Baikonur Fallout: Russia’s Cosmic Legacy Leaves Scars on Kazakhstan
“Every time there’s a rocket launch at Baikonur, you can’t see for days. The sand comes up off the ground, and doesn’t shift for a good while,” a waiter in Aralsk, a one-time fishing town on what was once the shore of the shriveled Aral Sea told The Times of Central Asia. Upon entering Baikonur, Russia’s gateway to outer space on the Kazakh steppe, the first thing you see is a billboard proudly displaying Vladimir Putin shaking hands with President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev. Beneath the façade, however, Russia’s presence here has spurred major economic inequalities and environmental degradation. Backwater to the Cosmos [caption id="attachment_32232" align="aligncenter" width="1512"] "Here on January 12, 1955, the first group of military engineers arrived, who laid the foundation for the creation of Baikonur Cosmodrome;” image: Thomas Hodgson[/caption] Stepping off the train at Töretam, the closest town to Baikonur proper, there is very little sense of occasion to be found. The only reference to the existence of rockets in the immediate vicinity is a tucked-away, red-starred plaque on the platform bearing the inscription: “Here on January 12, 1955, the first group of military engineers arrived, who laid the foundation for the creation of Baikonur Cosmodrome.” In 1961, Yuri Gagarin launched from Baikonur to become the first human being in outer space, propelling the complex’s status in history from an obscure backwater to a legendary, top-secret star city. In reality, “Baikonur” was a decoy name given by the Soviets to a town 300 kilometers away from the real launch site at Leninsk. Western newspapers reinforced the false story, and Baikonur entered the global popular consciousness. Kazakhstan’s government chose to sell the myth, finally renaming the actual cosmodrome settlement from Leninsk to Baikonur in 1995. With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia found overnight that its primary spaceport was in a foreign power’s possession. By 1994, Moscow struck a deal with the nascent Kazakh Republic to lease Baikonur at a rate of 7 billion rubles per year ($110 million). As of 2024, the Kazakh state has pulled in over $3 billion in revenue from the scheme. Living in the Shadow of Russia [caption id="attachment_32233" align="aligncenter" width="1512"] Image: Thomas Hodgson[/caption] The extent of Russia’s grip over the area, even outside of the “ring,” is clear in all aspects of daily life. In nearly every shop in Töretam, the ruble is accepted alongside the Kazakh tenge. This poses problems for the local economy, with the circulation of rubles effectively pricing out anyone who doesn’t receive a ruble salary from jobs in Baikonur itself. The Russian language is likewise used in tandem with Kazakh, even though the surrounding Kyzylorda region is less than 2% ethnically Russian and, by all appearances, overwhelmingly favors Kazakh. Poverty is widespread here, juxtaposed markedly with the hordes of affluent “space tourists” from around the world who head through Töretam into the “ring” every day. Tour agencies charge upwards of $1,000 per day for access to Baikonur, yet reinvestment in communities surrounding the “ring” seems non-existent,...
