Few noticed when earlier this month city authorities in the Kazakh capital, Astana, quietly replaced a memorial plaque honoring the victims of the deadly famine that ravaged the country in the 1930s.
The original inscription referred to the tragedy as a Holodomor, a term that implies a man-made famine and genocide.
The new plaque in Astana, however, uses the Russian word, “golod,” meaning “famine,” a more neutral term that removes the connotation of responsibility.
While the move raised few eyebrows at the time, it has started to catch the attention of many and put the spotlight on a long-standing debate over the famine, which killed at least 1.5 million people -- roughly one-third of Kazakhstan’s population --marking one of the darkest chapters in the Central Asian nation’s history.
Over the years, many Kazakh historians, politicians, and activists have called on their government to recognize the famine as a genocide orchestrated by Soviet leader Josef Stalin’s regime.
But, keen to avoid upsetting Russia -- a close ally and major trading partner -- Kazakhstan has so far resisted such calls.
The word Holodomor itself originates from Ukrainian -- combining holod (“hunger”) and mor (“death” or “plague”) -- and is commonly understood to mean “death by hunger” or “deliberate starvation.”
Ukrainians interpret it as denoting a policy of extermination carried out during the 1932–33 famine in Soviet Ukraine, which is now known internationally as the Holodomor.
Unlike Ukraine, which in 2006 officially labeled its Holodomor a deliberate act of extermination by Moscow, Kazakh leaders have consistently described their country's famine as the tragic result of misguided Soviet policies rather than an intentional crime against the Kazakh nation.
Now, however, the politics of remembrance embedded in that single word are reverberating in Kazakhstan.
Officials in Astana have offered little explanation for their decision to replace the original plaque. The city administration told RFE/RL in a written response to questions on the matter that the word was changed “to ensure bilingual consistency.” Kazakh is the country's "state language," while Russian has the status of an "official language."
The change of wording has sparked a backlash on social media, with many crying foul.
One Facebook user, Dastan Abdyrakhmanuly, called it “a distortion of Kazakh history and an attempt to conceal the political nature of the tragedy inflicted on the people.”
Abdyrakhmanuly and many other Kazakh social-media users have demanded that the word Holodomor be restored.
A Taboo Subject In Soviet Times
In the late 1920s, the Soviet government began forcibly implementing a policy of collectivization for the agriculture sector across the Soviet Union.
In Kazakhstan, the campaign aimed to permanently settle Kazakhs, a nomad nation, and force them onto collective farms. It also involved the mass requisition of livestock -- the main livelihood of the nomads.
By late 1930, drought, disease, and starvation had spread across the Kazakh steppe, killing more than a million people and forcing hundreds of thousands to leave the country.
Historians estimate that by 1933, somewherebetween 1.5 million and more than 2 million people had perished in Kazakhstan during the mass starvation, part of a broader Soviet famine that also affected Ukraine and several regions of Russia. But the subject remained taboo during Soviet times.
Only after gaining independence in 1991 did Kazakhstan begin to openly discuss the Stalin-era famine, locally known as the Asharshylyq. For the first time, it was included in Kazakhstan’s history textbooks.
In 1992, a commission was set up to study the famine at the state level, using newly opened archives. The commission labeled the 1930s famine an “ethnocide,” a deliberate crime aimed at eradicating an ethnic group.
This was an early attempt in Kazakhstan to define the famine politically and legally as genocide. But, sensitive to Moscow, the newly independent country decided to postpone a formal political assessment.
As the legal successor to the Soviet Union, Russia has strongly opposed such interpretations and refuses to accept any accusations of genocide.
'It Shouldn’t Be Politicized'
The Kazakh government still avoids ascribing political motives to the famine.
In 2021, President Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev said that “these dark pages of our history remain insufficiently studied.”
“We should approach this complex issue with restraint and responsibility. Research should be conducted scientifically, without slogans or sensationalism,” he said.
Toqaev’s comments echoed those of his predecessor, Nursultan Nazarbaev, who told the nation in 2012 that it “must be prudent when discussing the famine. It should not be politicized."
Berikbol Dukeyev, a Kazakh scholar, who has published research on the famine, argues that Nazarbaev was mindful of potential harm to Astana’s close ties with Moscow as well as resentment among Kazakhstan’s sizeable ethnic Russian minorities that make up some 15 percent of the population.
But over the years, historians and politicians have continued to call for a fair political evaluation. Among them is lawmaker Berik Dyusembinov, who in 2020 publicly urged the government to follow Ukraine’s example and recognize the famine as an act of genocide.
“The Foreign Ministry should start the process of gaining international recognition of the famine in Kazakhstan as genocide through the United Nations, the US Congress, the European Parliament, and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe,” he told the Kazakh parliament, saying the country owes justice to the famine’s victims.
Five years on, there has still been no concrete answer or action from the authorities, Dyusembinov told RFE/RL earlier this month.
Kazakhstan marks a Remembrance Day for Victims of Political Repressions and Famine on May 31.
