Marlene Laruelle. Problems of Post-Communism. Volume 65, Issue 1, January/February 2018.
Introduction
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 Russian-majority regions, and local political activism and grievances have remained limited since Crimea’s annexation.
At the Seliger youth camp in August 2014, Russian president Vladimir Putin answered a teen’s question about the growth of nationalist feelings in Kazakhstan with an ambiguous statement. He praised Kazakhstan’s President Nursultan Nazarbayev, who “has performed a unique feat” because “he has created a state on a territory where there has never been a state. The Kazakhs never had a state of their own, and he created it. In this sense, he is a unique person on the post-Soviet space and in Kazakhstan.” This vague statement rankled Kazakh public opinion, especially among young, nationalist-minded elites. Western observers simplistically interpreted it as an open threat that Kazakhstan’s sovereignty, like Ukraine’s, could be challenged. But Putin’s message could also be interpreted in a less alarmist way, signaling not Russia’s malevolent intentions toward its neighbor, but Putin’s doubts about the Kazakhstani elite’s ability to manage Nazarbayev’s impending succession without internal conflict. The Kazakhstani authorities responded emphatically. In October 2014, Nazarbayev announced that 2015 would be celebrated as the 550th anniversary of the birth of the Kazakh state, specifically the Kazakh khanate created by Kerey and Zhanibek in 1465. “It may not have been a state in the modern understanding of this term, in the current borders,” he noted, but “it is important that the foundation was laid then, and we are the people continuing the great deeds of our ancestors.”
Putin’s statement came at a time of high anxiety about some Russian irredentist aims. In early 2014 Russian nationalists such Eduard Limonov and Vladimir Zhirinovsky had expressed their desire for either northern Kazakhstan or the whole of Central Asia to rejoin Russia. Their statements had angered Kazakh public opinion and provoked the Kazakhstani Ministry of Foreign Affairs to send a diplomatic note to Moscow and declare Zhirinovsky persona non grata. Moscow demurred that it cannot be held responsible for statements made by a regime opponent such as Limonov, and that, even if Zhirinovsky carries out some official functions, he does not represent the Russian government. After Crimea’s annexation, Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergei Lavrov tried to downplay concerns and publicly declared in April that “all parallels between Crimea, which joined Russia as the result of a referendum, and Kazakhstan, made by some Russian politicians, are totally misplaced (neumestnye).”
Without waiting for Lavrov’s reassurance, the Kazakhstani authorities took their own precautions. An article was added to the new penal code that made threatening the country’s territorial integrity and calling for secession punishable by ten years in prison. A second measure accelerated access to Kazakhstani citizenship for Oralmans—ethnic Kazakhs repatriated from neighboring countries. Close to one million Oralmans have already returned and the waiting period for citizenship, 6-7 years, will be sped up in order to shift the ethnic balance of the population in favor of Kazakhs, especially in northern regions where Russians still dominate.
Less straightforwardly, Astana began setting its own parameters for its participation in the Moscow-led Eurasian Economic Union. First, it emphasized that the union is not an effort to revive the defunct Soviet structure. Second, it noted that it is an economic project, not a political one, and the Kazakhstani authorities have expressed strong reservations toward any supranational institutions, such as a combined parliament or joint citizenship. Third, Kazakhstan’s membership is conditional; it is the result of a choice that can be reversed if the country considers its interests are not being upheld. As Nazarbayev bluntly explained, “If the rules that were previously established in the treaty are not fulfilled, then Kazakhstan has the complete right to end its membership in the Eurasian Economic Union. Astana will never be in an organization that represents a threat to the independence of Kazakhstan.”
Yet, many in the media have discussed a possible domino logic according to which Kazakhstan could be “following” Ukraine, with its Russian minority used as the pretext for Russia’s intervention. As justification, observers note that Kazakhstan and Ukraine are the two former Soviet countries with the highest number of people who identify as Russian: 37 percent (6.2 million) in 1989, 21 percent (3.5 million) in 2015 for Kazakhstan; 22 percent (11.3 million) in 1989 and 17 percent (8.3 million) in 2015 for Ukraine. Estonia is often added as a third case. But statistics do not make politics. This supposed mechanical parallel between Ukraine and Kazakhstan is based on a very primordialist vision of “Russian minorities” outside Russia, as well as of the mechanisms of their political activism—secessionist or not. It is also based on an ideology that interprets Russia’s influence in the so-called Near Abroad as being systematically part of a grand design of “re-imperialization.”
