A historian of Russia and the Soviet Union, Sarah Cameron is associate professor of history at the University of Maryland, College Park. Her research interests include environmental history, genocide and crimes against humanity, and the societies and cultures of Central Asia.
Her first book, The Hungry Steppe: Famine, Violence, and the Making of Soviet Kazakhstan (Cornell University Press, 2018), examines a little-known crime of the Stalinist regime, the Kazakh famine of 1930–33. More than 1.5 million people perished in the disaster, a quarter of Soviet Kazakhstan’s population.
The Hungry Steppe won numerous awards in the United States. It also provoked intense discussion in Kazakhstan, where the famine remains a partially forbidden topic in part due to Kazakhstan’s close relationship with Russia. Russian and Kazakh translations of the book have been released.
Her project, “The Aral Sea: Environment, Society, and State Power in Central Asia,” offers the first complete account of one of the 20th century’s worst environmental catastrophes, the disappearance of the Aral Sea. Interweaving an examination of high politics with voices of the people who lived by the sea, the book underscores the urgency of finding more sustainable methods to produce cotton.
