Bhavna Dave. Kazakhstan: Ethnicity, Language and Power

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It allows individuals to preserve their autonomy from the state through a structure

of overt compliance and routine subversions of policies that impinge upon the

private domain. One illustration of how citizens safeguard their private cultural

domain from encroachments by the state lies in the reactions of ordinary citizens

to Dariga Nazarbaeva (the president’s eldest daughter, a parliamentary deputy,

and a likely successor to her father as President) singing Kazakh folk songs on

the State Channel Khabar. In April 2003, I asked a number of Kazakhs to

comment on her command of Kazakh and/or her musical prowess. Few responded

directly to the question. Instead, there was a near uniform expression of annoyance

and irritation with what they saw as a political act that had interrupted their TV

watching routine and favourite programmes. The comment by a 50-year-old

Kazakh schoolteacher – ‘Let her play her politics up there and spare us these

unwanted [nekomu ne nuzhnye] charades’– sums up the widely shared desire to

be left alone and to enjoy an autonomous space available for entertainment and

recreation (television as a key medium) within the private and family domain that

is free from encroachments by the state.

Efforts to translate symbolic, ethnic or cultural-linguistic objectives into

policies have often produced conflicts as the examples of India, Sri Lanka and

Malaysia show.

Conflicts over identity issues need not undermine the formation

of a national identity or hinder national development. As Das Gupta argues in the

Indian context, the multiplicity of identity claims initially exacerbated language

conflict and hampered development, but in the long run they were instrumental in

opening up ‘positive democratic channels’ for political integration and sustaining

national development.

The failure of the Sri Lankan state to accommodate

demands for regional autonomy and assertion instead of a majority conception of

democracy within a multi-ethnic setting was responsible for the escalation of the

language issue into ethnic strife, leading to civil war.

The priority for the Kazakhstani ruling elite was to adopt a language law that

accorded at least a symbolic supremacy to Kazakh, without undermining their

own position, or disrupting societal equilibrium. The proclamation of Kazakh as

the sole state language allowed them to establish the non-negotiability of a

Kazakh ethno-cultural orientation of the state and the notion of titular primacy.

By dispensing with any rigorous requirements, such as mandatory knowledge of

the state language and tests to determine Kazakh language proficiency, the ruling

authorities have managed to appease a large stratum of Kazakhs, as well as

non-titular groups. The weak and formalistic implementation of the language

legislation has considerably reduced the potential for both inter-ethnic and intra-

ethnic conflict by allowing individuals to pursue their own preferences, while

nominally complying with the language policy.

In an authoritarian-patrimonial state, citizens publicly comply with ‘official’

identity categories and expectations because it is ‘easier’ to do so in order to

privately pursue their individual preferences and prospects. Citizens’ apparent

compliance with state objectives – as manifested in the claims of proficiency or

that one is ‘learning’ the state language – paradoxically eases the responsibility of

the state to undertake a more extensive and intensive intervention in the social and

116 Enshrining Kazakh as the state language

linguistic domain. Claiming proficiency in the state language is both easy and

risk-free for the titular group, which has few incentives to fight a political battle

over the language issue and resist the language policy of the state. In both symbolic

and statistical terms, Kazakh has successfully established itself as a state language.

The state has avoided potential social conflict or politicization of the language

issue by refraining from adopting a cultural or linguistic transformation agenda.

Enshrining Kazakh as the state language 117

A society could be both civic nationalist (if that is taken to be the opposite of

ethnic nationalist) as well as a multiethnic society, while still being thoroughly

antidemocratic.

(Kai Nielsen)

We have no concept of a civic nation.

(Valery Tishkov)

[T]he unity of multiethnic polities depends largely on the on the willingness of the

dominant element not to think of itself as an ethnic category.

(Roman Szporluk)

As I have noted earlier, Kazakhstan was the only multi-ethnic post-Soviet state in

which the titular group did not constitute a majority upon becoming independent.

