The Use and Abuse of Postcolonial Discourse in Post-Independent Kazakhstan, Europe-Asia Studies Journal (original) (raw)
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Europe-Asia Studies, 2016
THe PUBLiCATiON UNDER Review "Assessing the evolution of political thought and the impact of the competition of ideas on public policies, policy choices and debates in post-Soviet Kazakhstan." The elite of independent Kazakhstan inherited a well-established and well-developed general education system. Political science and public policy research, however, had been significantly distorted by the Soviet ideology and, at the time of independence, were substantially underdeveloped. Yet, since the early 1990s, both Kazakhstan’s academic community and its policy-making circles reached a clear consensus about the need to develop specific institutions for policy studies, to ultimately establish what they termed an ‘official ideology’ (p. 23) for the newly independent state. Right from the beginning, think-tanks were established in Kazakhstan with a view to help policy makers to identify its policy priorities, define national interests and promote a national identity. This research book was designed to assess the evolution of ‘political thinking’ in Kazakhstan since independence (p. 25), charting the interaction of various political institutions in local policy debates ‘during the different stages of political development of the republic’ (p. 26).
Some Western pundits have embraced a "domino" logic to suggest that Kazakhstan might share the fate of Ukraine, with its Russian minority being used as the pretext for Russian intervention and irredentism. In this article I explore several reasons that invalidate this simplistic and mechanical parallel. Russia's policy toward Kazakhstan aims at remaining the main political and cultural yardstick for the whole of Kazakhstani society, not merely the protector of Russian minorities. Perceived historical and demographic similarities between Kazakhstan and Ukraine are narrower than it seems at first glance. Defining a potential "Kazakh Novorossiya" is not an easy task, even for Russian nationalists. Moreover, current demographic and economic trends do not favor Kazakhstan's Russianmajority regions, and local political activism and grievances have remained limited since Crimea's annexation.
The article dwells upon the factors impacting the process of nation-building in Kazakhstan. The question of national identity is widely discussed in Post-Soviet countries as it is directly connected to the national ideology, history, language and other issues. The authors consider the rebirth of the title nation, competition of the civil and ethnic approaches to the nationbuilding, and contradiction of Kazakh and Russian languages to be topical issues in the formation of national identity in modern Kazakhstan. Particularly important role is given to Kazakh language claiming the status of the main attribute of ethnic cultural symbolism of Kazakhstan. The article discusses the peculiarities of the policy of kazakhization and provides a conclusion that this is an effective solution for national and interethnic relations issues in Kazakhstan.
Nation-Building in Kazakhstan: Kazakh and Kazakhstani Identities Controversy
BILIG, 2015
The article dwells upon the factors impacting the process of nation-building in Kazakhstan. The question of national identity is widely discussed in Post-Soviet countries as it is directly connected to the national ideology, history, language and other issues. The authors consider the rebirth of the title nation, competition of the civil and ethnic approaches to the nation-building, and contradiction of Kazakh and Russian languages to be topical issues in the formation of national identity in modern Kazakhstan. Particularly important role is given to Kazakh language claiming the status of the main attribute of ethnic cultural symbolism of Kazakhstan. The article discusses the peculiarities of the policy of kazakhization and provides a conclusion that this is an effective solution for national and interethnic relations issues in Kazakhstan.
The Kazakhstani Soviet not? Reading Nazarbayev's Kazakhstani-ness through Brezhnev's Soviet people
Central Asian Survey, 2021
Rather than interpreting President Nursultan Nazarbayev’s nationbuilding model of Kazakhstani-ness as a balance between civic and ethnic forms of nation-building, we show that Kazakhstaniness was styled on Leonid Brezhnev’s supranational modern identity of the Soviet People. We explore three similarities by comparing rulers’ discursive aspirational statements (rather than historical policy trajectories) in a single case study of Kazakhstan. Both discursive models were based on teleological supranational state ideology, both were depicted as modern and advanced, and both modelled the new identity on the language and culture of ethnic majority. We used thematic discourse analysis in over 50 government documents and speeches of leaders to illustrate our argument. This case presents bigger lessons for regime’s power of defining the national membership in post-Soviet Kazakhstan and beyond.
Saeculum: Journal of World History, 2023
The article delves into the origins of independent Kazakhstan by looking at the critical yet underexplored years between Stalin’s death and the collapse of the USSR. The ambiguity surrounding the memory of this period functions as the article’s point of departure. Endeavoring to understand that ambiguity, the article steers clear of reified binaries of ‘Soviet’ and ‘anti-Soviet,’ ‘authentic’ and ‘foreign,’ ‘national’ and ‘imperial.’ Instead, it regards this ambiguity as reflecting a holistic, if contradictory, experience of Kazakhstan as part of the Soviet Union. The tendencies that could schematically be interpreted as either deepening Kazakhstan’s colonial status or, on the contrary, as promoting the Kazakh national consciousness and a sense of agency were all direct by-products and spin-offs of the entangled social, economic, and cultural transformations and the accompanying changes in power relations between the Soviet metropole and the no-less Soviet periphery. The article is divided into four parts. First, it examines the economic developments, which brought about profound reorientation in the republic’s economic landscape. Secondly, the article analyses demographic changes attesting to the gradual recovery of Kazakhs from the devastation of famine and war. The process of cultural Kazakhization is explored in Part 3 of the article. Finally, the article investigates three episodes of overt resistance, which, while evidencing a growing national self-confidence among the Kazakhs, also revealed the persistence of their Soviet allegiances. Placed side by side, these episodes bring to the surface the evolving nature of the Soviet project in the Kazakh Republic with its contradictions and consequential shifts.