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Madalbek Keneshov, who is Kyrgyz, was born in 1928 in Kara Sogot, a village in southern Kyrgyzstan, near Osh. He spent much of his life working as a veterinarian on a collective farm. Once, he recalls, a “…commission alleged that 400 lambs had died of … disease. They took me the regional committee bureau and took away my Party membership card.” Nurshat Ababakirov interviewed him in Kara Sogot on March 15, 2009.

My grandfather, Turdugul, was moderately wealthy. He had five children. My father’s name is Kenesh. He lived with my grandfather.

The basmachi [Central Asian anti-Russian insurgents] would constantly raid our villages and take livestock away from rich people. My grandfather decided to give my father to the basmachi to protect his livestock.

When [the Soviet military leader] Mikhail Frunze brought his army to Central Asia, he took control of Osh and then moved north to Jalal-Abad and Bishkek [subduing the basmachi]. Kenesh then returned to his father and began living an ordinary life as a farmer.

In 1932, when my grandfather was in danger of being sent to the gulag, my father took him to Kashgar, China. I was four. I cannot remember how long it took us to reach Kashgar. Maybe one month or half a month. We fled on our own – only our family, which included my father, grandfather, mother, sister, two younger brothers, and me. Every family made its own way with its own stuff. Everyone just got on their horses and took off. It was summer.

My grandfather sent my father back to Kyrgyzstan to learn whether things had settled down and my father learned that two of his brothers had been sentenced and the other two had fled to Uzbekistan. In 1932, the Kyzyl Emgek [Red Labor] sovkhoz [state-owned farm] of Kara Sogot village was established and my father joined it as a worker.

A law enforcement body under [Mikhail] Frunze recruited him. He worked in the Papan Valley for a merchant named Arzibai, who had recruited him. Arzibai was a Soviet partisan who was working for the MVD. While he was working as a law enforcement officer, my father was sent to China. He was captured there, but released with help from local connections. He returned to Papan and resumed his position.

His father, Turdugul died on his way back from China. I traveled all the way from China with him on his horse. He died when we had just reached Kyrgyzstan and he was drinking tea. I cried until my relatives came and took his body to be buried. Then I stayed with my maternal grandparents. We buried my grandfather in Kara Sogot. At that time, my father was in Kashgar, spying. And I remained in Kara Sogot.

In 1936, when I was eight, I went to the first grade. We studied there with lepkez, which were adults aged 30-35. I finished the third grade in that school. I went to the fourth grade in a seven-year school on the Shedrih sovkhoz of Boru village. When I was in fifth grade, World War II started. During the war, life was very difficult. Living standards fell. There was no food. We were hungry. I was 12-13 then. At the age of 13, I began to work for the sovkhoz. I did many kinds of work: I shepherded, drove carts of wheat, and worked in the fields. From 1943 until 1946, I worked on the sovkhoz worker. We didn’t get salaries – we were glad for the mere fact that they fed us, so we kept working.

There were nine people in our family – I was the oldest child. We didn’t have enough food. The money my father, my mother, and I made by working for the sovkhoz hardly made ends meet. Food was very expensive. I remember one person was killed for bread. Bread back then was very dark; it was made of corn. We would eat atala – a meal made of corn – often, too.

When I was working for the sovkhoz, we were sent to forest called Kyrkkech to get wood for making tools. There were seven of us. It was a two-day walk. For six days, we had no food. One horse fell from a cliff and died and we ate its meat, but it was no good. On the sixth day, we loaded our cart with wood and started back to the village. On our way, we stopped to rest in the village of Taldyk, where we asked someone to cook a kazan [pot] of atala for us. He gave us bread. At last, something was inside our stomachs. I felt like we had survived a famine. I could not forget this.