Of more concern for the new state, Russians constituted majorities in all of the

northern regions located along the 7,000 km long border with Russia and saw

themselves as more attached to Russia and the defunct Soviet Union than to the

new state of Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan’s landlocked status and economic dependence

on Russia further enhanced its vulnerability to Russian irredentist or separatist

mobilization. In the early 1990s, Slavic groups such as Lad and the Union of

Cossacks were active in advancing varying claims, ranging from demands for

ethnic proportionality and national-cultural autonomy to the unification of the

border regions with Russia. Kazakhstan thus appeared to contain several

favourable conditions for a mobilization of ethnic and separatist claims among

Russians along the triadic nexus of a nationalizing state, a non-titular minority

(Russians) and the external homeland of that minority, as delineated by Rogers

Brubaker.

Their long history of collaboration with the Russian and Soviet state and

integration into the Russian and Soviet way of life suggested that Kazakhstan’s

ruling elites would opt for ethnic accommodation, rather than pursue an avowedly

nationalizing course. As the previous chapters have shown, there was a virtual

absence of Kazakh national mobilization during the glasnost phase, including the

failure of the December 1986 protests in Almaty to take on an ethnic or nationalist

dimension. Yet, within only a few years of independence, over a third of its

6 Disempowered minorities

Russian-speaking population had opted to leave the country, rather than mobilize

for autonomy and press for recognition of its rights as a minority. Kazakh had

been pronounced the sole state language without encountering much resistance

from the Russian-speakers, as the previous chapter showed. The Kazakhs had

established a firm control over their Russian-dominated bordering regions,

acquiring a dominant share in all governmental, administrative and state-controlled

positions even before securing a clear majority status.

What is remarkable is that

all this happened without any visible conflict, social upheaval or ethnic mobilization.

The question that needs to be addressed is, therefore, why Kazakhstan did not

witness any ethnic conflict or a separatist mobilization by its Russian-speaking

groups, as many scholars and observers had predicted. Kazakhstan has purposefully

promoted its image as an ‘oasis of stability’ in the region, and as a multi-ethnic

state that has successfully preserved ethnic harmony and peace throughout the

turbulent years of transition from Soviet rule. Quite pertinent in understanding

this discourse on ethnic harmony is the role played by the political elite, president

Nazarbaev in particular, in initially constructing and amplifying the threat of ethnic

conflict and irredentism by pointing to the demographic preponderance of

Russians across the border. The Nazarbaev regime was able to garner significant

regional and international attention and support for monitoring its border regions,

and subsequently take credit for its critical contribution to averting conflict and

preserving ethnic harmony.

This chapter explores this question and enquires into Kazakhstan’s self-

proclaimed success in having preserved ‘ethnic peace and harmony’ against all

odds. To begin with, many observers within Kazakhstan, as well as Western

academics and commentators within Russia had erroneously exaggerated the

desire and capacity on the part of the Russians to mobilize for secession, territor-

ial autonomy or special cultural–linguistic rights. They had also overblown the

potential for the outbreak of a conflict.

The assumed ethno-cultural gap and ‘civ-

ilizational’ chasm between the two communities, not to mention the historical

occupancy of the border areas by Russians, gave credence to the view that Russians

could not reconcile themselves to living within a Kazakh-dominated state. Yet, few

among these observers and analysts had looked at the various legal and institutional

barriers, as well as the internal fragmentation within the so-called community of

Russian-speakers to organizing collective action. The various projections of an

imminent ethnic conflict in Kazakhstan were typically patterned on the broad

trends observed in the Balkans, Transcaucasus, Transdniestria and other republics

of the USSR, rather than on the regional and local trends in Central Asia. Even

the Huntingtonian ‘clash of civilizations’ thesis appeared to fuel such projections.

The fact is, there were few signs of an ethnic cauldron waiting to be ignited, as the

various academic and policy analysts anticipated at that time.

Elites’ construction of a separatist threat

The ruling elites’ perception of Kazakhstan’s prevalent ethnic make-up, shaped by

Soviet-era categories and ontology of ethnic relations, profoundly influenced

Disempowered minorities 119

their perception and handling of the ‘ethnic question’ and its representation to the

international community. This is not to say that the trajectories of Kazakhstan’s

ethno-cultural orientation were determined or constrained by the deep imprint of

Soviet categories, the institutional legacy, and its particular ethnic composition.

Rather, its ruling elites displayed considerable initiative and autonomy in adapting

the Soviet ideological and institutional framework in shaping their ethno-cultural

policies. Indeed, their corresponding policy choices in the first decade of

independence exerted a decisive influence over adapting the Soviet-bestowed

institutions and practices of ethnic management, and in setting the parameters for

defining the rights and representation of the non-titular groups.