A rich literature offers different explanatory schemes to understand the phenomenon of secessionist movements in the former Soviet space. At least three schools have emerged. One insists on the external factor: it is Russia’s will and need to punish a neighboring state resisting its regional hegemony that fuels secessionist sentiments among the Russian minority of the targeted country. Others turn to historical, demographic, and societal elements to explain why one region became secessionist and others do not. A third approach looks at local grievances and the role of local elites and their narratives. They incorporate the broader analytical trend of looking at the grassroots motivations of insurgents in order to explain the local dynamics of civil war. They also investigate not only the “minority” but also the central government: it is often the low or failed legitimacy of the central government that may be one of the “push” factors for secessionism.
In this article I explore several reasons that invalidate the simplistic and mechanical parallel between Kazakhstan and Ukraine. I second Alexander Diener in his analysis, and offer some new arguments to assess negatively the risk of a Russian irredentism in Kazakhstan. This research had to be done with no access to any kind of survey data that would help us capture the opinion of the Russian minority. Kazakhstani state institutions do commission surveys, but these remain classified even for many Kazakhstani scholars, much less foreigners. Moreover, their reliability in an authoritarian context can be questioned. Yet, enough secondary and primary sources are available to be correlated. Here I detail the three main approaches and address the Kazakhstani case in each of them. I conclude by stating that the risk of Russian separatism in Kazakhstan is largely hyped, and that comparative elements justifying a parallel with Crimea are limited, or projective.
Becoming an Irredentist Minority: Not Destiny, But an Opportunity
The first school hypothesizes that Russian minorities become secessionist when activated by Moscow. The Baltic states, Ukraine, Moldova, and Georgia are cited as proof of this argument. With few exceptions, such as Agnes Grigas, who defends the notion of “reimperialization” of Russian policy including for Central Asia, no scholarly work argues that Moscow has activated Russian minorities in Central Asia. Indeed, hosting ethnic minorities is not automatically a threat to state sovereignty and the citizenry; it becomes so only if the minorities are portrayed as a potential secessionist force. Realities on the ground diverge for each minority, depending on its rapport with the majority, its legal status, its economic prospects, its internal organizational capabilities, and its relationship to a kin state. Russia has not adopted any unified policy for dealing with Russian minorities in the Near Abroad, and there is no primordialist approach that would make Russia a natural and systematic “defender” of them. Each country faces a specific situation depending on Moscow’s relationship with the local regime in power.
Russian Minorities in the Post-Soviet Space
When Russian minorities are regarded as potential agents of separatism, it usually indicates that Russia has conflictual political relationships with the host state. This has been the case with Estonia, Latvia, and Moldova. The two Baltic states refuse to recognize Russia as a regional hegemon and have never participated in any post-Soviet regional institutions. They both put in place restrictive citizenship policies based on ethnicity that marginalized the non-titular part of the population (more than half a million Russian-speakers in Latvia; 320,000 in Estonia as of 2011). Since the early 1990s, Russia has claimed a right to defend the Russian-speaking population, complained of violations before the European Court of Human Rights, and conducted asymmetrical warfare, such as cyberattacks on Estonia. In Moldova, local conflict emerged as early as 1990 between the Russian-speaking elites of Transnistria and the Chisinau government, which was then considering integration with Romania. Since then, Moscow has instrumentalized the frozen conflict in order to slow down Moldova’s integration into the European space—with little success, as Moldova ratified an association agreement with the European Union in 2014—and to maintain Transnistria as a de facto client state.
Georgia’s secessionist regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia further confirm Russia’s lack of a primordialist approach toward minorities. In Georgia, Moscow supported local actors, intervened militarily in both regions in August 2008, and recognized their independence. But neither the Abkhaz nor the Ossetians can be considered Russian minorities or even Russian-speaking. Rather, they attracted Russia’s support by positioning themselves as pro-Russian constituencies able to link local grievances to a bigger “geopolitical” goal of undermining pro-Western regimes, such as that of President Mikheil Saakashvili.
Ukraine is a more complex case for several reasons: the difficulties of distinguishing a “Russian minority” from a “Ukrainian majority,” given the extensive historical, cultural, and linguistic proximity between the two peoples; the confusion between ethnic identification and belonging to a Russian- or Ukrainian-speaking information space; and multiple ups and downs in the relationship between Moscow and Kyiv over the last twenty-five years. In many aspects, this is more than just an issue for elites; the Russian public holds strong opinions about Ukraine as well. It is a “brother” country whose independence is difficult to accept because the shared historical past is interpreted as a sign of a shared future and because of deep family and individual connections.
