Life on an Atomic Collective

The Post-Soviet Retreat of the State in Rural Kazakhstan

Bibliographic Data

ID2734654
AuthorsMagdalena E Stawkowski (National Nuclear Center of the Republic of Kazakhstan, corresponding author)
Year2017
Volume200
Issue200
Pages196-219
Publication date2017-07-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueÉtudes rurales (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0014-2182 • E-ISSN: 1777-537X
PublisherOpenEdition (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.4000/etudesrurales.11762
OpenAlexW2795089607
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited30

This article is a case study of Koian, a former livestock and agricultural collective farm overlapping the border of the Semipalatinsk Nuclear Test Site in Kazakhstan. I examine how, despite economic hardships, village residents have reinvented their collective farm as a "collective bank" on a post-Soviet agro-nuclear landscape. Although informal economies and social networks play an important role in ameliorating a lack of state commitment to the region, the village has become a relatively stable economic unit and a lynch pin of a broader strategy of upward mobility for family members who move to cities

Agriculture · Business · Economic growth · Economics · Economy · Geography · Livestock · Political science · State (computer science · Unit (ring theory · Indigenous Studies and Ecology · Psychology · Soviet and Russian History · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies

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