Almaty, May 28, 2025 – significant International Roundtable titled “KAZAKHSTAN DURING THE PERIOD OF FAMINE AND MASS POLITICAL REPRESSIONS. 1931-1938” took place in Almaty. Organized by the Ch.Ch. Valikhanov Institute of History and Ethnology, the event gathered leading historians and researchers from Kazakhstan, Russia, Kyrgyzstan, and Poland.
The roundtable was conducted in both offline and online formats, allowing a wide range of participants to engage in in-depth discussions on the topic. The event was moderated by Shamek Tleubayev, Deputy Director General for Scientific Work at the Ch.Ch. Valikhanov Institute of History and Ethnology, and Konstantin Cherepanov, Head of the 20th Century History of Kazakhstan Department at the same institute.
With a welcoming address to the participants, the Director General of the Ch.Ch. Valikhanov Institute of History and Ethnology, Academician of the National Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Kazakhstan, Doctor of Historical Sciences,1 Professor Ziyabek Kabuldinov opened the event.
During the roundtable, numerous reports were presented, covering various aspects of the famine and political repression period in Kazakhstan. Among the topics addressed were: the child contingent in GULAG camps in Kazakhstan, the beginning of mass political repressions in Kazakhstan, memoirs as sources for the history of the famine, repressions against Iranians, repressed kulaks, the outcomes of NKVD national operations, the specifics of political repressions in the Kyrgyz SSR, as well as a report “Poles in the Maelstrom of Stalinist Repressions” by guest scholar from Poland, Director of the Bureau of International Relations of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Anna Plater-Zyberk, who is on an official visit to the National Academy of Sciences under the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan and the Institute of History and Ethnology, the contribution of Academician M.K. Kozybayev to research, the dismantling of the special settlement system for deported peoples, repressions and famine in the memoirs of E.G. Brusilovsky and Yu.O. Dombrovsky, the life and daily routines of the Kazakh aul in the 1930s, and ideological repressions against the Kazakh intelligentsia.
Leading Kazakhstani scholars Kulgazira Baltabayeva, Sayin Borbasov, and Timur Ryskulov actively participated in the discussions.
Upon conclusion of the discussions, a fruitful exchange of opinions took place among the participants.