In Central Asia, Russia has never mobilized Russian minorities as a tool to compel local regimes to adopt a more friendly posture. The two countries that have refused to support Moscow’s regional hegemon status, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, both have Russian minorities. However, Russian foreign policy institutions have never asserted the need to defend their rights as a tool to coerce Ashgabat or Tashkent, even when rights were trampled upon. In 2003 Turkmenistan abruptly terminated dual-citizenship status, forcing many dual citizens (not only ethnic Russians but also Turkmens) to make a choice, with significant consequences in terms of property, housing, rights to travel, and so on. The Turkmen authorities had advanced a very anti-Russian narrative in terms of nation-building and had given clear preference to China since 2006. Even so, Moscow never instrumentalized the status of Russians in Turkmenistan in its negotiations with Ashgabat. The same goes for Uzbekistan, whose leaders have constructed a nationhood by denouncing Russian and Soviet imperialism. But its zigzagging foreign policy—entering and leaving regional organizations depending on its shifting relations with Moscow and Washington—never provoked Russia to raise concerns about the status of Russians there.
The relationship to Bishkek is far more fraternal than Moscow’s ties with Tashkent and Ashgabat. The situation of Kyrgyzstan’s Russian population—370,000 people or about 6 percent of the total population in 2014—is not part of the repertoire Moscow uses to pressure the Kyrgyz authorities. Instead, Moscow prefers to insist on Bishkek’s need for Russian investments, military security and partnership, and protection and permission for the free movement of labor migrants. This is an interesting paradox given the fact that the status of everything Russian, on the contrary, is vigorously debated in Kyrgyz public opinion—use of the Russian language versus Kyrgyz, the vassal relationship to Moscow, the role of Russian media in shaping Kyrgyz public opinion, and so on.
The Russia-Kazakhstan Relationship: A Lack of Focus on the Russian Minority
Kazakhstan positions itself in still another category of relationship to Russia. Since independence, the Kazakhstani authorities have remained faithful to their pledge to be Moscow’s most loyal economic and political partner and a genuine supporter of all regional reintegration projects. Although Russia remains Kazakhstan’s most active external partner, few of Russia’s activities in Kazakhstan specifically focus on Russian minorities.
Russia is one of Kazakhstan’s main trading partners, after the European Union and, depending on the year, equaling or exceeding China. Russia shapes Kazakhstan’s security policy through bilateral cooperation and the Collective Security Treaty Organization. It has reoriented the Kazakhstani economy toward greater integration since the launch of the Customs Union in 2011 and the Eurasian Economic Union in 2015. Russian sources dominate Kazakhstani television, newspapers, and online media. The Russian university model continues to shape the Kazakhstani one. Several Russian universities, including Moscow State University and leading Siberian provincial universities, have opened branch campuses in the country. Russian universities host many Kazakhstani students: numbers vary between 20,000 and 26,000 depending on the sources, making Kazakhstani students among the largest group of foreign students in Russian universities. The majority of these students likely are ethnic Russians who want to study in their native tongue, have no interest in earning a Kazakhstani diploma, or have not mastered the Kazakh language—but there are no statistics confirming their ethnicity.
Russia’s public diplomacy institutions are active in Kazakhstan as in the other post-Soviet republics. The state agency Rossotrudnichestvo works as an umbrella for all cultural activities related to the promotion of Russian language and culture, including contests, festivals, and Olympiads, and offers grants and fellowships of all kinds. Several associations championing the Russian language and Russian-language instructors, such as the Kazakhstani Society of Teachers of Russian Language and Literature, the Kazakhstani Association of Teachers at Russian Schools, and the Kazakhstani Association of Alumni of Russian Higher Educations Institutions, function in the country and are recognized in bilateral relations as joint associations. The Russian Center for Science and Culture, which opened in Astana in 2004, serves as the main cultural body for Russia in the capital city. The Orthodox Church of Kazakhstan, under the jurisdiction of the Moscow Patriarchate, has always been very loyal to the Kazakhstani authorities.
