About the Kazakh Tazy breed through prisms

The Russian version of this observation was publised in September 5, 2022

On September 1, 2022, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, guided by considerations of preserving the purity of the indigenous dog breeds — the Tazy and the Tobet — as well as by the goal of securing Kazakhstan’s status as their country of origin within the International Canine Federation (FCI), instructed the Presidential Administration to take this matter under direct control.

On the question of the ethnic belonging of the Tazy

As is well known, patriotic rhetoric and the excessive emphasis on ethnic markers from the standpoint of “chosen-ness” in historical processes often lead to catastrophes for entire peoples. The issue of the “Kazakhness” of the Tazy is quite complex and requires a comprehensive approach, along with a readiness to avoid distortions. Understandably, much like in the situation with kurt and kumys, which have already been patented in other countries, we fear losing the right to claim: “THESE ARE OUR DOGS!”

Yet Turkish and Iranian Tazys, in many cases, are indistinguishable from Kazakh ones — neither in appearance nor in behavior — not to mention the “Uzbek,” “Turkmen,” and “Chinese” dogs along the border, who comfortably exist within a trans-territorial status shared with the Tazy population in Kazakhstan. Although their adaptive qualities are oriented toward somewhat different climatic conditions and the efforts of their respective owners.

Moreover, if one carefully examines the historical opportunities for the phylogenesis of this family of related breeds, and the regional potential specifically for the Kazakh Tazy, it becomes evident that there has been a process of permanent hybridization among various representatives of this canine race across the Great Steppe, stretching from northern China to Poland. In the regional types of Kazakh Tazys one can discern traits of caravan dogs, Sloughis, Salukis, Azawakhs, and Whippets. In Turkmen and our southern shchi-tazys (tazy which could be used in thickets of Achnatherum, they are a little bit smaller and more graceful then steppe tazys), ancient admixtures of dogs resembling Italian Greyhounds are quite apparent.

All this is a result of historical processes, the preferences of nomads at different periods of time, as well as the constant influx of caravans from distant lands. Time has been more than sufficient, since antiquity, for the formation of an indigenous steppe-type breed. Much of what has entered the bloodline and the conformation of our sighthounds is now difficult to explain, since there was never a need to document it, nor was there a unified structure capable of carrying such systematization through the centuries. This, in essence, is what gives us the right to call these dogs aboriginal.

It is evident that when the ancestral mixes and hybrids of such sighthounds first appeared in the steppe, the ethnonym “Kazakh” was still far from being conceived. The projects of that era were of an entirely different nature, which understandably unsettles those who uphold today’s paradigm of ethnogenesis constructed through political trends.

Human Y- and Mth-haplogroups existed then just as they do today. What was absent, however, was the kind of politically driven mental cataclysm into which we were plunged headfirst from the 19th century onwards in the pursuit of ethno-identification. Steppe politics did not imply racial or ethnic philosophical concepts with their double standards. In fact, the very notion of “ethnos” did not exist. There were clans, dynasties, and alliances, which required internal consolidation and responses appropriate to their era. But there was no national construction in the Eurocentric sense of nationalism.

Moreover, phenotypic traits had remained relatively homogeneous since the period of the Golden Horde, eliminating the need to search for racial distinctions as grounds for political conflict. One was considered Kazakh politically — under the aegis of khanate power, which, according to historians, designated itself as Kazakh. Following the canons of ancient steppe democracy, it defined principles of popular will, social order, and way of life. In other words, that first project was Kazakh in essence, at least until its confrontation with the Dzungar project.

If we theoretically admit the possibility of a Dzungar victory at that time, then the very descendants who today call themselves Kazakhs would instead have called themselves Dzungars–Oirats. Political coloring of power did not imply total genocide, since taxation and the replenishment of armed forces have always been the principal pillars of state budgets and governance. And the racial representatives of the “Tazoid” type would simply have borne a different name — perhaps something closer to taig, taiga, or even taizi — in the West-Mongolian or Oirat fashion. But so be it: these are matters of bygone days, an alternative branch of history, though contextually quite illustrative.

After the Dzungars, and after what seemed to be a geopolitically favorable turn for the Kazakhs in the form of their defeat at the hands of the Chinese, the victors themselves were forced to let their triumph dissipate and return to the central regions of the Celestial Empire due to internal and external threats. Yet, had the Chinese citizenship granted to Ablai Khan in 1757–1759 (the exact year remains uncertain) endured and developed further, then our Tazys would likely have been absorbed into the range of what are now known as the Chinese xigou.

