When conflict erupted in the Central Asian country of Kazakhstan in early January 2022, many international commenters struggled to sort fact from conjecture while voices inside the country were largely silent due to widespread internet outages. Watching a nation in crisis often provokes more questions than the most detailed and close-to-the-ground analysis can provide.

Amid rapidly developing events and uncertain outcomes, we want to provide Nationalities Papers readers with a selection of recently published articles that we hope will help you appreciate the past and present of Kazakhstan’s politics, society, culture, and national identity.

The articles can be found below.

Background

From the break-up of the Soviet Union, Kazakhstan—a country five times the size of France, bordering Russia to the north and west, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan to the south, and China to the east—has negotiated a delicate balance of political demands in the foreign and domestic arenas, many of which hinged on the personal leadership of long-time President Nursultan Nazarbayev (Anceschi 2014). Kazakhstan’s economy has been mainly dependent on the oil and gas industry, and the enormous deposits of precious metals, including copper, zinc and uranium. This wealth, however, has not benefited the population equally, generating a super-elite class of oligarchs centered around the Nazarbayev family.

Nazarbayev, now 81, ran the country for 29 years until stepping down as president in 2019. Nazarbayev cultivated a father-figure image that resonated with the population, and was given the official title of Elbasy (“Leader of the Nation”) by the parliament in 2010. His popular legitimacy hinged on a balancing act between Russia and the West, bringing foreign investment and international opportunities to the country and its citizens, and the promise of building a multi-ethnic yet still “Kazakh” state that mobilized the ethno-historical past while guaranteeing minorities’ full political inclusion.

Both the geopolitical and national frames are important for thinking about the current crisis in Kazakhstan. The nature of the crisis also stands as a reminder of how analysis of ongoing events is fraught with epistemic uncertainty.

Crisis, Facts, and Framing

Protest and other episodes of social unrest are not unprecedented in Kazakhstan’s recent past. These social impulses in Kazakhstan have varied over time, as have government responses to public grievances. In 2011, protests in the southwestern city of Zhanaozen centered on the grievances of oil workers, who saw the benefits of their labor being extracted by wealthy elites. Unrest in 2016 in Aktobe, the largest city in western Kazakhstan, was treated as a terrorist attack – the government utilized securitization frameworks and highlighted the danger of extremist elements, a rhetoric that has remained in play in official discourses. Protests erupted in response to renaming the capital city of Astana to Nur-Sultan after Nursultan Nazarbayev’s resignation in 2019.  These events marked the beginning of a civic movement Wake Up Kazakhstan, calling for broader political transformation in a post-Nazarbayev era. Since then, grievances have continued to build over socioeconomic issues, including economic inequality and corruption. Despite the promised liberalization of laws on peaceful protest and freedom of expression, demonstrations still require advance permission to be legal.

When protests broke out once again in Zhanaozen on January 2, 2022, this time over the removal of subsidies for the liquified petroleum gas that many Kazakhstanis use to fuel their automobiles, the government ultimately responded by reinstating subsidies. But when protests quickly spread to other cities and the list of grievances grew wider, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev dismissed the prime minister and his cabinet. Protests escalated in Almaty, the former capital and largest city in the country, as looters and armed rioters emerged setting government buildings on fire and briefly overrunning the airport, and in other regions such as Taldykorgan, where a statue of Nazarbayev was toppled.

Rumors circulated about the development of events, the motives of protestors, and whether elite factions were fueling the unrest. The president described protesters as “a band of international terrorists,” and on January 5th declared a national state of emergency and a curfew, and shut down the internet. He then took over as the Chairman of the Security Council of Kazakhstan, removing Nazarbayev from his last official state position. Former Security Council chairman and long-time political insider Karim Massimov, Nazarbayev’s close ally, was arrested on charges of treason. Hours later, early on January 6th, Tokayev invited military support from Russia and other neighboring countries. He later characterized the events an attempted coup, suggesting intra-elite contestation taking place in parallel with mass protests.

The pace of developments and limited access to reliable information amid government framing attempts and internet blockages has led to rumors and speculation about those involved in the protests and wider unrest, the motivation of government actors, and broader geopolitical implications. Crises and associated decision-making are clouded by uncertainty and the pressure to make quick decisions. In addition to the contingent nature of decision-making, is a tendency of regional governments to engage a highly editorialized version of events. Scholars, analysts, and Kazakhstani citizens will be sorting out the myriad details and experiences of the unfolding events for years to come. The mosaic of knowledge will be assembled piece by piece, through studies analyzing different aspects and angles of the crisis. In the spirit of supporting a slow evaluation of events, we offer the following observations on the current crisis set against the literature.

