The Silent Steppe by Mukhamet Shayakhmetov

The Silent Steppe: The Story of a Kazakh Nomad Under Stalin by Mukhamet Shayakhmetov and Jan Butler

Born into a family of nomadic Kazakh herdsmen in 1922, Mukhamet Shayakhmetov’s father was imprisoned as an ‘enemy of the people’ as Soviet rule spread across his people’s vast steppe-land in central Asia. In this book, Shayakhmetov recalls the scale of suffering in his homeland under Stalin’s rule.