In everyday terms, this could have been easily leveled through the shared Abrahamic context, had the Tsarist authority lasted a century longer. And if the process of Cossackization had unfolded on a grander scale — driven by the avalanche-like expansion of the empire beyond the Pamir barrier of the “Great Game” and by the centrifugal creativity in providing benefits for the empire’s new converts — it would have resulted in the wholesale inclusion of all steppe “aliens” into the official hierarchy of estates, as loyal servants of the Fatherland, with the simultaneous dismantling of all previous deep-rooted structures of historical and ethnic memory.

And who knows — perhaps in that alternative branch of history, against the backdrop of far deeper Russification of the steppe dwellers, there would have been nothing more contextually convenient than to subsume the Tazys into one of the categories of the Russian Steppe Borzoi.

In later eras, it was only the ideologues of Alash Orda who came close to formulating the meanings of a legendary Kazakhness, though already clothed in European garments and modeled on a Turkish prototype for future development. Yet even they openly acknowledged the primacy of the European order through the prism of Russian influence, and the impossibility of drifting away from the “elder brother’s” body into true independence.

Still, hypothetically, one might suppose that if these adherents and sympathizers of the Russian Kadet Party had somehow managed to retain power in the Steppe Region during the 1920s, then the question of “Kazakhness” or “Alashness” would not have been a matter of minor importance. For it would have been more fashionable to be an “Alashist,” as a supporter of the new state order. Consequently, the population of sighthounds across the entire territory under the control of an “Alash” state might well have borne the name Alash-Tazy.

Meanwhile, the Bolshevik clerisy of the steppe peoples, arriving on the shoulders of the mounted Red Armies, did not oppose central authority. Their ideological amalgam of party-mindedness implied both social “elevators” and sheer survival, granted by timely nods to leaders and engines of change. As it was decreed to rename the Kirgiz into Kazakhs, and the Kara-Kirgiz into Kyrgyz, so it was done — in accordance with the anthropological constructs dating back to the colonial period. Most likely, in this field the Bolsheviks borrowed heavily from the imperial Eurasianists, dividing and ruling, compelling, generalizing, and persuading the local illiterate population.

Here one must rewind back to the primary imperial contexts. At the moment of Russian imperial expansion, it was simpler to separate the population of the Steppe Region into a single governor-generalship, whereas the Turkestan Governor-Generalship was meant to encompass various components from multiple khanates and a single emirate. Historically, the steppe and Kokand components could not be fused into a single whole, due to their antagonism in the Semirechye region. Thus, the steppe peoples known as Kirgiz-Kaysaks came to be called Kazakhs, while the Kara-Kirgiz were re-identified as Kyrgyz proper. Yet to Europeans, neither externally nor culturally was it easy to distinguish between them.

But had Russia not reached the Kokand Khanate, then in that alternative version of history — where, after the collapse of the Dzungar Khanate, Kokand dominance extended across Ferghana and Semirechye up to Lake Balkhash — Kazakh ethnic influence would have left no dominant imprint, neither in political components nor in cultural markers such as the identification of indigenous dogs. The preferred exteriors of sighthounds, even in the steppe, despite different landscapes and hunting specializations, would have been more taigan-like or Afghan-like. The name Taigan might have spread far to the north, beyond Balkhash. And the collective designation for such sighthounds could have included either Taigan or Kokand-Tazy.

Since the Bolshevik era, the satellite position of the steppe did not exclude the incubatory maturation of a “Kazakh” paradigm, one encoded with deep meanings of belonging to the broader Eurasian space, yet framed within Eurocentric constructs. To a considerable extent, this is also why the everyday Islam of the steppe peoples could, even at the formative stage of Eurasian ideology, be regarded as something easily interchangeable with Tengrism — and, through it, with monotheism aligned to Orthodoxy.

By the beginning of the 20th century, the epic Kazakhs of the Kazakh Khanate had already faded into oblivion. The former bearers of the local population’s DNA markers had been swept away by the pendulum of cataclysms from the 17th to the 20th centuries, while their descendants were little more than roadside peasants in the service of dominant powers from other systems. In their place came other branches of social communities, reshuffled by shifting currents, though still bearing similar haplogroups.

Put simply, “Kazakhness” throughout the entire period of state and ideological succession described above was never genuinely implied. Its cultural component, within the Soviet socialist paradigm, nearly dissolved into new currents, mired in kitschy reconstructions, ideological adaptations, reinforced concrete, and asphalt.

The attachment of the population to an adapted, generalized ethnomarker in the 19th century — under the sanction of Eurasianist ideologues — took shape only as a search for alternatives against those antagonists still capable of consolidation: namely, those whom the British Empire, in the second decade of the 20th century, might have chosen to support in the region as part of the “Great Game” (see Peter Hopkirk, The Great Game).

