Steppe Dreams

Steppe Dreams concerns the political significance of temporality in Kazakhstan, as manifested in public events and performances, and its reverberating effects in the personal lives of Kazakhstanis. Like many holidays in the post-Soviet sphere, public celebrations in Kazakhstan often reflect multiple temporal framings—utopian visions of the future, or romanticized views of the past—which throw light on present-day politics of identity.

Adams examines the political, public aspects of temporality and the personal and emotional aspects of these events, providing a view into how time, mighty and unstoppable, is experienced in Kazakhstan.

More Praise

The strength of this thought-provoking book lies in Adams’s treatment of Kazakh musical
traditions. . . . A welcome addition to the scholarship on Kazakhstan.

Russian Review

This book engagingly describes how time and space, sound and belief, celebration and memory are negotiated by contemporary Kazakhstani citizens. It is a beautifully written work of cultural studies that provides both an overview for the novice and new insights for the expert.

Laura Adams, Harvard University

In vigorous and accessible language, Steppe Dreams deftly illuminates the ubiquitous culture of public festivity, celebration, and pilgrimage in Kazakhstan as a window into the national psyche of this diverse and dynamic country. Margarethe Adams is an insightful ethnographer and graceful writer whose broad knowledge of life in Kazakhstan comes alive on every page.

Theodore Levin, Arther R. Virgin Professor of Music, Dartmouth College

Margarethe Adams shows us that the Soviet past is never past, that time lingers in pools of memory, structures, habits, celebrations, the arts, and politics. The legacies of a transformative empire endure even in the visions of an alternative future in what seems a precarious and unending pursuit of an elusive happiness. Based on extensive fieldwork in Kazakhstan, Adams explores the nationalizing processes in the independent post-Soviet republic—the revival of Kazakh folk music, the calendar of holidays new and old—as well as the stubborn ideological reminders of the Soviet era. This is a masterwork of thick description of complex cultures in flux that speaks to larger theoretical issues of temporality, memory, and the affective affiliations to nation.

Ronald Grigor Suny, University of Michigan

Table of Contents

Sample