When I was young, I wondered if ever I would have a day when I would sleep until seven in the morning. We didn’t have tractors. We walked everywhere, even to Osh, where we bought food and clothes. We would stay the night there and return the next day. There were wolves on the way and some people were eaten. The distance between Kara Sogot and Osh is 25-30 kilometers. Once, my father gave me three kilograms of flour, two kilograms of rice, and two loaves of bread and sent me home to Kara Sogot. He stayed in Osh. On my way back to the village on my donkey, I was robbed by starving people. I didn’t know them. I cried – I was hungry, too.

We used to work in the fields for days, plowing the land, without going home. One day we were ordered to return to the village. When we got there, we saw the whole village was celebrating the end of the war. A couple of sheep were slaughtered and cooked. I still cannot forget how our stomachs were full for the first time after long years of starvation [interview subject laughs].

In 1946, after the war was over, I became an uchetchik, an inspector of sovkhoz issues. I got married in 1948, when I was 20. We dated for a certain period of time and then ran away from our village to Hodjabad, Uzbekistan, near Andijan. My wife’s parents did not want to give their daughter to me, because they said my father was poor. We got married in the traditional way in Hodjabad, by a mullah. This Uzbek mullah did not want to give us his blessing, demanding that we first register our marriage with the government. Islam was strictly controlled back then. In order to get the mullah’s approval, we had to secretly return to Osh to get a marriage-registration certificate. Then we lived in Hodjabad for six months before returning home. We lived for 50 years together. She gave birth to nine children. Three of them died. Now I have three daughters – Tajikan, Uulbu, and Maksat – and three sons: Abdymalik, Ulukbek, and Umutbek. I am a happy man, since I didn’t have any problems with my children.

In 1951, I was conscripted into the army. I was sent to the Moscow area for three years. At that point, I already had a good command of Russian, since I had worked with Russian workers on my sovkhoz. My Russian improved even more in the army. I was a samouchka: I studied Russian intensively on my own. In my unit, I was the only Kyrgyz among 40 Russians. They would slaughter pigs and cook them for us. There was a lieutenant named Kravchenko who was the commander of our group. When we were eating once, he moved a pig’s head toward me, suggesting that I eat it. Its nose was looking at me. I moved it back in front of him.

My action angered him. He asked, “Why don’t you respect me?” I said I couldn’t eat pork while looking at a pig’s head. He asked, “How come? What do you eat at home?” I said, “I eat mutton.” He got angry and said I was a Nazi. I said, “I just cannot eat pork! I cannot! What can I do if pork does not trigger my appetite? Enough! It makes me puke!” Then he asked why I was drinking soup made from pork, then. I said I didn’t want to die of starvation. My commander didn’t say anything after that.

In the army, I was appointed clerk of my platoon. At that time, mostly illiterate males would go into the army, but my handwriting was good. The colonel of my platoon enrolled me in a special Russian-language training course. After that, I began to feel confident enough to engage in verbal skirmishes with Russian soldiers. If it were not for my Russian co-workers on the sovkhoz who used to use sophisticated words and terminology, my command of Russian would not have been so good. Although my grammar was not good, I could use clear and intelligible words. Russians were often astonished.

Then I was appointed zavsklad [assistant warehouse clerk]. It was fun. I would send home various stuff. I would feed Kyrgyz soldiers who were hungry and I would asked them for favors. I was 22 years old, whereas most others were 19.

When I came back [to Kyrgyzstan] in 1954, I worked as a chief shepherd for five years. Then, through the local raicom [regional committee], I entered school in Bishkek. I studied for three years to become a veterinarian. Meanwhile, my family stayed in the village. My two younger brothers, Kalybek and Abdildabek, were drafted into the army after me. They served in Moscow and Finland.

I worked on the sovkhoz from the time I was 13 until I became a pensioner. I spent three years in the army and I spent three years at the party college. Aside from those six years, I spent my whole life working on the sovkhoz. It was an excellent sovkhoz: it received diplomas, honor certificates, cash bonuses, medals, and so on. It raised polutonkoronnyi kurduchnyi sheep, then tonkoronnyi sheep, and then meronosets sheep – this last was a special breed that was lost when the Soviet system collapsed. I was awarded the status of veteran of war for working on the sovkhoz during the war. I was also given the Chaban Kirgiziyi [Shepherd of Kyrgyzstan] medal. I became a member of the village council nine times.