While geopolitical reconnaissance and reshuffling were underway, few gave any thought to the Tazy. Consequently, its status was never tied to ethnomarkers — neither in the late Tsarist era nor in the subsequent Bolshevik period. Everywhere around the Great Steppe, they were simply called Tazy or Tazi — from Turkey and Crimea to ;r;mqi, from Omsk to Bukhara and the Iranian plateau. Among broader circles, even this scarcely registered in the minds of the Soviet public. Their attention was consumed by contexts of an entirely different amplitude of historical milestones. And so, the historical Tazy, left to the margins, managed to survive — albeit without proper recognition — by retreating into a deep aboriginal backwater.

Thus, the very question of “Kazakhness” requires, first of all, reflection at the level of human populations, through the prism of 19th–20th century geopolitics. Only afterwards can it be linked to everything else, including the aboriginal Oriental sighthounds.

Therefore, it must be acknowledged that the question of “Kazakhness” for the Tazy at the present moment is determined solely by contemporary political preconditions, trends, and the demands of state-level PR for Kazakhstan’s authorities. It is further shaped by the marketing strategies of both latent and overt players in the canine industry, along with their followers, who have now moved on to mass-producing even rhymed memes and, to put it mildly, engaging in myth-design.

In the mid-1990s, amid a wave of ethnic self-identification and various party-political projects in Kazakhstan, the aboriginal breed resurfaced after long years of neglect. Yet it is evident that the main reason for its popularization was not the breed’s aesthetic or utilitarian appeal, but rather the contextual demand for trends in nation-building — trends set by nameless concept-makers, or, in other words, by PR and GR experts.

But it should be recognized that they, despite all their nomenklatura importance and multilayered significance, were not the first initiators of this process. Conceptual decisions, at all times, were always set by the “synoptics.” In this context, these are not the people forecasting the weather, but rather the creators and initiators of global, transnational, and transregional trends within the post-Soviet space.

At that same moment, in the late 1990s and early 2000s, efforts were intensified to search for everything “Kazakh” that could be deemed relevant, and to pull it up to the surface from the meager annals of former narrators and ethnographers. Within the framework of rebranding—since vegetative state-building with a velvet transit while preserving the Soviet nomenklatura among the local “red” cadres was in fact nothing else—a paradoxical need arose: to return from the socialist utopia back to convenient Kazakh ethno-markers, susceptible to ideological reconstruction. These had, during the previous 70 years (plus another 70 of the preceding tsarist era) before the collapse of the USSR, been reduced to primitivism or reframed within alien contexts.

As a result, in 1996, the first Kazakhstani postage stamp depicting the tazy appeared—though still without any attachment to the ethno-marker, and with an indistinguishable meta-racial exterior that could equally apply to the saluki, the Iranian-type tazy, and a range of regional Kazakhstani varieties.

At that time, and afterward, the image-building of everything “officially Kazakh” was undertaken by the party structures of the so-called ruling party Otan (“Fatherland”), later renamed Nur-Otan (“Radiant Fatherland”) in deference to NURsultan Nazarbayev and the clans surrounding him. Around the feeding trough of such pseudo-image projects began to swarm figures and operators ready and able to work the trend. Thus emerged the ideological “pillars” for the initial pushing of the issue concerning an element of national heritage—namely, the tazy breed, which for the past two decades has been officially proclaimed as such, not without the support and involvement of the myth-designers.

All of this was also facilitated by the television and radio complex of the so-called First President and the TV company owned by his eldest daughter, to which—again with the sanction of party bosses—the thematic myth-designers and content-makers gained access. The “tazy” theme was apolitical, pouring water onto the mill of convenient aspects of nation-building. In all likelihood, the state commission also implied the deliberate emphasis on a politically amorphous context of returning to the values of the late-medieval national heritage, as a substitute for the paradigm of the socialist atomic-cosmic era with its directives of mega-scale creation.

As a result, statues of heroes in chainmail armor, embodying traditional subsistence values and achievements such as the hunting of badgers, foxes, and wolves with dogs in an active aggregate state, were raised to prominent places. Meanwhile, the former revolutionaries, cast in bronze and concrete with their Europoid physiognomies, were pushed to the margins.

Objectively speaking, the “tazy” thus became one of the bargaining chips in the process of self-identificational nation-building and the filling of voids with concepts devoid of dangerous explosive social potential.

For example, to a meme circulating in certain circles, which serves the agenda of urgent standardization concerning the prestige status of horse sausage—with an added parallel tied to the tazy—one could respond: not all Mongoloids are Kazakhs, and after a series of milestones and social contexts, not all of the Kazakh population is phenotypically Siberian Mongoloid. Even the supposed “monolithic” Turanoid identity is already under question. This demonstrates that within a population united by a common ethnic marker of self-identification, it is entirely legitimate for components to exist that extend beyond phenotype. And considering the matter of a trans-Eurasian linguistic commonality-family, speaking of the static and relic-like conservation of an ethnos against the broader historical backdrop of a 10–15 thousand year trajectory is practically impossible.

