Even after Nursultan Nazarbayev left the presidency of Kazakhstan, many started talking about the fact that the new authorities could accelerate the process of de-Russification of the country. And the recent conflict, which has erupted over the “language patrols” of nationalists, has only increased these fears. The organizers of the “patrols” were outraged that many compatriots use Russian instead of Kazakh in their daily communication. The conflict was resolved, but the problem remained. In Kazakhstan, the abandonment of the Cyrillic alphabet continues, and the status of the Russian language is gradually decreasing. Representatives of the political elite open a condition for this process and call it a condition for strengthening sovereignty. What is behind the de-Russification of Kazakhstan and whether it threatens Russia’s interests in Central Asia – “Lenta.ru” figured out.
The scandal around the “language patrols” was the main topic in Kazakhstan for several weeks. A group of nationalists associated with the YouTube channel Til Maidani Kuat Akhmetov provoked conflicts over the use of the Russian language in public places. Russian-speaking residents, who are forced to make them object, were threatened and tried to apologize to the camera in front of the “Kazakh people”. Later, these videos were posted on the same Akhmetov’s YouTube channel.
The publication of these videos caused a great resonance not only within the country, but also abroad, primarily in Russia. Actions of Kazakh nationalists condemned including in Rossotrudnichestvo and the State Duma. A criminal case was even opened against the initiator of the “language patrols” Kuat Akhmetov, and he fled to Ukraine. Deputy Head of the Presidential Administration of Kazakhstan Dauren Abaev criticized the “extremists” and named the creation of “patrols” by them as a manifestation of “cave nationalism”.
However, not all representatives of the Kazakh political elite were critical. So, presidential adviser Yerlan Karin actually entered into a polemic with Abaev, linking “language patrols” with “information panic in the neighboring northern country,” that is, in Russia. “The Russian language is influenced inappropriately and inconsistently,” he explained and only told the nationalists “to be more careful in opinions and actions.”
Against this background, an aggressive campaign against the Russian language continued in the Kazakh press. “Young people who think in Russian cease to be Kazakhs, they accept someone else’s consciousness,” – indignant journalists of the newspaper “Alash Ainasy”. Edition “Zhasalash” suggested and completely prohibit interethnic marriages, whose children often speak Russian. And the authors of “Kamsha” started insist on the introduction of tuition fees in Russian schools, since they turn out to be more popular than Kazakh ones.
Officials react to these provocative speeches. prepared a bill on the mandatory minimum knowledge of the Kazakh language for civil servants. Even though the current regulatory framework is allows to conduct office work in Russian – the official language of Kazakhstan.
What is happening now is not the first attempt at “Kazakhization” in the republic, which, despite slogans and ideology, remains predominantly Russian-speaking. According to sociologists, 75 percent of the country’s citizens prefer to use the Russian language in everyday communication. It produces 90 percent of lightness, 58 percent of newspapers and 80 percent of magazines. It is indicative that more than 96 percent of requests are in the internal segment of the Internet. And despite attempts to impose Kazakh television, 54 percent of the programs watched by the local audience are also aired in Russian.
51
percent
Kazakhs are fluent in Russian
The number of students in Russian-speaking classes growing fasterthan in Kazakh-language schools. Now in Russian learns 41 percent of schoolchildren, and the Ministry of Education of Kazakhstan, seeing this picture, begins hide real statistics on the use of languages in educational institutions: officials and published data differ greatly.
At the same time, the state apparatus itself prefers to speak Russian. “The picture has not changed for 30 years (…) the faces of officials are Kazakh, and the language is Russian”, – complain journalists of the popular newspaper “Zhasalash”. And this is not only about abstract bureaucrats, about teachers and medical workers who are used daily with the population.
In hospitals, almost all documentation filled in in Russian, because many health workers do not own Kazakh at the basic level, although about 80 percent of doctors are ethnic Kazakhs. Suffice it to recall that one of the victims of the “language patrols” was a neurologist Emilia Grechanik, who spoke Russian at work.
An indicative situation in the field of education. Many school teachers in mixed schools poorly proficient Kazakh, which does not prevent them from teaching better than their Kazakh-speaking colleagues. In Russian-speaking classes, the level of reading literacy is 21 percent higher, natural science – 19 percent, math – 11 percent (by according to PISA testing).
In other words, the population made their choice and resolved the language issue, preferring to communicate in Russian while preserving the Kazakh language as the second national language. However, an “unsinkable” party of nationalists is clearly operating in the political elite, trying to impose Kazakh on the Russian-speaking majority.
The visit of Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin to Kazakhstan, during which the situation of the Russian language and extremist “patrols” are discussed, was marked by a scandalous demarche. Exactly on the day of the visit, which took place in mid-August, the seven-year prison term was sentenced human rights activist Ermek Taychibekov, advocating for the development of Eurasian integration.