The Geopolitical Dimension

Kazakhstan is all too often presented as standing in the shadow of Russia. As the last of the Soviet Republics to declare independence, and one of the first to sign on to regional agreements, one of Nazarbayev’s key strategies was to keep regional ties strong (Hale 2009). This became one prong of a strategy that came to be known as multi-vector foreign policy, which sought to balance regional interests with those further afield, including ties with the US and Europe. At a time when neighboring Russia and Uzbekistan curtailed diplomatic cooperation with the West, Kazakhstan made it a priority to keep relations open and friendly.

Against this background, President Tokayev’s decision to invite peacekeepers from the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) – a military alliance including Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Kazakhstan – thus marks a major departure from the careful balancing of the previous administration, and has provoked sharp criticism from the West. Wide-ranging speculation about Russia’s motives and Kazakhstan’s geopolitical position have flown around the ether. Often these present Kazakhstan’s government as lacking agency or as a pawn in a greater geopolitical game.

Since the 2014 crisis in Ukraine, many Kazakhstanis have been nervous about Russian interference in the largely Russian-speaking north of the country. When Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed in September 2014 that Kazakhstan had never been a state prior to 1991, then-president Nazarbayev responded by creating a new holiday to celebrate the “550th anniversary of the Kazakh Khanate.” Anxiety over sovereignty flared again over Chinese encroachment in 2016, and Nazarbayev halted a constitutional amendment that would have allowed foreigners to lease land in Kazakhstan. Given past action against the perceived infringement of state sovereignty, it is clear that political elites are aware of popular fears of such encroachment. Tokayev’s invitation of CSTO troops is thus a politically risky move.

Identity Politics

The first insinuation that the current crisis might contain an ethnic component, including a rumor that ethnic pogroms were occurring during the unrest in Almaty, came from Russian media. The ethnic question was completely absent from Tokayev’s statements and has little resonance with society at large. While Russian media has generally been quick to ascribe ethno-nationalist motivations to civic unrest, the Kazakhstani media has avoided this type of framing, though there is some variation between Russian-language and Kazakh-language coverage in Kazakhstan. Nevertheless, scholarly literature on the ethnic question in Kazakhstan shows a great deal of variation and nuance in the salience of identity politics.

One of the central markers of Nazarbayev-era domestic policy was a firm rhetoric of interethnic harmony. A major strain of scholarly debate centers on how authentically the regime has navigated efforts to revitalize the Kazakh identity suppressed during the Soviet Union while maintaining a civic or multiethnic unifying identity (Isaacs and Polese 2015). A recent issue that demonstrates this delicate balance is the government’s push for the Latinization of the Kazakh alphabet while maintaining an official status for the Russian language. Empirically, studies have focused on material constructions, such as monuments and buildings (Fauve 2015, Tsyrempilov, Bigozhin, and Zhumabayev 2021), cultural practices (Isaacs 2015, Kudaibergenova 2016), historical memory (Richter 2020, Kundakbayeva and Kassymova 2016), language (Jašina-Schäfer 2019), migration (Zeveleva 2014, Kusku 2016), and state discourse. While the conclusions scholars reach depend a great deal on the focus of their empirical material, there is a consensus that ethnic relations have been managed comparatively well in Kazakhstan.

Nevertheless, given the shifting government rhetoric and uncertainty surrounding international intervention, it is worth remembering how nationalist discourse can create new cleavages. The presence of a multi-ethnic population alone does not predict conflict. However, increased chauvinistic language, though absent in Kazakhstan at the moment, can lead to tragic results when mobilized and supported by elite voices.

Slow Analysis and Epistemic Humility

Against the backdrop of geopolitical and nationally-oriented analysis is an urgency among Central Asian scholars to view Kazakhstan and the wider region through a post-colonial (vis-à-vis Russia) or decolonized (vis-à-vis Westernized knowledge production) lens. Empowering and amplifying local voices can go a long way to support this growing trend. It may be that current theories and frames are poor teachers when it comes to comprehending the unfolding events and the calculations of those involved. In the same way that the politicization of grief robs victims of their human experience, theoretical rigidity can instrumentalize and dehumanize. Interrogating hegemonic concepts such as authoritarianism, democratization, social mobilization, corruption, or securitization against the evolving body of evidence will be a crucial and painstaking task, but is necessary to do justice to those who mourn loved ones and suffer the consequences of a newfound instability.

- Caress Schenk and Harris Mylonas.