Collage / Qalam
In the summer of 1952, a place that had stood for generations vanished from the map of Kazakhstan. An entire district of the Bukey Steppe, its dozens of villages and thousands of indigenous residents, was erased in a matter of weeks. They were loaded into freight train cars and sent to the south of the country. Officially, the Soviet authorities called it ‘intra-Union resettlement’, but in reality, it was deportation. By decree of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, these ancestral lands were handed over to the Kapustin Yar military testing ground, a top-secret site where Soviet missiles would roar into the sky.
In this Qalam exclusive, Candidate of Historical Sciences Baktily Boranbayeva traces the human story behind these events and explores how entire communities were uprooted, and what became of the people forced to leave the steppe they had called home for centuries.
The District that Disappeared
In 1946, while the world was still reeling from the devastation of the Second World War, the USSR and the USA were already preparing for a new conflict—the Cold War. In May that year, a new testing ground for rocket weaponry, for the first Soviet ballistic and anti-aircraft missiles, appeared on Soviet territory. The test site was located in the Astrakhan region, near the village of Kapustin Yar.
Over time, the testing range expanded, and by the mid-twentieth century, it had reached the Bukey Steppe. Subsequently, according to a decree of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, No. 5263, dated 21 December 1951, an area of 1,355,692 hectares in the Orda district of West Kazakhstan was transferred to the military as a testing ground.
To clear the area, the predicament of the local population had to be resolved. Officially, this was called ‘internal resettlement’, but it was actually an organized deportation. According to the decree of the Council of Ministers of the Kazakh SSR, No. 1013-119s dated 14 December 1951, a decision was made to relocate 300 collective farms from the region—125 in the Jañaqala district and 175 in the Orda district—to the South Kazakhstan region.
In July 1952, the first people to be sent south from the Saykhin Station were residents of three collective farms in the Orda district: Internatsional, Kaganovich, and Kalinin. From Algai Station, residents of two collective farms in the Jañaqala district—the Saryözen and Lenin collective farms—were relocated. In total, 336 families, or 1,805 people from these five collective farms, were resettled in the Jetisai district of South Kazakhstan.
Not all collective farms were relocated to the South Kazakhstan region; some of the population was relocated to the western parts of the republic. For example, thirty collective farms were resettled from the Orda district: nine in the Guryev region, five in the Chapaevsky district of the same region, one in the Taipaq district, two in the Janaqaly district, and ten in the Janibek district. From the Jañaqala district, which borders the Orda district, four collective farms were resettled in the Guryev region, two in the Jympity district of the region, three in the Chapaevsky district, and one in the Burlin district.
The relocation from the Bukey Steppe continued for nearly eight more months, and eventually, the Orda district disappeared entirely from the administrative map.
Military Trucks and Freight Cars
Official documents record only the bare facts: the dissolution of the district, the transfer of land for the needs of the military testing ground, and the relocation of collective farms. But behind these records are the stories of real people—testimonies absent from Soviet archives but preserved in the memories of eyewitnesses, passed down like fragments of a truth that refused to be erased.
In 2023, a research expedition set out for the Jetisai district to investigate the 1952 deportations.
Cover of the book «Kapustin Yar Military Training Ground: Kazakh Deportation» by Baktyly Boranbayeva / Qalam
Their work took them into the state archives of the Turkestan region (formerly South Kazakhstan), where they combed through official records, and into local communities, where they sought out the descendants of those from the Bukey Steppe who had been forcibly relocated more than seventy years earlier. Among the eyewitnesses, there were very few elderly people who had experienced the forced relocation as adults. Most were younger, and had been subjected to deportation at the age of between ten and twelve.
According to their accounts, the deportees were first taken to the Saykhin Station in military trucks. In the scorching heat, people were made to wait for a train for nearly ten days in the open air. Then, they were loaded into freight cars and sent on their way. The journey from the west of the country to Jetisai took between fifteen and twenty days. The heat was unbearable, and people suffered from extreme thirst. During brief stops, some tried to search for water, but such attempts often ended in tragic deaths.
Aklima Bayantasova / Baktyly Boranbayeva
One of those who lived through these events was Aklima Bayantasova. Now ninety-five years old, she has returned to the Western Kazakhstan region and currently lives in the village of Janibek. In 1952, she traveled south in a stifling freight car with her newborn son Tilepbergen and her three-year-old daughter Nurzhiyan.
At the Arys Station, the train stopped briefly. We got a bit of fresh air and then returned to the car. One elderly woman with her little granddaughter didn’t make it back in time. As the train began to move, she ran with a kettle in her hand, trying to jump back on. But one of her galoshes slipped off. When she bent down to pick it up, she ended up under the train. The wheels cut off both of her legs. Her socks, galoshes, and feet were on one side of the tracks, her torso on the other. The blood poured as though from a bucket. As her daughter-in-law approached, the woman pointed to her chest—it turned out she had hidden money there—and then she died. We all cried . . .