The multifaceted presence of Russia in Kazakhstan can thus be defined as massive, well-organized and well-funded, at least until the economic slowdown hit Russia’s public expenditures in 2015—it remains to be seen if such levels of investments will be sustained. However, none of these Russia-funded activities specifically target the Russian minorities at such a level that it could be interpreted as a lever of Russia’s soft power. Funds available for Russian public diplomacy groups and Russia’s dominance over the Kazakhstani media landscape do not aim at Russian minorities in particular, but at the whole of Kazakhstani society. Moscow’s strategy in Kazakhstan is not to advance a “divide-and-rule” logic favoring the Russian minorities, but to retain its status as the main political and cultural yardstick for all of Kazakhstani society. Moscow seeks to be recognized as the regional hegemon in the economic, security, and cultural realms. So far, given the good relationship between Moscow and Astana, Russian minorities have not been instrumentalized by Moscow as a coercive tool.
The only Russian policy that does target the Russian minority is the repatriation program. Since its creation in 2006, almost 200,000 Kazakhstani citizens have applied for it. On average, Kazakhstanis comprise about one-quarter to one-third of all “compatriots” listed by Russian state organs. There are no available statistics on their ethnicity, but one may suppose the majority of them are ethnic Russians, although some may belong to the many other nationalities of Russia, such as Tatars, North Caucasians, Siberian peoples, and so on. Russians’ emigration does continue today: of the 30,000 people emigrating from Kazakhstan in 2015 (the 2014 numbers were of the same scale), 21,000 were ethnic Russians (the others were Germans and Ukrainians), and about 25,000 were heading to Russia. Of course, this repatriation policy actually decreases Russia’s influence in the neighboring country by bringing “back” a population that could otherwise have embraced pro-Russian positions.
Projecting the “Russianness” of Northern Kazakhstan
The second school posits that historical, demographic, and economic fundamentals explain why some minorities are prone to separatism and others are not. Many of these factors sharply differentiate Kazakhstan from Ukraine. First, there is no obvious spatial projection of Kazakhstan’s “Russianness”; second, the demographic balance puts Russian minorities at a disadvantage compared with the Kazakh majority; and third, Russian-majority regions have little weight in the national economy.
Unlike the other Central Asian countries, Kazakhstan shares a very long border with Russia, stretching over 7,000 kilometers. Much as in Ukraine and Estonia, the Russian minorities in Kazakhstan are located close to the Russian border. This location is a product of history, resulting from the century-long colonization of Siberia (more than 1.5 million Russian settlers in the Kazakh steppes by World War I) and relocation policies pursued by the Soviet regime for industrial and agricultural development (extraction industries and the Virgin Lands campaign), with the result that Russians represented, at their peak in 1979, 40 percent of the republic’s population. Russian minorities live in compact settlements in several of the country’s regions: North Kazakhstan and Kostanay, where they still represent more than half the population, followed by the East Kazakhstan, Karaganda, Pavlodar, and Akmola regions, where they comprise about one-third of residents, and the specific case of Almaty, the Soviet-era capital city, where they are about one-fourth of the city’s inhabitants. (See Table 1).
Table 1 Number of Russians, Ukrainians, and Belorussians in Kazakhstan’s Regions, 2015 (in percentage of the population)
| Russians | Ukrainians | Belorussians | |
| North Kazakhstan | 49.90 | 4.44 | 1.03 |
| Kostanay | 41.89 | 8.75 | 1.56 |
| East Kazakhstan | 37.56 | 0.36 | 0.10 |
| Karaganda | 36.98 | 3.21 | 0.85 |
| Pavlodar | 36.90 | 4.72 | 0.64 |
| Akmola | 34.14 | 4.65 | 1.44 |
| Almaty city | 28.47 | 0.66 | 0.10 |
| West Kazakhstan | 20.63 | 1.60 | 0.31 |
| Astana city | 15.64 | 1.63 | 0.46 |
| Almaty | 14.60 | 0.24 | 0.03 |
| Aktobe | 12.30 | 2.82 | 0.15 |
| Zhambyl | 10.50 | 0.34 | 0.04 |
| Magystau | 6.36 | 0.33 | 0.04 |
| Atyrau | 5.80 | 0.14 | 0.04 |
| South Kazakhstan | 4.72 | 0.16 | 0.02 |
| Kzyl-Orda | 2.03 | 0.04 | 0.01 |
| Kazakhstan | 21.05 | 1.70 | 0.34 |
The Blurry Boundaries of Kazakhstan’s Novorossiya
Even though Russian minorities are massively concentrated in the northern and northeastern regions of the country for historical reasons, mapping the “Russianness” of the Kazakh steppes is complicated. This distinguishes the Kazakhstani case from the Ukrainian one. Crimea occupies a specific and unique status in Russian public opinion for several historical reasons, such as the status of Sevastopol since the Crimean war (1853-1856), its role in Russia’s military defense today, and Khrushchev’s “gifting” of the region to Ukraine in 1954. Moving beyond the Crimean case, Ukraine is conventionally projected as “divided” between western regions and eastern ones. Although many scholars dismiss this division as an artificial construct, the point here is not to state it is an “objective” reality, but it is a projection of Ukraine’s geography that is widely used in Ukraine, Russia, and the West. This familiar “mental atlas” of a dual Ukraine was heavily politicized during the Ukrainian conflict, with the use of the terminology of Novorossiya—defined by Vladimir Putin as including Kharkov, Lugansk, Donetsk, Kherson, Nikolayev, and Odessa—to identify the regions that should potentially be returned to Russia.