At one level, the Nazarbaev leadership purposefully and effectively represented

the demographic majority of Russians along the border regions, a general

disgruntlement with the various sovereignty-enhancing measures that were under

way, and the various instances of ‘chauvinistic’ rhetoric by Cossacks and other

Russian leaders as indicators of ‘threat’ to their newly acquired statehood. Pointing

to the preponderance of the various ‘imperialist’ and ‘chauvinistic’ interests within

Russia and their eagerness to play the ethnic card by mobilizing some disloyal

faction among Russian-speaking groups, Kazakhstan turned to organizations such

as the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) for support

and protection. The sporadic calls by Cossack groups along the border for

‘autonomy’ and ‘separatism’, as well as for recognition of their distinct status were

taken at face value and seen as undermining the stability of the region as a whole.

At another level, the Nazarbaev regime continued to present internationalism and

multinationality as integral attributes of the state, underscoring its commitment to

constructing an inclusive and harmonious civic polity.

The regime’s conversion of

Russian disgruntlement and diffuse demands by Slavic and Cossack leaders for

‘autonomy’, for a formal institutional structure ensuring their visibility and

representation within the new state, and for cultural, linguistic and legal guarantees

of their rights into a ‘threat’ to the nascent statehood of Kazakhstan proved to be

critical in defining the subsequent choice of policies and institutions.

The Nazarbaev leadership exploited the unitary and centralized institutional

framework inherited from the Soviet period to reject demands for federalism and

cultural or territorial autonomy. These legal-institutional restraints and the virtual

absence of a public domain, where minorities or social groups can articulate their

claims, have defused the mobilizational potential of its non-titular groups.

Kazakhstan is a multinational state in terms of its ethnic composition, but lacks

any federal, institutional or power-sharing arrangements for providing formal

channels for minority participation in public life, or even for facilitating

decentralization.

Centralized territorial–institutional framework

The Soviet ethno-federal framework was designed primarily to offer symbolic

self-determination to non-Russian nations in order to deter the potential for ethnic

mobilization. It accomplished this objective fairly successfully, at least until

120 Disempowered minorities

the early 1980s.

Yet, over time, the very institutions created by the state to deter

an ethnic and societal mobilization produced subversive effects that eventually

led to the collapse of the Soviet ethno-federal structure.

With the dissolution of

the Soviet state, the hierarchical ordering of ethno-territorial units within a ‘first’

(titular) and ‘second’ order (non-titular) of nationalities provided a ready template

for the former to assume sovereignty and assert their control over the new state.

The independence of the union republics sparked the proverbial parade of

sovereignty among numerous territorial autonomies within these republics, as the

leaders of the minorities began using the rhetoric of ‘sovereignty’, ‘independence

’

or greater ‘autonomy’.

Russians in Kazakhstan accounted for 70 per cent of the total Russian diaspora

outside of the Russian Federation at the time of Soviet break-up.

As the

state-forming people, they were accustomed to seeing the entire Soviet Union as

their home, as a natural extension of Russia. The Soviet collapse reduced them to

a beleaguered minority, among the most disadvantaged groups in the new

successor states. Not only did they lack institutional channels or a territorial

framework for articulating their claims, they were also impugned publicly as

‘colonizers’ or ‘occupants’. Russians did not experience the kind of ‘territorial-

ization’ that all other nationalities, including the most newly recognized ones, had

undergone as part of Soviet nation-building. Ever since the inception of the Soviet

Union, Russians were, as Martin explains, ‘always the Soviet Union’s awkward

nationality, too large to ignore but likewise too formidable to give the same

institutional status as the Soviet Union’s other major nationalities’.

The questions of cultural rights and the territorial status of Russians as a nation-

ality in the republics were extensively debated during the 1920s and 1930s, but

never satisfactorily resolved. In 1926, Russians were termed ‘national minorities’ in

Central Asia. But this term was not used after 1933 and disappeared fully in 1937.