Women, children, and the elderly were the first to be relocated from the west of the country. The men stayed behind to hand over livestock to the state and only followed their families fifteen to twenty days later.
Dirty Water and Dugouts
In the Ilyichevsky district of the South Kazakhstan region, where the settlers were sent, no accommodations had been prepared for them. Exhausted from the journey and under the scorching July sun, they were forced to build dugouts simply to find shelter from the heat. Drinking water was scarce. For both drinking and washing clothes, people had no choice but to use the murky water from irrigation ditches, channels meant for livestock, not humans. Some recalled:
We huddled in the shade of a makeshift shelter that one family had built—they were busy digging earth and making bricks. The heat was unbearable. We drank dirty, murky water from the irrigation ditch. There was no firewood . . . At night, we dreamed of our homeland. We longed for home. We survived and endured everything. But, you know, the hardships of war fade with time, while the pain of being torn from your native land in times of peace never goes away.
But it wasn’t only the residents of western Kazakhstan who were deported to the Jetisai district of the South Kazakhstan region. Historians found documents in the collections of the Turkestan Regional State Archive showing that between 1950 and 1952, people of various nationalities from twelve regions of Kazakhstan were resettled in the area.
For example, from June to August 1952, eight families from the Bolshenarym district of the East Kazakhstan region were relocated to the Progress Collective Farm in the Ilyichevsky district; sixty-eight families from the Besqarağai district of Pavlodar region were sent to the Mikoyan Collective Farm; and sixty-six families from the Krasnyi Pakhar (Red Plowman) Collective Farm in the Molotov district of Aqmola region were moved to the seventh division of the Ilyichevsky district.
In addition, people were resettled from the interior districts of what were then the Taldyqorğan, Semipalatinsk, North Kazakhstan, East Kazakhstan, Kökshetau, Qostanai, Aqtöbe, Jambyl, and South Kazakhstan regions.
The Jetisai district was not prepared to receive such a large number of people, and as the number of settlers grew daily, their already dire situation only worsened. But it was impossible to assess the true scale of the human tragedy without a thorough investigation. Therefore, on 11 December 1952, the chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Kazakh SSR, E. Taybekov, signed a decree titled ‘On the Progress of the Resettlement Plan and Measures for Organizing the Economic Welfare of the Resettlers’. By the provisions of this decree, a special state commission was established, which inspected seventeen collective farms in the South Kazakhstan region and found the following:
Among those resettled in the summer of 1952 were war invalids, families of soldiers killed at the front, large families, single mothers, and elderly people in urgent need of material assistance. Many collective farmers lack bread and drinking water. None of the collective farms have maternity wards, public bathhouses, or telephone communication. Due to a shortage of school buildings, children study in three shifts. Most schools have no heating or lighting.
After the inspections, the authorities attempted to implement measures to ease the settlers’ living conditions, but little actual improvement was achieved. Three months after the inspections began, on 6 March 1953, at a meeting of the Resettlement Administration under the Council of Ministers of the Kazakh SSR, the chairman of the regional executive committee, P. G. Lugin, presented a fresh report on the socioeconomic conditions of the resettlers in the region.
The discussion of the situation in the Jetisai district was particularly heated. It was found that of the 3,200 houses planned, fewer than half had been built. Of the 4,124 resettled families, only 2,682 had received housing. The rest were forced to share homes with other families or live in dugouts and temporary shelters.
Children’s Cemetery
The resettled population faced severe hardships: no proper housing, no medical care, no public bathhouses, and constant shortages of clean drinking water and food. Under such conditions, epidemics spread quickly and illness was widespread. The first to perish were the most vulnerable, the elderly and children, and mortality rates climbed sharply.
Saparaly ata cemetary. Zhetisai / Baktyly Boranbayeva
The expedition drew on two main sources to reconstruct these events: eyewitness accounts and official records. For example, on 15 January 1953, the Resettlement Administration of the South Kazakhstan region sent a letter to Jumabai Shayakhmetov, First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan, and to the Resettlement Administration under the Council of Ministers of the Kazakh SSR, reporting the deaths of thirty-eight children from measles, pneumonia, and the spread of infectious diseases.
Yet, the reality on the ground seems to tell a different story. Near the village of Jañaauyl (formerly Telman) in Jetisai district lies a children’s cemetery dating back to that time. Its size alone casts serious doubt on the official figures, suggesting that the true human toll was far higher than the Soviet records were willing to admit.
Children's cemetery near Saparaly ata cemetary. Zhetisai / Baktyly Boranbayeva
Eyewitness testimonies further cast doubt on the official figures. One such witness, Köshkinbai Qapolov, emphasized that the number of deceased children defied any attempt at record-keeping:
‘There were too many child deaths. I personally knew a family where only two of eleven children survived.’