In the Kazakhstani case, the spatial projections of what could be Kazakhstan’s Novorossiya are more complex for three main reasons. First the notion of “Northern Kazakhstan,” often referred to as a potential Novorossiya, remains imprecise geographically. It extends from Uralsk, on the eastern side of the Volga, to the Altay region close to Mongolia. The “depth” of this northern Kazakhstan is also flouted: it can include only border cities, such as Petropavlovsk, or it can extend inward to Karaganda, located farther south than the capital city of Astana. Second, there is no specific symbolic date to commemorate, no “gift from Khrushchev” to mourn: the gradual Russian conquest of the Siberian steppes began with the fall of Kazan and Astrakhan in 1552 and 1556, respectively, and stretched through the second half of the nineteenth century. Third, there is no obvious “natural” border between Siberia and Kazakhstan to invoke, unlike the projected border between the Russian Empire and the “West” asserted by the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. Contrary to the Ukrainian case, the “Russianness” of the Kazakh steppes cannot be embodied in a famous city whose fate would alone symbolize the whole region: there is no Kazakh Sevastopol whose mere mention would spark a rally-around-the-flag movement in Russia.
This lack of a precise spatial projection of Kazakhstan’s “Russianness” is reflected in statements made by leading Russian nationalists. In 1990, Nobel laureate Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, in his manifesto on how to rebuild Russia, Kak nam obustroit’ Rossiiu, stated:
Today, an immense part of its [Russia’s] territory has been cut away by the Communists without any reason: if, before, there was some cattle transhumance once a year, then it became Kazakhstan. But up to 1936 Kazakhstan was considered an autonomous republic inside the Russian Federation; later it became a federal one. It is composed of South Siberia, the South Urals, and central desert regions that were transformed and built by Russians, zeks [gulag prisoners], and deported peoples. Today Kazakhs represent a little bit less than the majority of Kazakhstan’s population. Their real, compact fatherland part is the large southern crescent of regions going from east to west almost to the Caspian Sea, which is indeed populated mostly by Kazakhs. If they want to take this part and separate, please do so.
In Solzhenitsyn’s narrative, the geographical delimitation is quite imprecise (southern Siberia, southern Urals, and central desert regions), and the key date is 1936. For Solzhenitsyn, it is Kazakhstan’s promotion to federal republic status that is problematic: Kazakhstan’s “natural” status would be that of an autonomous republic inside Russia, like Tatarstan or Bashkortostan, with the possibility of a separate, independent southern Kazakhstan. Solzhenitsyn’s stance is grounded on a vision that emerged during the colonization decades of the nineteenth century and that posits the Kazakh world as dissociated from the rest of Middle Asia (Sredniaia Aziia) or Turkestan. The dissociation between the Governorate of the Steppes and that of Turkestan was critical: the former was seen by the Tsarist administration as the continued conquest—osvoenie—of Siberia, which included peasant colonization and conversion of indigenous people to Christianity, while the latter region was seen as a “protectorate” where Russian colons and the Orthodox Church were not welcomed, imperial laws not applied, and greater autonomy was given to local constituencies and elites. The Soviet regime obviously unified and centralized policies toward both Kazakhstan and Turkestan, but continued the Tsarist tradition indirectly by using the label “Kazakhstan and Middle Asia” (Kazakhstan i Sredniaia Aziia), thereby insisting on a specific status for Kazakhstan outside the Middle/Central Asian region.