There was much discontent among Russians in the Russian Soviet Federated

Socialist Republic (RSFSR) over the fact that they were the only nationality lacking

national emblems and insignias, such as their own republic, Communist Party

organization, national academy of sciences, theatre, opera and so on, which all other

nationalities possessed. Russians in the republics of the Caucasus and Central Asia

complained that they had little protection against the hostility they encountered as

‘outsiders’ and ‘colonizers’. Although a steady but unintended process of

‘Russification of the RSFSR’ ensued in the 1930s as a corollary to nation-building

in republics, the RSFSR was never deemed the ‘homeland’ of Russians.

Yuri

Slezkine has likened the USSR to a typical Soviet-style communal apartment, in

which the various nationalities had their designated ‘private’ quarters, but the

communal space and the entry passages were occupied by Russians.

Almost all ethnic mobilizations during the glasnost era and the post-Soviet

period have occurred via existing Soviet-created institutional channels.

The

availability of territorial autonomies, as within Georgia, Ukraine and Moldova,

for example, has provided institutional channels for non-titular groups to

mobilize territorial and cultural claims, even when these groups lacked numerical

preponderance or ‘ethnic power’ within these entities.

Conversely, there are no

Disempowered minorities 121

instances where a post-Soviet state has recognized special cultural-linguistic

rights of a ‘new’ minority, or extended territorial autonomy on ethno-cultural

principles, despite significant changes in their ethnic composition during the first

decade of independence. Take, for example, both Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan,

where Uzbeks and Tajiks respectively have replaced Russians as the largest

minority since the 1989 Soviet census.

Despite its pledge to establish a civic,

democratic framework with minority safeguards, Kyrgyzstan has steadfastly

resisted demands to recognize Uzbek as an official language in the southern

oblasts of Osh and Jalalabad, where Uzbeks form a sizeable population. Any

discussion of Tajik territorial or cultural autonomy, let alone distinct cultural-

linguistic rights, is seen as subversive in Uzbekistan. Minorities in the new

post-Soviet states that lacked an existing, that is, a Soviet-established, framework

for territorial autonomy have gradually, albeit grudgingly come to accept the

primacy of the titular ethnic group in the new state.

Ethno-territorial gerrymandering

The lack of an institutional framework does not mean that the barriers to minority

mobilization in Kazakhstan were simply structural. Numerous policy acts and

directives issued by the government further defused the potential for Russian

mobilization. The Kazakhstani government responded to Russians’ demands for

a greater recognition and representation on the basis of their majority status in the

northern oblasts by undertaking a major reconstitution of the oblast boundaries

during 1994–97. This was presented as an act of ‘administrative rationalization’,

in which all Russian-dominated regions in the northern and eastern parts were

merged with the neighbouring Kazakh-dominated regions.

The oblasts of East Kazakhstan and North Kazakhstan had Russian majorities

(Russians forming 62 and 66 per cent of the total population, with the Kazakh

share at 18.6 and 27.2 per cent respectively), whereas Aqmola, Kokshetau,

Qostanai and Pavlodar had a plurality of ethnic Russians.

The Semei (previously

called Semipalatinsk) oblast, with 54 per cent Kazakhs, was merged with East

Kazakhstan, 67 per cent Slavic, and the Zhezkazgan oblast, containing 49 per

cent Kazakhs, was unified with Qaraghandy (Karaganda), 63 per cent Slavic.

Parts of Kokshetau (the Kokshetau town and the surrounding areas) were

incorporated within Aqmola and North Kazakhstan. Similarly, the Qostanai

oblast was enlarged to include parts of Torgai. The changes, affecting all Russian-

dominated border regions (except Pavlodar), enlarged the size of these oblasts

and increased the ethnic Kazakh share in the reconstituted units. The decision was

presumably guided by the calculations that the larger size of the reconstituted

oblasts and a higher Kazakh share would serve as an antidote to potential

secessionist claims. The end result was that the Kazakhs formed clear majorities

in all the reconstituted regions.

The transfer of the state capital from Almaty to Aqmola (which was renamed

Astana, meaning ‘the capital’, and was previously known as Akmolinsk) in the

north was also part of a pre-emptive effort to check the potential for a separatist

122 Disempowered minorities

mobilization among Russians.

