<p> Respondent - Gulsum N. </p> <p> Place of residence: Almaty </p> <p>   </p> <p> My mother, Nurkiya Smagulovna Otenova, came to China from Makanchi district when she was a teenager. Her grandfather was repressed as a bey; her grandmother remained in her homeland with an infant child. In 1928, Kazakhs were leaving en masse for China; one night a commotion broke out, and neighbors were packing their things and leaving. Her grandmother sent her mother and brothers away with them, and she remained in her homeland with her baby sister. On the way, the refugees were caught up by the Red Army and locked up in a yurt, the men and women separately. At night a Russian man came into the yurt, he turned out to be an acquaintance, he recognized me, let me out of the yurt, showed me the way, and sent me to the Emel River, he said that China was beyond the river. With difficulty, I crossed the stormy river when the flood raged in the spring. Mother thought of her brothers. On the bank of the river, all the refugees were caught by Uyghurs, and she was sold to one rich Uyghur as a maid, his 7th wife was a Kazakh, and my mother lived with her. One day she heard a rumor that my brothers had come to town. They met at night, they were hungry and ragged, my mother collected scraps from the table in the canteen during the day and waited at night for my brothers to come. In the hem of her dress, she took food to them, and that's how three years passed. Then my mother was trusted and given more freedom, I continued to work. By the time she came of age she met a 42-year-old man with a daughter, the other daughter stayed at home. Mom got married and then had four children. My father's name was Nurgaliyev Nureke. </p> <p> I was born in Chuguchak, China. In China we lived in an adobe house, I went to Molotov school, which was on the edge of town, I got up at 6 am and walked 3 hours to school. The director of the school was Chinese and the teachers were Uyghurs, but the language of instruction was Kazakh. The school gave us strong knowledge, we studied a lot, and the children weren't allowed to waste time playing games. There were a lot of tasks. Every morning before classes we sang the Chinese anthem. Chuguchak has a good climate, I liked studying, and I had excellent grades. When I was finishing 3rd grade, word went around town that the Soviet border was opening, and neighbors and my parents started packing up. We had our documents drawn up, so we crossed the border easily. We returned to Kazakhstan on April 15, 1955. When we came to Makanchi our family was sent to the Charsk district, to a collective farm, my father worked there as a watchman, and my mother was a housewife. Then I went to KazSU and left for Alma-Ata, and I've been living here ever since. When I lived in China, we all thought that life in the Soviet Union was rich, better equipped. When we came here, we saw adobe houses and were disappointed, we lived modestly. The most offensive thing was that we were called Chinese by the locals, and there is still a neighborhood in Makanchi that is called Chinese. We were often insulted by this; it still offends me. I had an older sister, she was a talented singer, she participated in competitions successfully, and she was taken to the Drama Theater in Semipalatinsk. My sister died because of an accident at the age of 29. I studied at the Faculty of Philology at KazSU, and I worked all my life at the Institute of Linguistics and Literature at the Academy of Sciences of the Kazakh SSR.   </p> <p>        The interview material was provided by the Republican Working Group for studying, preparing, and making proposals for the rehabilitation of Kazakhstani refugees forced to leave Kazakhstan in 1916-the 1930s as a result of punitive actions of the state and political repression of the authorities during the various violent political campaigns and famines. </p>