Once, the Second Secretary of the oblast [province] committee came to inspect our sovkhoz. At that time, some young lambs had contracted a disease was affecting their mouths and throats. While inspecting the sheep, the secretary noticed some sick lambs. He was also a veterinarian. He asked why I was not treating the lambs. “This disease is contagious and it is spreading to our veterinarians. They say they are ill too,” I told him. “Then why aren’t you infected yet?” he asked. “Because I am old. My bones have already gotten hard. If I were young like you, I would contract the disease,” I replied.

He left our village immediately. The same day, he organized a commission and came back to our sovkhoz to investigate the matter. The commission alleged that 400 lambs had died of the disease. They took me the regional committee bureau and took away my Party membership card. My conversations with the law enforcement officers were tough. I was not allowed to defend myself. They asked questions and I could only say yes or no. Still, I was able to provide clear evidence that this disease was spreading because the sheep had not had enough fodder, the sheepfolds had not been warm, and the roofs had been leaking. When the case was thoroughly investigated, I was acquitted and regained my Party membership. The Second Secretary was found guilty of libel. He was stripped of his Party membership.

Nevertheless, I was well respected among the local Party representatives. Most of them were Russians. Once, I invited our sovkhoz director, the head of the oblast [province] executive committee, and the head of the regional agricultural committee for dinner. My wife made them soup. We sat outside and, while we were eating, a fly fell into the soup of the head of the oblast [province] agricultural committee, Viktor Handyukov Pavlovich. He took the fly out and kept happily eating his soup, whereas the head of the regional executive committee would not even finish his kumys [fermented mare’s milk] and soup. Victor Handyukov was a good man. He was a good farming specialist and he was accustomed to our culture and traditions.

During the Soviet period, religion was discredited. Mosques were destroyed. There was no large-scale religious observance, but some people would clandestinely practice Islam. I prayed as well. Religious practices were strictly limited; they were considered the private family affairs. Even at tois [wedding parties], religious practices were avoided. Popular Muslim holidays were not celebrated on a large scale. Our village didn’t have a mosque. The only mosque was in the city. You would go to Osh for Friday prayers, which was allowed. Circumcisions were practiced in secret. Islamic teachings took place within families. You would have to make an agreement with a local moldo [mullah] to arrange religious teachings for your children. Those who openly practiced religion were sentenced. Nevertheless, people in general didn’t abandon religion and, these days, religious holidays are widely celebrated.

Back then, relations between sons and fathers were respected. Moral values were strictly upheld. Muslims didn’t abandon their moral values. There was a feeling of general support and cohesion within our community. For the health of the family, there should be respect between fathers and sons, husbands and wives. There is one president in a country, and, likewise, there should be one ruler in the family. Every member of the family should listen to the head of the family. Back then, women had relatively limited freedom. Unlike the female labor migrants today, back then, women were not allowed to live abroad for years at a time. Women’s rights have expanded to a great extent. In many families today, women have the dominant role. The current system allows freedom we never saw in our time.

I have three sons and three daughters. They all have higher educations. I have 24 grandchildren and nine great-grand children. The government is doing everything it can for the youth. The root problem is that young generation does not get proper moral education, because so many parents leave the country to work. Unemployment is the main reason they are leaving for Russia and other foreign countries.

Labor migrants will not have a good life, despite their efforts. What one needs for a better life is to build a foundation. One must plant trees and fertilize land. A person should work for himself. [A labor migrant] will bring money home this year, but what about next year? He will buy a car, but it will get old and will need repairs. He will buy a house, but it will not earn money. Everything he earns will be gone in one or two years. Then he will have to sell his car and house for money to live on. At the end, he will be in the same position he was in before he went abroad. Elderly people must teach the younger generation. As our fathers would tell us: “put the words of elders into your bag.”