The same can be said about the Tazy, whose ancestors—with only slight variations—evidently existed already in the times of the Sumerians and Egyptians, and, quite logically, long before them as well. What they were called back then remains an open question. The trans-territoriality of this breed requires persistent effort to avoid tying it to the political, ideological, utilitarian-marketing, and consumerist aspects of human social anthropology.

By the way, the very question of the Tazy’s aboriginality also has temporal criteria, determined by the limits of interbreeding, the formation of sub-territorial populations, and the time of the initial importation of the “first” dogs (their “primacy” being itself debatable due to uncertainty) and the beginning of their adaptation. And today, the issue of the Oriental sighthound Tazy in Kazakhstan is hardly a purely cynological one. At this stage, it ought to be considered more through the lens of ethnography and, in particular, social anthropology—a discipline deeply inconvenient for myth-designers and ideologues.

By no means a disappearing breed! The notion that the Tazy is “dying out” must be discarded as quickly as possible. It is a misleading complex of ideological and verbal manipulations leading toward the tragedy of standardization, irreversible conservation, and eventual degeneration. The roots of this narrative should be sought by identifying the beneficiary/ies of such manipulations. In this regard, the presidential “alarm” is nothing more than a tool in the hands of shrewd operators eager to carve out a niche for their strategies. Whether their playful hands are merely seeking “neutral standby topics” to be voiced from the highest podium as a convenient distraction—or whether those same hands are deliberately “in on the deal”—remains to be investigated in detail.

Although reasonable people – and those who once worked “close to the body” in quasi-analytical structures, putting effort into preparing important speeches – should understand those delicate moments when something has to be voiced through HIS mouth. Whether it’s lobbying for someone’s petty interests or searching for something fitting and adequate to the historical moment is a matter of each specific situation.

And I tend to think that with the contexts laid out back in the late ’90s by those very nameless “forecasters” (unknown to the general public), later shaped by the minds of analytical “ghostwriters” into speeches and into conceptual throwbacks to a “golden” and dignified Middle Ages, the question of “who’s in on the deal” is secondary. Though, of course, there are always hustlers happy to warm their hands on it, trying to forge legends.

The calculation is simple: very few among the wider public have the time to deeply fact-check myths and legends, as long as they at least somewhat resonate with the tremors of the current historical moment. And creating such legends just to get closer to the feeding trough requires no more than mid-level qualifications. The persuasion “technology” here is about as complicated as pulling the blanket over oneself. Nothing too difficult.

Given that values have radically shifted, what counts as an asset now is not dogs – all rapidly sliding into the role of freeloaders – but much more important resources. Obviously, keeping dogs of any breed in today’s conditions is hardly a utilitarian pursuit, unless it concerns guarding a household, herding, or breeding them for profit.

The current “patriotic solitaire layout” is also a matter of questionable profitability. Yet at the same time, it doesn’t really draw attention to the social aspects of existence, nor does it lead to any mental anguish among the masses.

The analogy here is with Soviet-era broadcasting in Kazakhstan: there was a programming grid, but its hedonic potential was zero. So airtime was filled with talking heads, folk songs, ballet, opera singers, grain farmers, socialist labor heroes, third-rate Soviet films, and the like. In that sense, the tazy theme today functions exactly like that “Soviet content” on regional TV—a convenient, neutral, tranquilizer-message with a dose of national-cultural soothing, and at the same time a PR trick to fog people’s minds.

And here, one can ironically recall that in August 1991, Soviet Central TV broadcast Swan Lake for a couple of days straight—just so people wouldn’t know what was actually happening in the country. Also a “cultural component,” also meant to obscure.

Now, as if on cue, it’s been remembered that Kassym-Jomart Tokayev himself owns tazy. And, quite likely, someone thought: “Well, why not push this semi-national spiritual ‘chewing gum,’ ingratiate ourselves with the new president, and at the same time pedal a convenient theme?!”

And “chewing gum” it really is, because you can’t feed yourself on this topic, nor can you feed the dogs themselves. True, the breed is ethnic, aesthetic, and doesn’t have that strong “doggy smell” (a natural characteristic), but in essence it’s something only for devoted enthusiasts—those willing to dedicate themselves to these wonderful dogs as both a behavioral phenomenon and an ethno-social marker.

For the general public, though, it’s just a pretty legend and an element of national image-making. Moreover, the bet was clearly that no one would dig too deeply into such a surrogate message—since that’s a matter for narrow specialists, who are few and far between. Instead, it provides a workout: an occasion to marvel, to thump one’s chest over status, centuries-old grandeur, and treasured heritage.

