Lecture: "When the Steppe Was Home: A Historical Perspective on Hospitality in Nomadic Society"

For millennia, the vast steppes of Central Eurasia were a space across which immense groups of people moved incessantly. Mobility—the ability to move freely and transport one’s entire household—not only enabled steppe dwellers to survive in harsh climatic conditions but also allowed them to integrate into regional trade routes, political and strategic alliances, and to create and govern their own states. The region itself became an arena for the military expansion of great powers—from the Achaemenids and Alexander the Great to the Mongol Empire and the Timurid State—yet the nomadic way of life, its steadfast rules, and the collective morality of mutual aid and support for travelers and guests remained unchanged. For today you are the host, but tomorrow, you may be the guest.

However, in the 20th century, everything changed radically—during the period of the Stolypin reforms, wars, border delineations, collectivization, famine, deportations, and the Virgin Lands campaign. Traditional economies and social structures were dismantled, the demographic landscape was overturned, and people were forced to adapt to entirely different, alien cultural and political realities while striving to remain true to themselves. For the Kazakhs, this was a time when they became strangers in their own land, losing the ability to determine their own destiny and being forced to leave their ancestral homes due to strategic and industrial projects—and, during times of famine and repression, to migrate to other countries.

We have decided to speak with historian Zhar Zardykhan, Editor-in-Chief of the Qalam project, about how hospitality and mutual assistance historically served as vital survival mechanisms in nomadic society, and how, during periods of colonization and ideological transformation, they helped both Kazakhs and representatives of other nations to adapt and survive.