In the post-Soviet decades, few Russian nationalists expressed interest in Kazakhstan; their statements about the need to defend Russian minorities targeted mostly Ukraine, Transnistria/Moldova and the Baltic States. In 2013, Egor Prosvirnin, the provocative chief editor of the website Sputnik and Pogrom, an advocate for the “Europeanization” of Russian nationalism and supporter of a fight for an ethnically homogenous Russian state, was an exception. He stated: “Some readers ask why, when speaking about the restoration of the natural borders of the Russian (russkii) national state, we mention the return of Northern Kazakhstan.” He produced a map that shows the percentage of Kazakhstan’s population belonging to so-called European ethnic groups—Russians, Ukrainians, Belorussians, Poles, and Germans—and therefore designates North Kazakhstan, Kostanay, Pavlodar, and East Kazakhstan regions as predominantly “European.” Prosvirnin continued by declaring that “Northern Kazakhstan is the geographical and demographic continuation of Siberia, it has been artificially cut from it, has been colonized by our grand forebears, and therefore illegally, against any logic, moral, and ethics, attached to Kazakhstan.” Thus Prosvirnin maps Russians’ demographic majority as the central argument of his claim, even if he doesn’t stipulate a threshold to justify reintegrating Russia.
During the Ukrainian crisis, new Russian voices called for Russian irredentism. On February 20, 2014, Eduard Limonov, the leader of the (banned) National-Bolshevik Party, a beacon of Russian nationalism, and a fervent Putin opponent, expressed his hope that both Ukraine and northern Kazakhstan, which he judged as on the brink of collapse, would reintegrate with Russia. His declaration, published in his Life Journal, listed his definition of “Russian” regions in Ukraine but remains blurry for Kazakhstan: “I hope that part of Ukraine will make it to Russia […] as well as northern Kazakhstan; it will be possible to recover our Russian cities to Russia at the moment of power transition in Kazakhstan.” A few days later, in response to criticisms coming from Kazakhstan, he clarified his meaning: “Let’s say the city of Uralsk, previously Iaik—by the way the center of Pugachev’s revolt—why for God’s sake should it belong to Kazakhstan? Or Aktiubinsk, Petropavlovsk, Semipalatinsk, Pavlodar, Ust-Kamenogorsk. … These are Russian [russkie] cities. Kazakhs didn’t have any cities, they are from a nomadic culture.” He concluded his message by asking Kazakhstan to “give back foreign property.” In Limonov’s case, the justification for reintegrating with Russia is based on historical arguments—cities built by Russians or Soviet “Europeans.”
A few days later, on Rossiya-24, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the infamous leader of the Liberal-Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR), chimed in following a speech in which he argued that the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan had precipitated the Soviet Union’s collapse. “There are no republics in Central Asia. There is a Central Asian federal district. The main city is Vernyi. Now it has a foreign name, Alma-Ata, my city of origin. Uzbekistan, Kirghizia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan: a Central Asia Federal District.” Without the invasion and then the collapse, he declared, “there would have been silence in the south [tishina na iuge].” One can therefore interpret his statement as an “alternate history.” Had the Soviet Union not collapsed, the Central Asian republics would have become a federal district of Russia. It could also be regarded as an expression of a hope that today Central Asia might eventually reintegrate with Russia. Put in context, his sentence seems to belong to the first category, even if Zhirinovsky has been known for his provocative imperialist narratives since the early 1990s. The LDPR press secretary tried later to downgrade Zhirinovsky’s statement, saying it was in no way a call for separatism. Zhirinovsky’s worldview is focused on rebuilding the Soviet Union, calling for the reintegration of the whole post-Soviet space under Russia’s umbrella. In his vision, there is no need to specify northern Kazakhstan: the whole of Central Asia is the target of his aspirations.
From this brief summary of the four main Russian nationalists’ statements on Kazakhstan, one may conclude that they are quite ambivalent. Zhirinovsky’s call for the whole of Central Asia to reintegrate with Russia represents a minority viewpoint, while the others (Solzhenitsyn, Limonov, and Prosvirnin) focus only on a vaguely delimited “northern” Kazakhstan to be detached from “southern” Kazakhstan and annexed to Russia. But they do not even agree on which historical dates are critical, much less the related historical or demographic arguments.