The number of tazy in Kazakhstan is many times greater—if not by orders of magnitude—than, for example, breeds such as Airedales, Collies, Bull Terriers, Giant Schnauzers, and many others that simply went out of fashion in previous years. From those former favorites, what now roams the villages are spaniel-like mutts, off-standard dachshunds with schnauzer coats and muzzles, and vulgar Jagds. All of this is the consequence of trends—waves that sweep pedigree dogs into the ditch if they lack an indigenous survival potential.

As for the much-hyped claim about the supposedly tiny population of tazy: between 2011 and 2017, I personally gave away (!) from my own litters far more high-quality tazy puppies than the oft-repeated “floating” and “sorrowful” figure of an “endangered” Kazakh population of just sixty to one hundred and fifty dogs. Sometimes publications even cite a number like 300. And still, it all sounds like clumsy begging by amateurs, manufacturing a sense of need. As if to say: “Please help. We’re not from around here. Haven’t had bread in ages. Without it we’re forced to spread black caviar straight onto sausage.”

By the way, I want to strongly emphasize: trading in what is positioned as a “national treasure” (the breed) is, to put it mildly, in poor taste. In all the years of giving away puppies from my own breeders and from stud services, I never once took more than the occasional symbolic trifle. I admit, a couple of times—purely as a participant-observer in a social experiment—I tried to exchange puppies for sheep to be slaughtered later.

But as I’ve noted, the popularity of the tazy exists and is circulated mainly on television and in the narrow circles of commercially minded breeders, intent on keeping up demand for a supposedly rare indigenous breed. The real agricultural environment, however, is rational, profit-oriented, and long since immune to such TV-driven, supposedly well-meaning signals.

The logic from that environment is clear: if a dog—given its declining utility, and with firearms now widely available both for hunting and livestock protection—becomes more and more of a freeloader, then spending money on it is obviously either a drain on the family budget or a pastime for youngsters.

I should note that I have encountered a situation where a shepherd, in whose household there were flock-guarding dogs, without any regret exchanged a healthy and decent tazy for nothing more than a single fresh loaf of flatbread. There are photographs and witnesses of that deal. Most likely, he was disheartened by the dog’s status as a freeloader in his household compared to the utility of the flock-guarding dogs.

The fact is, people today have access to high-precision firearms, often used for recreation. At the same time, industrialization and infrastructural development—particularly in the Almaty agglomeration—have “revived” the region with road construction crews, heavy traffic, tourists, weekend travelers, commuting migrants, and so forth. As a result, within a radius of 100–150, or even 200 kilometers around Almaty, the wildlife that once served as a natural food base for the tazy has largely disappeared.

For shepherds, whose pastures suddenly ceased to be “wolf corners” or “remote steppe outposts,” keeping tazy has become not only unprofitable but burdensome. Now the dogs have to be provided with an increased food ration due to the absence of game. This raises the issue of preserving an indigenous breed within a completely different civilizational framework, one that collides with urbanization, industrialization, infrastructure projects, and other anthropogenic factors of modernity. And it is doubtful that we are ready to make sacrifices in favor of preserving this aboriginal breed.

Among other contexts, the question of the conditions under which tazy are kept stands out. Naturally, for both mental and practical reasons, keeping such dogs in urban apartments is a torment for them. Until recently, one would rarely encounter such dogs in the city. But now it happens. What shocks me most—accustomed as I am to seeing packs or individual dogs racing across the endless steppe at lightning speed—is to see them on a leash. Moreover, in such a case, the symbiosis of human and tazy turns into suppression of the latter by the former, since the urban format of keeping them is dictated by safety regulations and, as a result, breaks the aboriginal psyche of the dogs.

To find an opportunity to encounter tazy in their natural aboriginal form, one needs deliberate intent as well as proper vehicle equipment and resources for long trips into regions where there is space for grazing livestock, hunting the proliferating foxes and badgers in river valleys and ravines, among sand dunes and rocky scree slopes, and where the owners are able to provide sustenance for their individual dogs or packs.

To meet tazy in their traditional habitat, one must be within the context and move purposefully through the local Oikumene. For example, by way of analogy, you cannot expect to encounter hoopoes of the steppe within a city. Nor can you meet camel spiders, karakurt spiders, or scorpions, even though in some places the Almaty region teems with them. The public’s ignorance of the entire “road map” outside the main highways only fuels lamentations about the tazy being an “endangered breed.” And such a status is, in fact, a convenient message for certain vested interests.

The actual beneficiaries of spreading this narrative—one that, if necessary, can be put into the “authoritative mouths” of high figures—are precisely those whose “hats would catch fire” if the context were to change. That is to say, if all Kazakhstani cynological associations, clubs, and private breeders were banned from exporting, selling, or gifting tazy puppies abroad for at least ten years under a declared moratorium, it would serve the preservation of this aboriginal breed far better than all the empty talk about “national heritage branding.”