The decision was made in June 1994 and was

swiftly put into effect in October 1998. Journalists and political commentators

have identified the various motives for transferring the capital: to channel the

movement of Kazakhs from the south to the Russian-dominated northern and

eastern regions in order to increase the Kazakh share and deter a potential

irredentist threat; to secure the loyalty of Kazakhs in the north-east, affiliated

largely with the Middle Horde, which was under-represented in governmental

positions; concern over the proximity of Almaty to China; Almaty’s vulnerable

location in the seismic belt and its already high population density relative to

other cities. However, the overriding motivation appears to have been the desire

to exert a greater vigilance over the Russian-dominated regions, and to secure the

loyalty of the Russified Kazakhs in these territories. The transfer of the capital

encouraged a movement of Kazakhs from the south to the Russian-dominated

heartland of the north, further decreasing the proportional share of Russians in

the region.

Territorial restructuring and the transfer of the capital by Kazakhstan’s ruling

elites should not come as a surprise.

After all, rulers of numerous multi-ethnic,

postcolonial polities have frequently resorted to practices such as manipulation of

internal administrative boundaries, territorial gerrymandering and demographic

engineering when democratic institutions of ethnic accommodation are either

weak or perceived as fraught with divisive consequences.

Administrative tools

such as redrawing of territorial boundaries and channelling demographic mobility

often enable a state to increase the numerical share of the dominant ethnic group

in the minority regions and intensify central control over the recalcitrant

peripheries, thus weakening the potential for minority mobilization. Kazakhstan’s

1999 census data, which show a Kazakh majority in all the oblasts bordering the

Russian Federation, affirm that the desired goals were attained.

Was there a separatist or irredentist threat?

Quite naturally, throughout the Soviet period, the northern and eastern regions of

Kazakhstan had closer economic and cultural links with the RSFSR than with the

rest of the republic. For party officials in Moscow, as well as for ordinary

Russians, these regions represented virtual extensions of the territories of Russian

Federation. For many, the territorial creation of Kazakhstan, together with other

Central Asian republics, under the national delimitation of 1924–25, denoted an

act of Russian imperial largesse, as nomads had no state or territorial attachment.

When the Nobel award winning Russian writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn called for

the creation of a ‘Greater Russia’ by uniting various Russian-dominated peripheries

of the adjacent republics (most notably, the areas of eastern and northern

Kazakhstan), few Russians showed disagreement. However, his reference to the

bordering regions as Russian territories ‘gifted away’ to the nomads ‘who roamed

about on the steppes and had no sense of territoriality’ outraged the Kazakhs.

Predictably, the sentiments voiced by Solzhenitsyn were echoed by several

Russian nationalist groups, Cossack organizations and the Russian State Duma’s

Disempowered minorities 123

Committee on Ties with Compatriots Abroad, and also acquired some popular

resonance. But there was neither strong support by the ruling elites in Russia, nor

an unequivocal endorsement by Slavic leaders within Kazakhstan. Statements

such as these, however, which proliferated in the media and the public domain,

offered the Kazakhstani state ample reason to rally for international support

against seemingly imminent threats to its territorial integrity. In a rejoinder,

Kazakh historians, representing a state-sanctioned view, questioned the legality,

as well as historicity of Solzhenitsyn’s claims. They argued that while Russian

‘imperialists’ know their current geography too well, they demonstrate a wilful

ignorance of their own history.

Challenging this overriding nationalist perspective,

Kazakhstani Russian historian Irina Erofeeva points to ecological differences in

the landscape of East Kazakhstan. She argued that the north-western parts of the

East Kazakhstan oblast’, along the right bank of river Irtysh, including the city

Ust-Kamenogorsk (Oskemen), are part of the Siberian ecological landscape,

which could not be used as pastures. She reminds that these areas were under the

West Siberian governorate throughout the tsarist period, until their inclusion into

the Soviet republic of Kazakhstan in the 1920s. This observation questions the

tendency among Kazakh officials to see the Soviet-drawn borders as the ‘natural’

boundaries of the Kazakh nation.

In contrast to the debates raging in academic, media and political circles at that

time, there was little public manifestation of ethnic unrest or separatist action in

Kazakhstan, or elsewhere in Central Asia during the post-Soviet period. Some of

the most hostile encounters between Slavs and Kazakhs occurred in the late 1920s

and early 1930s, and during the Virgin Lands campaigns. The introduction of

korenizatsiia in the 1920s and 1930s had produced a fierce rivalry between

Kazakhs and Russians, in which racial abuse, brawls and unruly behaviour were

rampant in the new industrial and construction sites. But, at the same time, the

Bolsheviks’ determination to forge an indigenous proletariat and a sense of

‘international’ solidarity transcending ethnic and internal tribal affiliations had a

vital resonance for the Kazakhs.

