The Stories of the Great Steppe: The Anthology of Modern Kazakh Literature
Alva Robinson
Rabis Abazov, ed. Sergey Levchin and Ilya Bernshtein, tr.
2013, Cognella Academic Publishing, 978-1-62131-8-378, $68.95 pb.
In early 1953, following the death of Joseph Stalin and the ascension of Nikita Khrushchev to first secretary, the Soviet Union began to ease repression and censorship of creative arts. In the Kazakh Soviet Republic (today’s Kazakhstan), this gave rise to a generation of literary figures who would be the engines to drive the nation forward. Mass-produced publishing and popular readership rose for the first time alongside nomadic storytelling traditions. This anthology of short stories and poetry by some of Kazakhstan’s most prominent writers and poets, rooted in the nomadic traditions, helps readers understand the “universe through the eyes of a nomad” while revealing some of the social impacts of the period’s major trends and events, such as Soviet patriotism and World War II.
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