Cemeteries and memorials to visit Kazakhstan

It's hard to imagine, strolling along the empty streets of this city swept by desert sand, that it was once a thriving port city. And yet, during the Soviet era, Aralsk was the main transit center for cotton: produced in Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, it arrived in Aralsk loaded onto large ships that crossed the Aral Sea, before being transported by train to Russia. The town of Aralsk itself is home to a small ship cemetery, where the port once stood. A few rusting hulks lie beside panels bearing poems dedicated to the Aral Sea. You can also venture out onto the sand in the harbour, to wander among the rusty plates, engine parts, pieces of ship's hulls... As you go further on, many more silhouettes of beached boats loom on the horizon, some of them truly impressive in size. Since the fish have disappeared, the wrecks have been taken over by cows and camels, which gather along the hulls in the hottest hours to take advantage of the shade. As the sea retreated, other wrecks remained isolated in what is now a desert. Some are visible, notably around the village of Zhalanash, but you need a 4x4 to venture there. As for the wrecks themselves, don't expect to find them whole: many have been cut up to recover their metal parts.

Soberly named "Stronger than Death", this monument was erected on August 29, 2001 on Polkovnichy Island, just south of the city, to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the closure of the nuclear test site, but also the date on which the first Soviet atomic bomb exploded. A thirty-meter-high black marble column, hollowed out to evoke a nuclear mushroom cloud, towers over a statue of a woman trying to protect her child. The monument is now mostly visited by newlyweds, who choose to have their photo taken there rather than in front of the statue of Abay! Nearly 500 nuclear tests were carried out by the Soviets in the Semipalatinsk quadrangle, on the Kurchatov site. The latter can only be visited with special authorization and radiation protection equipment.

In 2009, the United Nations chose August 29 as the "International Day against Nuclear Tests". This choice was made at Kazakhstan's suggestion, which is no doubt why the dates of July 16 (the first American atomic test, in 1945, in the New Mexico desert) or February 13 (the first French atomic test, in the Sahara) were not chosen. These three nations alone carried out 97% of the 2,404 nuclear tests that took place worldwide on that date: 210 for France, 980 for the Soviets and 1,110 for the Americans.

The monument to the heroes and victims of the Great Patriotic War takes the form of a circular plaza, decorated on the ground with geometric interlacing and surrounding a second circle on whose edges stand five concrete blocks, representing the five years of war and surrounding an eternal flame. The upper tips of the blocks are inclined, evoking the silhouette of a yurt. A promenade joins the waterfront where a Mig-21 appears to take off facing the Caspian Sea.