Most conflicts during the Virgin Lands phase

were between the new, mostly European, settlers and the various deported ethnic

groups (Chechens, Ingush), and were coded as instances of ‘hooliganism’ and

‘drunkenness’, causing violence at the workplace.

The Almaty protests of 1986,

as shown in Chapter 4, were not ‘anti-Russian’. They did not have a visible ethnic

overtone or a nationalist goal, and were primarily anti-Moscow, directed

against Gorbachev’s efforts to overhaul the republic’s patronage network and

clan balancing.

Although references to a cultural divide between Slavs and Muslims, even a

‘clash of civilizations’, were commonplace in the media and academic analyses,

these stemmed from primordialist assumptions about group relations. Overall, the

pattern of industrial and urban growth in Kazakhstan had reduced the economic

and sociocultural distance between Russians, other Russian-speaking groups

(such as Slavs, Germans, Jews, Koreans, Tatars) and Kazakhs, contributing to a

much greater social homogeneity. Class solidarity, the growing convergence in

the socio-economic levels of the nationalities under Brezhnev, and Soviet-era

124 Disempowered minorities

internationalism brought together the Kazakhs and various Russian-speaking

groups in the Russian-dominated regions. The urban Kazakhs in the north-east

were more integrated into the dominant Russophone culture than those in the

southern and western regions, where they constituted majorities in the oblasts.

A survey conducted in Ust-Kamenogorsk (Oskemen) in 1996 revealed a higher

degree of ‘internationalism’ among local Kazakhs than among its Russian-speaking

inhabitants.

Such ‘internationalism’ was an important element of all public mobilizations

organized by Lad and other Russian groups, together with the newly founded

Federation of Independent Trade Unions of Kazakhstan (a rival to the existing

state-sponsored trade union) in the early 1990s. These tended to focus on

socio-economic issues (such as the increase and timely payment of pensions,

organization of industrial action) and not on ‘ethno-cultural’ concerns.

Several

trade union and civil rights activists among Russian-speakers pledged their com-

mitment to preserving inter-ethnic solidarity, as they organized along social and

class lines, thus undercutting the potential for separatist mobilization. Although

some members of Lad and several Cossack groups frequently issued calls for a

merger of Kazakhstan (or of its Russian-dominated oblasts) with Russia and

greater cultural autonomy, they possessed little organizational capacity or

resources to rally popular support for ethnic autonomy or separatism. Nor were

these the only calls for closer ties between Kazakhstan and Russia and some form

of union or confederation between the two. The prominent Kazakh writer and

environmental activist Olzhas Suleimenov and several other Kazakh scholars

and writers also advocated a union or confederation between Russia and

Kazakhstan.

While Lad and Cossack groups employed ‘nationalist’ or separatist

rhetoric to obtain the support of groups within Russia, they also evoked the famil-

iar Soviet agenda of self-determination – recognition of language and culture,

retention of Russian-medium schools and textbooks, support to Russian mass

media – rather than pressing for autonomy or separation within the new frame-

work of Kazakhstan’s sovereign statehood. Among the new post-Soviet items on

their agenda were, recognition of Russian as a state language, along with Kazakh,

dual citizenship for Russians, maintenance of free travel, the establishment of a CIS

(Commonwealth of Independent States) Customs Union, a common currency

zone, and close economic cooperation between Russia and Kazakhstan.

Incidentally, while Kazakhstan has continued to widen its economic cooperation

with Russia, the close relationship between the two states has not had any impact

on the political status of Russians.

Russians: imperial solidarity, lack of ethnic cohesion

As argued above, the historically dominant status of Russians and their population

in territories contiguous with Russia did not morph into an active set of ethnic

secessionist claims. Russians in Kazakhstan evidently share an unequivocal sense

of cultural and civilizational superiority, along with a firm belief in their own

decisive contribution in transforming the Kazakhs from a ‘tribe’ to a nation and

Disempowered minorities 125