Such imprecision is typical for the main Russian nationalist spokespersons, those based in Moscow, for whom Kazakhstan is only one minor element in Russia’s national awakening. At the local level, both in Kazakhstan and in Russia’s border regions, a more defined vision is advanced, based on more detailed historical arguments. Russian nationalist-minded groups, some of whom publish local newspapers, booklets, or websites, and Kazakh nationalists, fight over the territorial delimitations made in the 1920s. Between 1920 and 1925 Orenburg was the capital of the Kirghiz Autonomous SSR, which then stretched from Siberia to today’s Kyrgyzstan. When the region was upgraded to a union republic in 1925, some districts—North Kazakhstan, Akmola, Aktobe, Pavlodar, Kustanay, West Kazakhstan, and East Kazakhstan—were assigned to the Kazakh SSR and separated from what would remain Orenburg region. For local Russian nationalists, this is the critical historical moment that should be redressed, a watershed moment that mistakenly gave Russian regions to Kazakhstan.
The only instance in which a similar, locally produced, claim gained visibility at both the Russian federal level and in Kazakhstan occurred in April 2014, when the president of the Supreme Soviet of Khakassia, Vladimir Shtygashev, recalled that several districts of the Ishim region were given to Kazakhstan when it acceded to federal republic status in 1936:
Rudnyi Altai has always been part of Russia. Kazakhstan had few territories and the decision was taken to give it the Ishim district [part of Omsk region]. They gave it and made from it Karaganda region. It was in 1936, not a long time ago. All together we gave five regions to Kazakhstan. … These territories were exchanged as if they were just money.
A few days later, after official complaints from Kazakhstan, Shtygashev retracted his statement, citing a misinterpretation by the newspaper that reported his comments. This is the only reported case when specific administrative districts were mentioned, with an argumentation similar to the Crimea one, suggesting that Soviet-era administrative adjustments from one Soviet republic to another one could be questioned today. But contrary to the Ukrainian case, the general knowledge in Russia about the history of Kazakhstan and the overlap between “Siberia” and “Kazakhstan” is low, and few leading Russian nationalists seem interested in devoting the time and effort needed to build forceful arguments in defense of their stance.
Demographic and Economic Imbalances
Two other elements should be briefly added to this discussion: the demographic and economic weight of the Russian-speaking regions of Kazakhstan. In Ukraine, the demographic evolution of the whole population, whether identified as Russian or Ukrainian, is relatively similar. But in Kazakhstan, the demographic gap between Kazakhs and Russians is large and rising. In 2015, the natural growth rate of the Kazakh population was 2.3 percent (2.6 percent for the Uzbek minority), that of Russians was negative, at -0.51 percent (-1.96 percent for the Ukrainians). This impacts the average age of each group. In 2013, the average age of Kazakhs was 28.9 (26 for the Uzbek minority), compared with 38.5 for Russians and 43 for Ukrainians. This gap of about a decade means than the ageing of Russian minorities will accelerate—the majority of them are already past reproductive age. In 20-30 years, the number of Russians will decline abruptly because of natural factors; the northern regions will be populated largely by pensioners. Their potential to become a factor of separatism will then be close to zero. This already unbalanced equation tilts further in favor of Kazakhs with Astana’s repatriation policy. It has created social tensions and resentment on the part of Kazakhstani Kazakhs toward the Kazakh newcomers from neighboring states—Uzbekistan, China, Mongolia, Afghanistan—but the authorities are using the Oralmans to accelerate the demographic rebalancing in favor of Kazakhs by pushing the repatriates to settle in Russian-majority regions.
The economic weight of Kazakhstan’s Russian-dominated regions is also different from the Ukrainian case. In Ukraine, the eight regions potentially included in the “Novorossiya” narrative represent about half of the country’s GDP, as they host the main extractive industries built during Soviet times. In Kazakhstan (see Figure 1), wealth is concentrated in the two capital cities—Almaty still dominates, generating 8 billion tenge (US$ 23 million at the early 2016 rate) of regional gross product (RGP) in 2014, while Astana contributed another 4 billion—and in the two west Caspian regions of Atyrau and Mangystau. These levels are complemented by the dynamic agricultural sector in South Kazakhstan, around Shymkent, a region bordering Uzbekistan. Northern regions thus dominate the bottom half of the list. Karaganda is an important center of production thanks to its huge Soviet-era extraction industries, as is East Kazakhstan. Pavlodar, Kostanai, and Aktiubinsk produce less than 2 billion each, and North Kazakhstan ranks last. In total, the “northern Kazakhstan” territories produce a combined 11 billion tenge of the country GDP—14 if we include Karaganda—out of a total of 40 billion.
