Complaints about rubbish, waste and pollution in Kazakhstan owe more to politics than environmentalism, according to new research

Dr Catherine Alexander, of Goldsmiths, University of London, spoke to residents, bureaucrats and architects during annual fieldwork from 2000 to 2005 in Almaty – former capital of Kazakhstan, once dubbed the 'third greenest city in the Soviet Union'.

Citizens complained about air pollution, litter and rubbish, laying the blame firmly on the emergence of unregulated capitalism in post-Soviet Kazakhstan. They claimed that new billboards and high-rise buildings owned by foreign companies clogged the city's air flow, unregulated shashlik (kebab) stalls burned foul-smelling fuels, while unlicensed petrol stations belched black smoke. Migrants from rural Kazakhstan were accused of littering the streets and canals.

Parks and trees, the city's green lungs, were being decimated by authorities selling public land to businessmen for petrol stations, offices, casinos and leisure centres.

However, according to Dr Alexander, these complaints often overlook a more complex geography that stretches back to Perestroika, and before, with pollution often being a direct legacy of the city's socialist past.

Shrinking subsidies from Moscow during Perestroika, for example, resulted in the unchecked growth of trees and bushes in the city’s central parks; fountains dried out and cracked, the grass grew to meadow height.

Before 2002, many of the higher buildings in central Almaty were in fact built during the Soviet period. Toxic soil in the city centre resulted from the factories scattered throughout the city, which leaked chemicals into the land. The proximity of un-engineered waste dumps and industrial zones to residential areas – despite Soviet planning norms to the contrary – led these areas to be characterised as ‘time bombs’.

The complexity continues when many companies that were said to be foreign owned were often subsidiaries of Kazakh holding companies, that were in turn connected to an elite that spans Soviet and post-Soviet periods.

Citizens' nostalgia for Almaty's once green garden-like city is thus intertwined with realisations of the negative effects and legacies of the various political regimes they have been, and are, living through.

  More on Catherine Alexander's work
  Dr Alexander's research is published in a chapter of Enduring Socialism: Explorations of Revolution and Transformation, Restoration and Continuation edited by Harry West and Parvathi Raman, and published by Bergahn Books. Details