Balkhash

The lake was a landmark of the nomad world long before there was a town here: Kazakh clans of the Middle Horde grazed the northern shore, and the water divided pastures rather than joining them. Balkhash itself is entirely a creation of Soviet industry. Prospectors led by the geologist Mikhail Rusakov confirmed a very large copper deposit at Kounrad, north of the shore, and the decision to smelt the ore beside the lake — which could supply the water a smelter needs in an otherwise dry landscape — brought thousands of workers to a bare strip of sand and scrub.

Construction of the Balkhash copper works began in the early 1930s. The first settlement, Pribalkhashstroy, was turned into the city of Balkhash in 1937, and the works shipped their first copper in November 1938. Labour came from all over the Soviet Union, some of it voluntary and much of it not: deported families and prisoners from the camps of central Kazakhstan worked on the plant and the railway that linked it to the main line. During the Second World War the works were of national importance, supplying copper for munitions while the western Soviet industry was overrun.

The post-war decades were the town's best: new districts of flats, a cultural palace, sanatoriums on the shore and a population larger than today's. Independence brought a sharp contraction, with emigration and the transfer of the works to the mining company that became Kazakhmys. The plant still operates, the Kounrad mine north of the town is still the largest of its mines, and the town's fortunes remain tied to the metal price, while the lake's level and health are a constant regional worry.

Balkhash has the culture of a Soviet company town overlaid on a Kazakh shore. Life has long been organised around the plant: its holidays, its sports clubs, its cultural palace and the sanatoriums it built for workers by the water. Metallurgist's Day in July matters more than most public holidays, and families identify themselves by which part of the works a parent or grandparent served in.

The population is mixed. Kazakhs form the majority today, with Russians, Ukrainians, Tatars, Koreans and Germans among the descendants of those who came or were sent to build the plant, and Russian remains the language of the street while Kazakh grows in schools and offices. Orthodox and Muslim observance sit side by side, and Nauryz in spring is celebrated along with the industrial holidays.

The lake shapes the year. Summer belongs to the shore — swimming, boats, barbecues on the sand and the smell of smoking fish along the roads — and winter to ice fishing, when huts and drilled holes appear on the frozen water. Fishing is both livelihood and pastime, and talk about the lake's level, the fish stocks and the water drawn upstream from the Ili in China is a standing subject of local conversation. Visitors are unusual enough to be greeted with curiosity and, very quickly, with an invitation to tea.

About 70,000 people live in Balkhash, a smaller number than in the late Soviet years, spread between the compact centre, the outlying microdistricts and the mine settlement at Konyrat. It is one of the larger towns of Karaganda Region, after Karaganda and Temirtau, and the administrative centre of its own district.

The copper works and the mines dominate employment directly and indirectly, with the rest of the town living from transport on the Astana–Almaty corridor, from fishing, from trade and from the schools, hospital and colleges. Wages follow the copper market, and young people leave regularly for Karaganda, Astana and Almaty, which keeps the population slowly falling.

Days are lived on a small scale: walking or a short bus ride to work, the bazaar for fish and vegetables, long summer evenings by the water and long winter evenings indoors. Air quality near the plant, the condition of the water supply and the future of the lake are the issues people raise most. The town is quiet, low-built and worn, and it stands out mainly because of what is beside it — a lake so large that the far shore is invisible, with fresh water at one end and salt at the other.

Fish is what Balkhash is known for. The lake supplies zander, called sudak locally, along with carp, bream, catfish and the native marinka, and they are fried whole, baked, dried or smoked over reeds. Smoked fish hangs at stalls on the roads out of town and travels home with visitors from Karaganda; fish soup, ukha, is made at the shore. The fish of the fresh western basin and the salty east are held to taste different, and locals will say which they prefer.

The rest of the table is the food of the steppe and of the Soviet town. Beshbarmak — boiled mutton or horsemeat with sheets of pasta and onion broth — is the dish for guests, served with kazy sausage and followed by sorpa broth. Manty, plov, shashlik, borscht, pelmeni and cutlets fill the canteens, and baursak, fried dough, comes with tea. Korean families brought morkovcha, the spiced carrot salad, and kimchi to the bazaars.

Tea is drunk constantly, black and often with milk, and accompanies bread, jam and kurt, the hard dried curd balls of the steppe. In summer, melons and watermelons from the irrigated south are piled by the roadside, and kymyz and shubat, fermented mare's and camel's milk, are sold by herding families outside town.