Aktobe

Aktobe began as a military post. In 1869 the Russian Empire built a fort at the confluence of the Ilek and the Kargaly to hold the steppe frontier and control the Kazakh clans of the Junior Horde, and named it Ak-Tyube, the white hill, for the rise it stood on. A trading settlement gathered around the garrison, granted town status as Aktyubinsk in 1891, and the arrival of the Orenburg to Tashkent railway at the beginning of the twentieth century turned it into a junction for grain, hides and livestock.

Industry arrived with the Soviet period and again during the Second World War, when factories were evacuated eastwards from Ukraine and Moscow and a chemical and ferroalloy industry was established: the Aktobe ferroalloy plant, commissioned in 1943, was the first ferrous metallurgy works in Kazakhstan. The discovery of enormous chromite deposits at Khromtau to the east tied the city's economy to metallurgy: chrome ore mined in the region has been smelted into ferroalloys in Aktobe ever since, and the plants remain among the largest employers.

Oilfields developed in the region from the late Soviet years and were expanded after independence with Chinese investment, adding a second industrial pillar. The city was renamed from Aktyubinsk to Aktobe in 1999, and it has grown quickly since, both from migration out of the villages and from families arriving from elsewhere in the country, spreading into new districts on the steppe. Its position on the road and rail corridor between Russia and Central Asia keeps it a place through which a great deal passes.

Aktobe is one of the more mixed cities of western Kazakhstan. Kazakh is the majority language and the fabric of family life, while Russian remains common in the street and at work, and the city has long-established Russian, Ukrainian and Tatar communities alongside its Kazakh majority. Mosques and Orthodox churches stand within the same districts, and both sets of holidays are publicly marked.

Traditional Kazakh custom is observed carefully, particularly in families with roots in the surrounding countryside. Elders are greeted and served first, a guest is fed before being questioned, and weddings, memorial feasts and the naming of children draw large gatherings. The region belongs to the Junior Horde, and the memory of Abulkhair Khan, who led it in the eighteenth century, is part of local identity, as is the dombra music and epic singing tradition of western Kazakhstan.

Football has an unusually strong hold here: the city's club has been among the country's leading sides, and match days are a focus of local pride in a region that often feels far from the capital. Everyday social life runs through the parks and the riverside in summer, through shopping centres and tea tables in winter, and through family visiting all year. People are direct, used to newcomers passing through, and quick to offer hospitality to anyone who stays.

About 560,000 people live in Aktobe, making it the fourth-largest city in the country and the largest in western Kazakhstan and the centre of a very large and thinly populated region. The city has grown steadily for three decades, spreading from the old centre and the Soviet microdistricts into new estates on the surrounding steppe, and housing construction is constant.

Heavy industry sets the tone of the economy: ferroalloy and chemical plants, engineering works, the chrome mines of the region and the oilfields developed with Chinese partners, alongside the railway, road haulage and the trade that comes with being a junction. Government offices, hospitals and several universities employ many others, and shift and rotation work is common. Wages are lower than in the oil cities to the south but living costs are lower too.

The rhythm of the year is severe. Winter lasts from November into March, with snow, ice and wind off the steppe, and life moves indoors; summer brings heat, long evenings, and crowds at the reservoir and in the parks. Traffic and parking in the centre, air quality near the industrial zones, and the cost and quality of new housing are the subjects most often raised by residents. Many young people study or work in Astana, Almaty or Russia and return for family occasions.

Aktobe eats the food of the western steppe. Beshbarmak — boiled mutton or horse meat with broad sheets of pasta in onion broth — is the dish for guests and celebrations, served from a common platter and eaten with the hands by tradition. Horse meat is prized rather than exceptional here: kazy, the sausage made from rib meat, and zhaya and shuzhyk appear at feasts and on market stalls.

Everyday cooking mixes Kazakh, Russian and Central Asian dishes. Kuyrdak, offal fried with onion and potato, and sorpa, a clear meat broth, sit alongside plov, lagman noodles, manty dumplings and samsa baked on the walls of a tandoor. Russian influence shows in pelmeni, borscht and pickles, and Tatar and Ukrainian baking is part of the local repertoire. Shashlyk grilled over coals is the summer standby.

Dairy products from the steppe are everywhere: ayran, kurt, hard balls of dried salted curd, kymyz, fermented mare's milk, drunk in spring and summer, and shubat where camels are kept. Baursak, small squares of fried dough, accompanies tea at every meal, and tea itself — black, strong and poured with milk into bowls filled only part way — is constant. Melons, watermelons and grapes arrive from southern Kazakhstan in late summer.