A virtual round table on Asharshylyk was held in Washinton D.C.

On June 8, 2021, a virtual round table “Remembering Kazakhstan’s Great Famine of the 1930’s” on Asharshylyk  was held. The event was co-hosted by the Embassy of Kazakhstan in Washington D.C. and the Central Asia Program at George Washington University.

The virtual event was attended by Sarah Cameron, the author of the book “The Hungry Steppe Famine, Violence and the Making of Soviet Kazakhstan”, Peter Rollberg, Director of the Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies (IERES) at George Washington University (GWU), Dosym Satpayev, political scientist and Director of the “Risk Assessment Group”, and Marlene Laruelle (moderator), Director of the IERES, GWU.

Opening the event, Yerzhan Ashikbayev, the Ambassador of Kazakhstan to Washington D.C., spoke about the tragic event in the history of Kazakhstan and made a special emphasis on the fact that a purely scientific and historical approach is used in the study of Asharshylyk in the country, without politicizing the issue.

Describing the causes and consequences of Asharshylyk, Sarah Cameron noted that she approached the study of these events as objectively as possible, using materials in the Kazakh language, and also noted the growing interest in the topic of the event, which was being discussed for the first time in the United States within such kind of event.

In his turn, Dossym Satpayev elaborated on the publication of Cameron's book in Kazakh by his private cultural and educational foundation, which the young generation of Kazakhstan to know more about Asharshylyk.