Introduction

In his novel The day lasts more than a hundred years, the prominent Kyrgyz writer Chingiz Aytmatov (1982) compares Sabitzhan, the book's main character epitomizing Soviet youth, with a mythological figure called Mankurt, who acts as a slave of the conquerors due to his loss of memory. Legend has it that the Zhuan-Zhuan tribe, the powerful conquerors of the Kazakh steppes, used a special technique to wipe out the memory of local people: they shaved their hair off, wrapped their shaved heads in an tripe freshly cut from a camel and left them for several days in the Kazakh steppe. In the sun, the tripe dried and clung ever-more tightly to the scalp of the victims. As a result, their hair did not grow outwards but was directed inwards to penetrate their brain. Most captives died from this unbearable suffering but a few sturdy and muscular men would survive. The survivors could not remember who they were and what their virtues or destiny had been. The Zhuan-Zhuan conquerors then used these Mankurts as memoryless slaves to suppress their own people.

Here, Aytmatov is exploring the loss of memory and identity of the oppressed groups of the Kazakh steppe during three invasions: by the Zhuan-Zhuan tribe; by the Bukhara Emirate; and by the Soviet Union. He defines the problem from the perspective of a class antagonism that divides slaves and slaveholders, or victims and victors.

This chapter, which draws on data collected through ethnographic field research, also reflects on the question of how the hegemonic demands of dominant local groups endanger minorities and thus influence their social and cultural life. However, in contrast to Aytmatov's narrative about the dominant role of the external conquerors in wiping out the memory of local groups, the Lyuli subgroup of Mughats, a minority group in the suburban area of Osh City, Kyrgyzstan, do not always have their memory wiped out; rather, they develop certain security practices in response to the demands of the dominant local groups and the economic deprivation in which they find themselves. Mughats generate these practices by learning from their own or their elders’ selected experiences of risk.