Most of the beneficiaries would immediately fall away from the body of the recovering breed like ticks subjected to disinfection. There would be no point in creating an image of the tazy as a rare and endangered breed. On the contrary, the gene pool and population growth of the tazy would only benefit from this.

Moreover—and I will never tire of repeating this—according to folk tradition, trading in national heritage is considered bad form. Tazy puppies were only ever given as a gift, as a demonstrative and sacred yrym (omen-ritual), a symbolic gesture tied to a respected person or significant event.

And only under conditions of extraordinary “stardom” of a particular tazy—one that had achieved a “superhero-like” fame far beyond its local surroundings—could such a “star” or its descendants be honorably bartered for wealth that would instantly elevate the status of its owner or group of owners. Whoever set the terms of the deal dictated the tone for multiplying the narratives about whole herds and flocks being exchanged for a single tazy. Most likely, the new owners themselves added fuel to the fire by inflating the importance of the yrym (sacred omen) and tacking on some supposed compensation (which probably never existed) in order to glorify the “stardom” of their acquisition. Advertising is always advertising. A media hook is always a media hook—at any time.

Today, however, we live under a different economic order. For tazy to become a compelling hobby, one must be a fanatic—in the positive sense of the word—able to carve out a niche, or else an enthusiast-researcher. And this requires considerable expenses for providing proper nutrition and transporting individual dogs or packs on outings or hunts. Any margin in such cases exists only in dreams for such owners. These “tazy freaks” cover costs out of their own pockets, or in rare cases by selling pelts of game animals they have caught to furriers.

A somewhat different approach is taken by owners who expect to make a profitable margin from selling puppies. Although, it must be admitted, in conditions of financial scarcity, there is no clearly defined line between “freaks” and profiteers. Everyone dreams of earning something, and thereby raising their status. But many novices—lured by the television image of the breed—when faced with issues of profitability and unable to find a niche for covering feeding costs and expenses for outings, soon realize that keeping tazy is unprofitable.

Attempts then begin to sell or trade the dog for a phone, a quantity of fuel, tires, a saddle, or construction materials. In most cases, such attempts barely succeed, which leads to the tazy drifting into the ranks of pariah dogs roaming village wastelands, surviving off scraps from dumps and refuse piles. This means the tazy shift to self-sufficiency in survival mode.

In other cases, when there is a danger that tazy might start attacking neighbors’ livestock, such owners take their dogs to relatives or acquaintances on distant farmsteads, where the animals are likewise left to themselves—but in conditions more comfortable from the standpoint of their specialization and ability to subsist off natural forage.

Focusing on the puppy-selling business is barely manageable for most newcomers, which often forces them to abandon hopes and instead resort to giving the dogs away as a way to build good relations for the future. The circle closes, and the Tazy once again return to their aboriginal status. Of course, there is now an entropic factor at play — an abundance of yard and flock-guard dogs of unclear origin, even in remote areas. Yet with proper attention and understanding, this can be seen either as a stimulus for the owners’ intellectual activity or as a process of introducing fresh blood.

And the “duregei-Tazy” issue, in this context, is also quite profound, reaching back centuries to the roots of the Tazy’s steppe and other phenotypic types.

On the other hand, in Tazy breeding there are essentially two commercially oriented groups: the profit-driven breeders and the so-called non-commercial organizations — dog clubs and associations, which are mostly focused on working with solvent foreign consumers and transnational reseller networks. It is precisely for these two categories that the myth of the vanishing, rare breed — the Kazakh Tazy greyhound — is being molded and promoted.

Marketing activity requires the support of a matching image and reputation for the “product.” It’s worth noting that due to the Russia–Ukraine conflict, and Belarus’s partial involvement in it, the question of ties with reseller networks and the transit of Tazy through these countries and the Eastern European buffer has been left in limbo. The population of dogs is growing, but there’s no longer anywhere, or anyone, to sell them to.

This is probably why certain circles and lobbyists have intensified efforts to enter the market of live-animal suppliers “independently,” targeting places where people can pay decent money. Everything else is just debris aimed at quasi-patriotic feelings. Although, it should be said, even at zero profitability this automatically creates a pool of neophytes eager to get their hands on the breed. And in turn, this fuels the cycle: ambitious expectations ; attempts/failures ; abandonment ; sending dogs off to “wolf corners” and “snowstorm waystations.”

In any case, even this latest version of public circulation sustains the breed — even at zero profitability. The only sad part of all this is that this fodder, once placed into the president’s mouth, essentially pours water onto someone else’s mill. A parallel comes to mind with the children who, in different years, were adopted by foreigners and taken out of our country. Only now, in their place, another kind of living commodity has been put forward — this time with the image of a vanishing exotic breed: the attractive and trendy so-called KAZAKH tazy, from such an “exotic” land as Kazakhstan, which has already been promoted both by comedian Cohen and by the fact of erecting a capital in a sharply continental climate zone, as well as by the dubious-context events of the January 2022 “false flag” format.

