Uralsk Tour

It's really cold here now!!! This is pretty much my look whenever we leave the apartment now.

This is a Russian Orthodox church near our apartment. There is also a very beautiful mosque a little further away that has recently been built. Kazakhstan is 65-70% Muslim, although they have very relaxed rules. Women do not seem to be treated differently at all, pretty much everyone drinks alcohol, etc.
This is the entrance to our apartment. Most of the large apartment buildings look very old and run down on the outside. As we understand it, the apartments are owned by individuals, like condos, but there is no homeowners association, so no one bothers with maintenance of the outside of the building, common areas, roads, etc. We guess our building was probably built in the 1930's or so. The outside is not as bad as many we have seen, although as you can see, there are broken windows and other signs of decay. Also, there are always clothing, rugs, you name it hanging from the windows or balconies of the big apartment buildings. So, while no one maintains the outside, the individual owners are resposible for the actual apartments which can be quite nice inside. We have even seen some satellite dishes here and there.
This is a pretty typical residential street in Uralsk. Each of the small buildings are homes. I would guess they are maybe 1000 square feet or less, and their may be many people living in them. They are very old, and some of them have walls and roofs patched with all sorts of random materials. Also most do not have plumbing. I cannot imagine going out to an outhouse in these temperatures. There are also some very large new homes here and there, and we have seen one new apartment building that looks very nice.
This was one of the stops on our tour. As you can see, the sun came out for the first time since we have been here. This is a memorial to a Russian woman who fought in combat in WWII.
This is another war memorial. As you can see from the dates, it is mainly for WWII, but they also have separate memorials for the Bulshavik Revolution, WWI, and Afghanistan. This was actually a very nice memorial, but much of it was covered in snow so the pictures don't really do it justice.
This is another separate memorial honoring soldiers who died in various wars.

We really enjoyed our tour of Uralsk. Our interpreter Aliyah was a great guide. She is a very sweet girl and has taken great care of us! She is only 19 and is studying to be an interpreter at a college in Uralsk.

So, if I can do it, I will try to summarize the history of Uralsk/Kazakhstan in two paragraphs or less. I will do my best between previous reading and the tour. Uralsk was founded in 1613 by rebel peasants who had escaped their masters. They were referred to as "cossacks". They were a thorn in the side for Russia for some time, and were involved in various battles and uprisings. I cannot recall the name that Uralsk had while this was going on, but in (I think) the late 1800's Catherine the Great wanted to wipe out the cossaks' influence and had the name of the town changed to Uralsk. This hame was chosen because the Ural River runs through the town. Incidently, the Ural River also is the dividing line between Eastern Europe and Asia.

When the Soviet Union was formed, Kazakhstan was a part of it. Much of the food for the Soviet Union was produced in Kazakhstan. Soviet leaders sent Russians to live and work in Kazakhstan, with one of the reasons being to interbreed with the Kazakhs. They felt that if there were not different nationalities in the Soviet Union there would be less chance of any one group rebelling. Now that Kazakhstan is it's own country again, there are Kazakhs and Russian mainly living here. Most things like street signs are printed in both Russian and Kazakh. Parents choose whether their kids go to a Russian speaking school or Kazakh speaking school. However, there is now a big push to switch to only Kazakh. It seems the government is planning to begin doing all business in Kazakh only in 2007 or 2008, which mean many Russians will not be able to have government jobs and are leaving Kazakhstan.

Kazakhstan has huge oil reserves, and many oil companies are here in the process of developing Kazakhstan as a source of oil. We have seen one area of town which was completely rebuilt by donations from the oil companies with brand new, beautiful buildings. So, it seems that Kazakhstan's ecomonic future should be fairly stable as they begin to supply oil to the world. However, there could be some problems as racial tensions grow as Russians (35% of the population) are slowly squeezed out of the country.

So, that is my very simplified report on Kazakhstan. It took forever to load the pictures tonight, so I've got to get to bed, but we'll have more pictures of the kids tomorrow!