This past Thursday marked the anniversary of the USSR's involvement in Afghanistan. As I know little about this conflict, I was not expecting much ceremony. However, during lunch, my school put on quite a moving memorial for those who served in the war. Veterans were present when our principle handed out memorial wreaths. The USSR fought there for around ten years (if my Russian serves me right) and many lives were lost. Those lives came not just from Russian, but also from all of the satellite states (now Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan). The lives lost during this war and WWII are remembered in every town I have visited. Each little hamlet has its own war memorial (usually a stone sculpture depicting a weeping mother) and everybody proudly remembers the USSR's role as victor during WWII. Indeed, this is the main reason why some people still fondly remember communism.
Micah Lemons writes: War Memorials and Bureacracy in Kazakhstan
War Memorials and Bureacracy in Kazakhstan
May 24, 1:27 AM
Caption: War Memorial in Panfilov Park in Almaty. by sly06 Flickr Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic
This following post was taken from an email I wrote while teaching English as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Kazakhstan from 2006-08.
This past Thursday marked the anniversary of the USSR's involvement in Afghanistan. As I know little about this conflict, I was not expecting much ceremony. However, during lunch, my school put on quite a moving memorial for those who served in the war. Veterans were present when our principle handed out memorial wreaths. The USSR fought there for around ten years (if my Russian serves me right) and many lives were lost. Those lives came not just from Russian, but also from all of the satellite states (now Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan). The lives lost during this war and WWII are remembered in every town I have visited. Each little hamlet has its own war memorial (usually a stone sculpture depicting a weeping mother) and everybody proudly remembers the USSR's role as victor during WWII. Indeed, this is the main reason why some people still fondly remember communism.
A school performance in southern Kazakhstan at a memorial to honor the fallen in World War IIIn the West, I remember learning about the USSR's involvement, with Stalin sitting next to Churchill and Roosevelt in all those famous pictures. However, the magnitude of lost lives (in the tens of millions) never struck me until I came here and saw how WWII memories are still present. Thus, yesterday was both a day for mourning the lost and celebrating triumph (although I understand there was little of that in Afghanistan…). Perhaps America would do well to remember our own lives lost before we head needlessly into conflict.
Recently the Minister of Education for all of Kazakhstan came to Turkistan to visit my school. The preparations for his visit were intense. All the students washed the entire building and parking lot from top to bottom. Lines were painted for the first time on to the parking lot, denoting were cars should be parked. Students and teachers alike hung precariously outside second storey windows to wash the outside of the building.
A World War II memorial in Turkestan, KazakhstanThe next day students were abuzz in anticipation. This being Kazakhstan, the minister never showed up and we later learned that he would come later in the week. When he finally did come (three days after his planned visit), the teachers made sure that the halls were free of students and other loiterers. I happened to be walking from the bathroom (alias outhouse) back to the computer room when a local teacher spotted me and shoved me into a classroom that was for some reason temporarily without a teacher. So for the next hour, while the minister roamed our halls, I tried to teach eighth graders who I'd never seen before. Since they spoke in Kazakh, didn't know any English, and I only know a little Russian, we had a pretty interesting class. By the end of the hour, the minister left, having briefly looked around two classrooms and the gymnasium. For an American, the amount of red tape rolled out for this bureaucrat was absurd. The legacy of the USSR lives on.
