N. Shneidman stated "The mankurt motif, taken from central Asian lore, is the dominant idea of the novel and connects the different narrative levels and time sequences". In the later years of the Soviet Union "Mankurt" entered everyday speech to describe the alienation that people had toward a society that repressed them and distorted their history. In former Soviet republics the term has come to represent those non Russians who have been cut off from their own ethnic roots by the effects of the Soviet system.