There’s something powerful about film as a story-telling medium. Even though we’ve read books and articles about Kazakhstan under Stalinism, spoken to our host families, and even visited the site of an old gulag, none of these experiences gave me an insight into this period of Kazakhstan’s history as much as watching the movie A Gift to Stalin (2008). The film artfully transfers the emotions and devastations of its characters to the viewer while simultaneously depicting traditional aspects of Kazakh culture, beautifully and tragically illustrating what life was like for ordinary people living in Kazakhstan under Stalinism.
The movie, directed by Rustem Abdrashev, takes place in 1949 on the wide Kazakh steppe, and follows the story of a young boy named Sasha (Dalen Shintemirov). Early in the film, we meet Sasha and his grandfather on a Soviet train with other Jews headed to Kazakhstan. However, Sasha’s grandfather quickly dies on the train, and Sasha decides to hide himself with the other dead bodies once the train stops in Kazakhstan. The two grave-diggers, Faty and Kasym (Nurzhuman Ikhtimbaev), discover the boy and decide to bring him back to their village. There, we meet many other characters: Vera (Yekaterina Rednikova), the Russian woman who served in Alzhir (the same gulag we visited), Ezhik (Waldemar Szczepaniak), a Polishman hopelessly in love with Vera, and Balgabai, the town’s police officer who rules through fear and abuse. Sasha is thrown into this multicultural village, living with Kasym. Тhe old Kazakh man integrates the boy into Kazakh culture, even giving Sasha a new Kazakh name– Sabyr, which means “humble.”
Indeed, the power of Sasha’s character lies in the nonverbal acting performances of Shintemirov. Sasha is like a sponge, quietly and (for the most part) passively absorbing his new life as a proto-Kazakh boy. He wears his taqiyah, plays with the village boys, and even learns to speak some Kazakh. However, it’s clear that Sasha is not living a normal childhood; he misses his parents, who were arrested back in Moscow, but seems sure that he will see them again. This sadness hangs over his head like a cloud throughout the film, which can be seen in Sasha’s downcast facial expressions and heavy movements. Often, he simply shuts his eyes, goes mute, and waits for his fear to pass. The innocence and sadness of Sasha’s character shines through these nonverbal cues, pulling on the heartstrings of the viewer, and leaves Sasha as a symbol for the millions of children who grew up orphaned like Sasha under Stalinism.
Although Sasha may, in one sense, be the main character of the film, the other characters flesh out the story in important ways. Vera, one of only two women characters in the entire film, brings a maternal touch to the village, picking out the lice in Sasha’s hair when he arrives and protecting him from Balgabai. However, she is arguably the character that suffers the most in the film; not only is she a former prisoner of Alzhir, but she is continously subjected to sexual harassment and abuse from the Soviet men in charge, and her character is thus a poignant representation of the role and treatment of women during this time.
One character, though, stands in juxtaposition from the terror of the Soviet regime. Kasym, Sasha’s adopted father/grandfather, serves to represent Kazakh culture in the film: he speaks Kazakh instead of Russian, majestically rides his horse out into the vast steppe, plays the dombra, and expertly hands out each part of the goat’s head during the serving of beshbarmak. Unlike the Soviets, he practices a tolerant Islam, and prays over those he has to bury. His character gives a feeling of safety and security to both Sasha and to the viewer, and in this way the film contrasts the cold, dangerous nature of Soviet culture with the welcoming, safe nature of Kazakh culture.
This juxtaposition between the culture associated with the Soviet Union and traditional Kazakh culture is what truly gave me the deeper insight into what Kazakhstan was like under Stalinism. I was excited to see aspects of Kazakh culture depicted in the film that I have already come to love during the short four weeks I’ve been here (especially baursaki!), which are so rarely depicted in the media. Seeing the harsh conditions of Stalinism that the people and culture of Kazakhstan I’ve come to know today have survived, then, was particularly striking.
Indeed, despite the melancholy mood of the film, there is something uplifting about seeing Kazakh culture play out on the screen. Sasha is welcomed into the village as readily as we were welcomed into Almaty, and Sasha’s experiences as a new Kazakh felt familiar to the experiences we’ve had adjusting to Kazakh culture. Importantly, though, the village characters did not appear to be defeated despite the various trials and tribulations to which they were subjected, whether ethnically Kazakh or not. Indeed, even now, it does not appear that Kazakhstanis have been defeated. Perhaps only those who lived through that time can comprehend the horrors of Stalinism, but A Gift to Stalin does a beautiful job portraying characters who feel as real as the people I meet on the streets of Kazakhstan, making it easier to understand how they lived under Stalinism. While not a light-hearted watch, this movie nevertheless serves as a powerful reminder of how much the Kazakh people have both suffered and survived.
I hope you give it a watch!
-Grace
