Custom-made phonebook (Kazakhstan)

A rigid, unwieldy structure, the Brezhnev-era Soviet state was beset by inefficiency. Faced with a dire need to modernise its ailing infrastructure, the Moscow-based leadership relied on an army of regional bureaucrats. Among them were apparatchiks who began their careers as early as the 1920’s, when the nascent Soviet state recruited local cadres. In many cases, these functionaries did well without a proper understanding of Communism. My great-grandfather Atymtai Kisanov (1906-1995), to whom this custom-printed phonebook belonged, preferred his bookshelves serried with volumes of Lenin’s works, which he hardly ever opened. The son of a poor cobbler, Kisanov owed his entire six-decade-long career to the Soviet state. His true allegiance, however, lay not with Lenin but with the semi-mythical figure of Tole Bi, a seventeenth-century ruler of Tashkent. Leaning against the brown edges of Lenin’s pristine omnibus, Tole Bi’s blue-and-white portrait proudly faced the visitors of Kisanov’s study in his spacious Tulebaeva-street flat in central Alma-Ata. An antique flintlock pistol adorned the wall opposite to the bookshelves, complementing the parochial setting of the room.

Kisanov’s pre-Soviet idols might seem extravagant to us but they were familiar to his kin, who frequently turned up at his doorstep with requests small and large. A true patriarch, Kisanov was always ready to help. His weapon of choice was not the pistol but the phone, which stood in his study on a tall side table beside the imposing green velvet sofa. He rarely picked up the tube without looking up a number in his bespoke red phonebook, which is evident from the object’s wear and tear. The book gave Kisanov unrestricted access to a small empire of his own: the Ministry of Housing and Communal Infrastructure of the Kazakh SSR. Kisanov, the deputy head of the ministry (1955-81), had a firm stand within the informal political hierarchy of Soviet Kazakhstan underpinned by his life-long friendship with the leader of the Kazakh Communist Party Dinmukhamed Kunaev. This behind-the-scenes influence earned Kisanov the moniker ‘Otdel kadrov’ (the Cadres Department) and allowed him to settle almost any matter quickly and decisively. For that, he needed his phonebook to be at hand at all times.

The most important numbers Kisanov must have known by heart or kept tucked away. This phonebook, nonetheless, was used most frequently. Not only was it indispensable in managing the decaying ministry, it also came in handy when an odd relative had to be put up for the night in a place as distant as the town of Dzheskazgan. To help, it was enough for Kisanov to dial the number, utter his name imperiously and task the director of the Hotel Dzheskazgan with providing a room for the so-and-so. Most entries in the phonebook sound unappealing and clunky in a typically Soviet way: Spetsavtobaza, Remstroiupravlenie. The hideous Soviet newspeak dating back to the 1920’s, almost as old in the Brezhnev era as Kisanov himself. However terrible these names sound, they denoted organisations that formed the backbone of the infrastructure created throughout the biggest part of the twentieth century. And while most call recipients and all the phone numbers from Kisanov’s phonebook perished, the infrastructure indicated in the directory still exists. My great-grandfather was not the type to resist the temptations of ownership. But by the time the USSR collapsed and privatisation came about he was already too old. Other people lay their hands on what once known as Kisanov’s domain bequeathed to him by the Soviet state, the birth of which he witnessed and which he outlived by four years.

Arslan Akanov is a Eurasian Studies PhD student at Nazarbayev University in Kazakhstan