One of those forced to resettle in Jetisai was the poet Kairat Jumagaliev. In his recollections, he described how, during the worst times, there was sometimes no one left to bury the dead:
There were so many deaths that people stopped offering condolences. The law was harsh and clear that no one was excused from work without a serious reason. Even funerals became a major ordeal, because no one could be found to carry them out. A whole cemetery appeared on the outskirts of the village.
Gulzhiyan Shokanaeva moved to the Telman Collective Farm in the Maqtaaral district at the end of May 1952. At first, her family crowded into one of the rooms in a local resident’s home. According to her recollections, many families lost loved ones due to outbreaks of intestinal infections:
At the collective farm, we picked cotton and cleaned irrigation ditches. Many people died from infectious diseases. I remember how the head of the camel farm, Khamit Junisov, who arrived with us, lost five children—unfortunately, he buried two of them on the same day. We saw how grief overwhelmed Burkhan and Agipa Ömirzakov, whose three daughters and son were laid to rest one after another.
Lost Connections
While researching data on those deported and resettled in the Jetisai district, historians encountered another problem. It turned out that among those who were forcibly relocated, there were some who were still searching for the relatives they had left behind in their ancestral homeland.
For example, Alibek Mukangaliev (born in 1965) now lives in the village of Qaraqai in the Turkestan Region (formerly South Kazakhstan). His father, Kuanishkali, was eleven or twelve years old when he was deported. His grandmother, Jibek, barely survived the deportation along with her children: Latifa (born 1937), Quanyshkali, (born 1941), and Quandyq (born 1944). Their homeland is the Jañaqala district. Alibek is still searching for relatives who remained in the Oral region:
I’m still looking for my father’s relatives in western Kazakhstan, but so far without success. As the saying goes, ‘One who doesn’t know seven generations of their ancestors is without kin.’ I remember how my son and daughter once lost a school contest because they couldn’t name all seven generations of their ancestors.
The archives have preserved numerous petitions in which people begged for permission to relocate to South Kazakhstan with their parents and relatives, so as not to be separated from their families. One letter by someone named Tomanov, addressed to Daniyal Kerimbaev, Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Kazakh SSR, reads:
I work in the malaria control department of the Orda district, West Kazakhstan region. I wish to relocate to the South Kazakhstan region together with my parents. However, the Orda district executive committee denied my request. I ask for your assistance in this matter.
—Tomanov
However, it appears that no one ever responded to such pleas, and archival documents confirm this:
To the Secretary of the Orda District Party Committee, Comrade Kenjebek Mendaliev,
From a resident of the village of Orda, a father who lost his son at the front, Sary Tomanov.
Two of my brothers live on the Kaganovich Collective Farm. They are now preparing to relocate to South Kazakhstan. I ask to be allowed to go with them. I have appealed to many agencies about this matter—I pleaded, but to no avail. I ask for your help—I am an elderly, illiterate man. Attached is a letter from the regional executive committee.
—S. Tomanov. 3/VII/1952.
Many families suffered greatly during the years of forced resettlement. Fathers and children, brothers and sisters were separated, and it took them many years to find each other again. The story of Aibarshyn Jahanshaqyzy (born in 1962), a resident of the village of Jañadäuir in the Keles district of the Turkestan region, is illustrative:
I clearly remember how my late mother-in-law, Nurganym Digarova, quietly wept, saying, ‘Having been torn from my native land, I found myself further from my family than anyone else . . .’ In 1952, she lost contact with two of her brothers, who remained in the Urals. Only in 1986 did they find her, and when they met, they cried for a long time with happiness.
The research clearly shows how the eviction of the Kazakh population from the lands allocated to the Kapustin Yar military testing ground was not only a severe socioeconomic blow but also a profound moral and psychological trauma for ordinary people.
A Story That Did Not End
Archival documents show that residents of three collective farms from the Orda district and two from the Jañaqala district—a total of 1,805 people—were resettled. They were sent to the Jetisai district. However, it is still impossible to determine how many among them were men and women, elderly people, or children.
The picture is further complicated by the fact that some of the resettled people tried to escape. Some never managed to adapt to the new place. People secretly returned, despite having their passports confiscated. Some moved to neighboring Uzbekistan, and others to Russia. However, there is no exact data on them. The poet Kairat Jumagaliev recalled:
Those who dared to escape slipped away unnoticed on moonlit nights, leaving their livestock in the pen and firewood by the stove. Without telling anyone, they simply disappeared.
In the autumn of 2024, a memorial plaque was placed at the Saparaly Ata Cemetery in the Jetisai district at the burial site of children, victims of the Soviet command-administrative system of 1952. But this act is only one small step towards true remembrance and the reconciliation of grief, which demand more: that every victim of this tragedy be identified by name, and that their descendants, after decades of silence, finally uncover the truth about the lives and untimely deaths of their relatives.