What is FCI recognition, and what can it lead to? The status of a registered and recognized breed is needed solely to serve the strategies of commercialization and its consumerist utility. Once the tazy native to Kazakhstan receive this registered status, all owners and canine organizations will be strictly required to comply with rules and regulations that were not created by us, but must be followed in order to adapt to market conditions. That’s c’est la vie.

There were attempts to develop domestic standards. And an imitation of vigorous work was displayed on television. And who benefited from this imitation? Naturally, those who saw profit in it.

For now, the status of an indigenous breed, free from binding obligations, still protects it from the big players and self-styled guardians with “noble” intentions. However, by analogy with “grassroots initiatives,” the newly raised issue of preserving national heritage — and the president’s recent directive to the presidential administration — could lead to the formalization of everything connected with the tazy.

What would follow is the registration of every individual dog whose owner seeks to have victories recorded in club and state registries, along with oversight of compliance with FCI-approved regulations. All of this will add up to a hefty “little penny”: registration procedures (lines, letters, prefixes, owners), maintenance and expert evaluations, membership fees, and so on. Of course, as the saying goes, “the collective farm is voluntary.” But coercion will come through the imposition of inescapable circumstances.

On top of that, mandatory requirements will “appear” for feeding and other matters — rules that will oblige owners to purchase only from approved suppliers of dog food, vaccines, vitamins, and supplements. Standards will also cover training, competitions, hunting minimums, veterinary certification, etc., all of which will demand financial outlays. This will result in many shepherds and enthusiasts — those still caring about the breed but barely able to support one or two dogs — being forced to give up the tazy altogether, unable to bear the weight of obligations suddenly dropped on their heads.

Thus will emerge a dual system of “official” and “underground”: the latter will not claim formal pedigree status, but this cheaper pool will inevitably inspire profiteers. It immediately calls to mind the historical backdrop for the song Sixteen Tons, with its refrain of “I owe my soul to the company store.”

Meanwhile, the large associations, kennel clubs, and commercial breeders will become the sole proprietors of the breed, and the organized canine industry will extinguish the indigenous status of the tazy. And… farewell, little dog.

In the sphere of indigenous dogs, one can clearly see a trap disguised as concern for national and traditional interests — a trap with heavy consequences, up to and including losses in the genetic pool of regional tazy. After all, from a softly laid bed to Procrustes’ bed is but a single step!

It would be better to leave everything as it is, even at the current level of neglect, rather than handing the breed over to the dealers and moguls of the established Western European market—people who have been in this business for over a century—along with their local enablers comfortably seated in Kazakhstan. We won’t be able to push through with our own rules there, but as a country we will still be forced to comply with theirs. Everyone knows that ignorance of the law does not exempt one from responsibility!

What would be the consequences? First, we would lose the regional exterior phenotypes and genetic diversity. Second, we would forever be unable to properly address the issue of duregey-tazy. Yet within the culture of the tazy, this has always been a whole institution of relationships and breeding strategies. Without this institution, our tazy would hardly differ from neighboring, cross-border, and other related indigenous breeds.

For reference: the term duregey-tazy refers to accidental or intentional crossbreeding of tazy with other dogs, along with the subsequent culling of such offspring. Qualified local experts, geneticists, and elders know that the formation of indigenous breeds is a lengthy and complex process, full of countless problems, mistakes, dead ends, and long-term developments. All of this, in itself, creates the unique portrait of the tazy’s indigenous status.

In nomadic culture, the question of duregey-tazy could never be viewed solely through the lens of total culling. For centuries, selective breeding and mixes with other representatives of the tazoid/saluki-type/azawakh/caravan-dog lineage—as well as with other dog breeds, and most likely even with other Canini—have influenced the steppe tazy.

For example, a number of tazy lines still carry a tuft of white hair at the tip of the tail — a trait believed to have been inherited from distant African ancestors at the very dawn of this sighthound’s drift. Today, this tail tip can be seen in Italian miniature greyhounds, in Azawakhs from Tunisia and Morocco, in many tazy lines across Central Asia and Iran, and even in Xigou in China. Moreover, through outcrossings, this feature spread further — to subsequent breeds such as the Hortaya Borzaya, the Middle-Russian Steppe Sighthound, and even to dogs that fall completely outside the sighthound phenotype: village pariah dogs and flock-guarding dogs. Even though their tails are docked within the first weeks of life, the trait remains visible. All of this points to an aboriginal genetic drift, which must not be suppressed by rigid breed requirements. To do so would expel the population from its native context, forcing it into the category of an artificial, exhibition-standardized breed — not aligned with the everyday practices of nomadic culture, but with the expectations of international experts.