On the same date, the Vice Minister of Information of Kazakhstan was appointed Askar Umarov, known for her extreme Russophobia.
Umarov also became famous for the fact that during his leadership of the Kazinform agency, it published a new map of Kazakhstan, where Russian and Uzbek territories were “cut” to the country. Moreover, Umarov is not the only example of a nationalist integrated into the political elite.
On behalf of the notorious State Commission for the Full Rehabilitation of Political Repression, which also protects criminal gangs, with anti-Russian statements advocates Member of Parliament Aydos Sarym. Two years ago, he was a member of the political council of the pro-Western movement “Zhana Kazakhstan”, which also included former Prime Minister Akezhan Kazhegeldin, sentenced in absentia to a ten-year term, and Serikzhan Mambetalin, who was imprisoned for inciting ethnic hatred.
The political council of “Zhana Kazakhstan”, including Sarym, visited Washington in its entirety, was accepted in the State Department and the Senate of the US Congress, where he agreed on his memorandum on the mass famine of the 1930s as genocide of the Kazakh people. However, the patrons helped Sarym, after returning from an American trip, to join the ruling Nur-Otan party, to become a member of parliament and the said commission.
This is not an isolated episode. The already mentioned presidential adviser Yerlan Karin in 2019 invited “Oyan, Kazakhstan”. At that moment, she refused to recognize the results of the presidential elections and invited young people to go out into the streets. The very idea of including “Oyanovites” in the structure under the president seems to be a dubious initiative, but there is a version that it was decided to give them a pass to the elite for American connections…
Careers in politics and the state apparatus of Kazakhstan often depend on family-clan ties, where the elders promote the younger ones and form networks of influence. In this system of relations, it is not professional qualities, honesty or the absence of defamatory ties that are primary, but loyalty to the clan. But getting into such a clan is difficult, it is available only by birthright or, less often, as a result of a successful marriage.
The alternative is a career that builds on US-created networks of influence, usually communities of learning projects. They receive financial and informational support, and then promote each other to the top.
For example, Erlan Karin started his career a school teacher in Aktobe, but soon became the director of the NGO “Central Asian Agency for Strategic Research”, which participated in the projects of the Internews funds (USA) and Ebert Foundation (Germany). He also was listed lecturer at the American University in Washington. It is not surprising that Karin tried to help the Oyanovites, who are also developing in the American system, to enter the political elite.
The Minister of Education of Kazakhstan Askhat Aimagambetov, who became famous for his application on the need to transfer school education to, starts as a minor functionary of the self-government of the Karaganda region. But in 2006 his sent to Moscow to study at the courses of the NGO Moscow School of Political Studies (entered by the leadership of justice of Russia in the register of non-profit organizations performing the functions of a foreign agent) which were funded from the US and the UK.
Efforts were not left without a reward. For two years Aimagambetov and his organization “League of Young” Ansar ” received grants “Soros Foundation” for a total amount of about 200 thousand dollars. Later, at the head of the structure of education in Kazakhstan, he supported the win American Foundation projects in schools. But these scandalous facts, which do not exclude corruption, did not prevent him, Umarov or Karin from entering the Kazakh political elite.
The mutual support of nationalists in the elite allows them to accumulate political power and financial resources. The same Aimagambetov, having taken the post of vice minister of education in 2017, supported the creation of a “national translation bureau” (NBP) fund for publishing textbooks in Kazakh. Into the leadership with him entered Yerlan Karin and Aydos Sarym. The Foundation has successfully received funds in the amount of 2.5 billion tenge (about $ 6 million) for the translation of literature.
In addition, it was pro-American nationalists who turned the State Commission for the Rehabilitation of Political Repression into a platform for provocative speeches. They propose to rehabilitate the traitors of the Great Patriotic War.
The system of administrative-political ties and obligations allows the cohesive political group of nationalists to influence the state system. Undermining the influence of the Russian language in Kazakhstan, for them, the key is set how a common information and linguistic space forms friendly relations with Russia. A study conducted in Kazakhstan commissioned by the US Department of Defense in 2020, showsthat 74.1 percent of the country’s population is in favor of Moscow and only 27 percent – with Washington.
Attempts to “Kazakhize” the republic, carried out by pro-American nationalists in power, are aimed at disrupting the linguistic connection between the peoples of the two countries and giving the United States more chances to influence the internal political processes in the country. That is why scandals are actively provoked in Kazakh-Russian relations. Either from above, as in the case of the State Commission for Rehabilitation, or from below – in the form of “language patrols” and Russophobic propaganda in the media.