for ‘resisting Soviet power’ after simply being denied grain. Those over seventy years of age were given two-and-a-half-year prison sentences instead of the standard five years. Records from the state archives of the Aktobe region show that dozens of such elderly prisoners were documented.

During the famine of 1931, the remote areas of the Aktobe region were left without food aid. According to a report from the Political-Secret Department of the Aktobe Regional Directorate of the Unified State Political Administration (abbreviated as OGPU) dated 25 March 1933, the food shortage was felt particularly acutely in the districts of Oiyl, Torgai, Batpakkara, Temir, Tabyn, and Shalkar. The document stated:

Sources also indicate that in the spring of 1931, more than 2,000 households from the Torgai district moved toward Syr Darya, Shalkar, and Aiteke Bi, but many of them perished along the way.

During grain procurement campaigns, millet played a decisive role in the survival of the population of Kazakhstan. In districts such as Irgiz, Shalkar, Torgai, and Baiganin, wheat simply would not grow. The arid climate, unstable weather, and scorching sun made it impossible to cultivate other types of grain; only millet could be cultivated. This is why, in the minds of local residents, millet remains deeply associated with the tragic period of famine and the struggle to survive.

In essence, during those years, only tary helped people survive. Some elders recalled:

Those born during that time recall that, as children, they even used the husks from roasted millet.

During the Second World War, when crop yields were vital to the war effort, record millet harvests were exported outside the region.

At that time, the agricultural innovator Shyganak Bersiev became famous across the Kazakh steppe and beyond because he succeeded in developing an improved variety of millet suited to arid lands, achieving record-breaking harvests between 1941 and 1943. His life is depicted in the novel Shyganak by G. Mustafin.

Despite the record harvests, the people of the Kazakh lands received very little millet. Historian Qadyrbai Joldasov recalled that during the war, rural families received just two handfuls of grain per day—about 500 grams—for every four people. According to Joldasov, people simply referred to government food aid as ‘the ration’.

This modest portion was brought to homes from the warehouse every day and used to prepare meals. The next day, they would wait to be given their share again because there was usually not a crumb left in the house.

Some, trying to preserve the little they had, dug holes and buried millet in the ground. Hidden millet wasn’t just a backup for a rainy day—it was a way to calm fear and insecurity. But even that could lead to disaster: if you hid food, you were considered an enemy or a criminal. The phrase ‘stored grain at home’ often appeared in newspapers of the time as a reason for arrest.

The persecution of individuals connected to grain procurement began as early as the late 1920s, at the same time as the dekulakization campaign. Issue No. 87 (294) of the newspaper Stepnaya Pravda (The Steppe Truth) from 1929, in a column titled ‘The Bai and Kulak—the Spiders of the Village and Aul’ featured several articles illustrating these processes. In fact, in an article titled, ‘Under Kulak Surety’, they reported:

It was not uncommon to see once-prosperous individuals who, during the years of famine, were forced to beg for a handful of grain from those they had once helped. In the 1930s, Qabylbai and Qartpai, two men who were related to each other, stopped for the night at the home of an elder named Joldas in the village of Tepsen. They were on their way from Aktobe to Irgiz after being released from prison. Both came from a prominent Kazakh bai family that had been subjected to property confiscation and exiled to Karkaralinsk in 1928.

In 1918–19, they had supported the Alash army, gathered people for the militia, and donated livestock. It is also known that they organized an as, a memorial feast, in Irgiz in support of the Alash fighters. According to the testimony of one of Qabylbai’s relatives during the investigation, more than 300 yurts were set up, and in each one, not only a horse but a sheep was also slaughtered. The as was attended by members of the nobility and local bais from various regions, as well as fighters from the Alash army.

It was after this that Qabylbai came under constant pressure from the authorities and was eventually convicted. In 1928, Qabylbai was first exiled to Karkaralinsk and then to Omsk.

According to the testimony of their contemporaries, after their release from prison, both Qabylbai and Qartpai were severely emaciated. The next morning, they left Joldas’s home early, setting out on foot toward Irgiz. As he was leaving, Qabylbai turned to the kelinidaughter-in-law, pointing to the tary laid out in the sun to dry, and asked, ‘Kelin, may I take a little for the road?’

She was taken aback by the question and replied. ‘Kainagaihusband's older brother, what are you saying—this is all yours!’ Without hesitation, she tied up several kilograms of grain for him in a bundle. Thus, members of a family that had once owned 3,000 horses and fed half the region found themselves forced to ask for a handful of millet

During those years, no one complained about the hardships involved in growing, harvesting, and processing millet. Even children, not just adults, were required to perform hard physical labor. Second- and third-grade students were tasked with guarding kolkhoz fields from raiding sparrows. In 1930, Stepnaya Pravda (Issue No. 7) published an article titled ‘Schoolchildren—To the Sowing Fields’, urging children to be sent to protect the crops from birds.

The article included the following instructions:

Although millet is not a demanding crop in terms of soil and climate requirements, harvesting and processing it have always required considerable effort and patience. Harvesting millet by hand yielded better results than machinery, but it was grueling labor, forcing workers to bend over continuously. Using a scythe wasn’t an option—cutting that way caused the grains to fall off and be lost.

During the grain procurement campaigns of the 1930s, in some districts, local leaders, aiming to ‘optimize the process’, ordered millet to be cut while still green and not fully mature. Attempts to use a scythe were suppressed and even punished. Such facts are recorded in archival documents:

As a result, people had no choice but to harvest the ripe grains by hand, carefully breaking the spikelets off right at the base.

One notable feature of millet is its ability to produce a good yield even on a small plot if the soil is fertile and there is sufficient moisture. Another critical point is that millet is very convenient to store. Given the nomadic lifestyle of Kazakh herders, they often used this grain because it was easy to bury in the ground when moving between winter and summer pastures. When relocating in spring or autumn, they sowed a plot of millet with the intention to return and harvest it.

Since millet was harvested by hand back then, it was first boiled in a cauldron without removing the husks—this made it easier to separate the grain from the shell. After that, the millet was roasted in a large cauldron. It was prepared in this way in every household and was not sold commercially. The roasted grain was then ground manually using mortars. To feed everyone, especially the elders, broth was sometimes added to the millet. While millet in its grain form can be stored for a long time, roasted millet (tary) lasts only a limited time, no longer than two to three weeks.

Today, tary appears to be seen as an element of traditional cooking, but its historical role was far more significant. During the famine, forced collectivization, and repressions of the 1930s, millet played a key role not only as a food source but also as a cultural and social phenomenon. Therefore, its importance goes far beyond gastronomy; tary became a symbol of resilience and a collective memory of a time when survival literally depended on a fistful of grain.