On the question of source base
As is known, the overwhelming majority of modern authors writing about the tazy tend to refer back to ideas about the breed from “ancient times.” Yet this supposed antiquity rarely goes further back than the mid-to-late 19th century — the period of active colonization of the steppe by the Russian Empire, when its gaze was also fixed on neighboring lands. Among those gazing were zoological geographers, naturalists, and hunting enthusiasts with sighthounds — men who combined civil service with a passion for amateur writing. For it was fashionable then to echo one’s potential rivals within the framework of the Great Game (see Peter Hopkirk, The Great Game). This was an attempt to appear as engaged researchers, even if not quite as meticulous as the British on the far side of the Pamirs.

In addition to this, our contemporaries also have at their disposal a small body of scarce material from Soviet naturalists and cynologists. Yet most likely, their meager interest during that period was shaped by the prevailing attitude toward anything connected with ethnography as a “dark past” — a distraction from the progressive outlook of socialist builders. Moreover, the very notion of the sighthound class acquired, almost immediately after the revolution, a “class-alien” connotation, exemplified by the Russian Borzoi. As is well known, sighthounds — and especially the Russian Wolfhound — became associated, after the fall of Tsarism, with the landed gentry and the excesses of serfdom, despite their highly developed cultural dimension reflected in visual art and naturalist essays through the lens of romanticism.

Ideological messages about landowners who allegedly forced peasant women with nursing infants to breastfeed puppies — accounts likely based on actual events — stirred the imagination of the new generation of activists. All of these grim associations with times of oppression imposed a clich; of class alienness even upon the aboriginal sighthounds of the “backward peoples.” These dogs, although to a great extent ancestral to the Russian Wolfhound, and indeed belonging to the wider Oriental type of sighthounds, nonetheless fell into the same hunting-specialization category. Attempts to explore the “Tatar roots” of such ancestral forms of the Russian Wolfhound — in the sense of steppe aristocracy and all things foreign — could just as easily be interpreted as sliding into class struggle and the stigma of oppressors of alien social origin. Nobody investigated this in depth, and to even consider the “elitism” of aboriginal dogs under conditions of universal leveling was fraught with risk.

In both the Tsarist and Soviet eras, ethnographers and researchers rarely delved deeply into the ethnographic aspects of the symbiosis between this race of dogs and humans of a different cultural-economic order. Furthermore, the limited understanding of the subject by “pandits” of Oriental sighthound breeds in a land-locked region such as Central Asia fell outside the scope of interests defined by imperial rivalries and immediate political objectives. The stark economic and cultural differentiation — which only the Bolsheviks managed to eliminate through rejection and enforced oblivion — worked against any profound study of the tazy.

On the Relevance of Seeking Alternative Ways of Preservation

By handing over the tazy — as an element of national heritage — to transnational dealers and their domestic enablers, we would be forcing this aboriginal breed into regulations unnatural for it. And this is not a position akin to the “Luddites,” resisting innovation for its own sake. Here one must feel the situation as a threshold, a contextual point of bifurcation: by accepting the proposed rules, we are far from being professionals in the higher league of transnational social Darwinism.

In trying to play on someone else’s field of interests, with our own na;ve or contrived messages, we run the constant risk of being crushed under the asphalt roller — along with the aboriginal breed. Perhaps, to the president and his speechwriters, this is seen as a playful amusement, an image-building experiment, a convenient brick in the edifice of national PR. But for true admirers of this breed, it is a prospect of escalating burdens.

If the state wants to hand over an aboriginal breed for FCI standardization, then why not place the entire Kazakh state apparatus under the external management of transnational players altogether?

I am convinced that aboriginal breeds require different approaches and preservation paths, ones oriented toward ordinary owners. The tazy — historically marked as “breadwinners” — cannot be turned into a “feeding trough,” even if they no longer fit the changed cultural-economic paradigm, and our diet differs greatly from what once sustained our ancestors.

We no longer live in yurts, and likely will not return to them. Nomadic herding has given way to seasonal pasturing and stall-feeding. Into our beshbarmak we sometimes add potatoes — unknown to us a few centuries ago. Layered bows and chainmail armor remain only as decorative artifacts on the carpets in our living rooms. And there are many such cultural shifts.

Yet we must reflect deeply to ensure that the tazy in Kazakhstan, once moved beyond its aboriginal-primitive status, does not become merely an industrial trick — a decorative show or sporting breed with high marketing potential, sold off as a commodity.

To be honest, even seeing a tazy on a leash in city squares and parks is, excuse me, like a sickle to the balls! And it looks about the same as wearing a forged medieval pointed helmet from a family chest instead of a plastic motorcycle helmet when riding an Italian scooter.