Grassroots Russian Activism
The third school stresses the importance of grassroots activism, local grievances, and the role of minority elites in increasing the potential for secessionism. Yet, Russian minorities in Kazakhstan seem to have retreated from a period of activism in the early 1990s to massive depoliticization since the early 2000s. The Ukrainian crisis did not—contrary to the predictions of some Western pundits—reverse this trend.
The Russian Associative Landscape
Even before independence, in December 1990 a group of Russian activists in Pavlodar created a society for Slavic culture, Slavii, whose purpose was to advance Slavic culture and traditions against Kazakh cultural revival and sovereignty declarations. At Kazakhstan’s independence in late 1991, several “non-native” nationalities united in a political front named Edinstvo (Unity), which did not get registered at the Ministry of Justice because it called for Russian to be recognized as a state language. In 1992, Slavii protested against the dismantling of the sculpture of the Cossack Ermak in Pavlodar and presented a petition with 16,000 signatures demanding the recognition of Russian as the state language. Several Russian cultural associations then decided to create a state-wide organization, Lad-ROSD (Respublikanskoe obshchestvennoe slavianskoe dvizhenie), while the activists around Edinstvo launched their own association, Russian Community (Russkaia obshchina).
During the 1990s, Russkaia obshchina and Lad were the two main platforms speaking on behalf of the Russians in Kazakhstan, but they were unable to cooperate. Russkaia obshchina became a member of the Assembly of People(s), hence accepting the official rhetoric of Kazakhstan as a country of friendship among peoples under the wise leadership of President Nursultan Nazarbayev. As a consequence, Russkaia obshchina leaders became state employees working on the country’s nationalities policies, supervising a large array of cultural activities, but without political claims. Lad, on the contrary, became a member of the various opposition platforms, working with the Popular Republican Party of Akezhan Kazhegeldin, Azamat, the Communist Party, and, in the first half of the 2000s, with the Democratic Choice of Kazakhstan.
At its peak in the mid-1990s, Lad counted 12 regional chapters, about 20,000 members, and 400 activists, but it quickly faded away at the same pace as the rest of the opposition to Nazarbayev. The last attempt to try to create a Russian party was in 2002, by the leader of the Semirechie Cossacks, Georgii Beliakov. Even inside the group of activists calling for collaboration with the Kazakhstani authorities under the umbrella of the Assembly of the People(s), several competing groups appeared, such as a new “Russian Movement” (Russkoe dvizhenie). The dividing lines were sometimes ideological: representing only ethnic Russians or the whole Slavic community, having a strong Cossack component or not, having support in Moscow coming from Vladimir Zhirinovsky, Gennadii Zyuganov’s Communist Party, or Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov. But they were mostly driven by personal ambitions and the career-related trajectories of local leaders. The moving of the capital from Almaty to Astana helped marginalize the Russian leaders, who all stayed in Almaty. The Russian minorities are largely unrepresented in Astana except during the sessions of the Assembly of the People.
In 2015 four Russian associations were represented at the Assembly of the People: the Association of Russian, Slavic, and Cossack organizations; the Coordinating Council of Russian, Slavic, and Cossack Organizations of Kazakhstan; Lad; and Russkaia obshchina. They were joined by several Ukrainian and Belorussian associations that were pushed by the Kazakhstani authorities to dissociate from the Russian ones in order to avoid having a unified Slavic front. In the early 2010s the Almaty and Astana Archiepiscopacy, led by Archi-Episcop Aleksandr, launched a Union of Orthodox Citizens of Kazakhstan, which focuses mostly on promoting Church views, inviting Russians to attend religious services, organizing charitable activities, and cooperating with local Cossacks. At the regional level, about 25 associations representing Russians registered in the country’s various cities, as well as several organizations representing non-Russian population groups of Russia such as Tatars-Bashkirs, Chechens, Dagestanis, and so forth. All display loyalty to the regime.
Regional Activism and the Cossack Issue
The situation in Kazakhstan’s regions has been quite different from that in the two capital cities. Many movements defending Russians emerged in provincial cities and contained a strong regional component. Since the perestroika years, Uralsk, Pavlodar, and Ust-Kamenogorsk have had powerful, locally anchored Russian movements. The latter two were more influential as they are closer to Almaty and Astana, while Uralsk is remote from the rest of the country. This locally based activism is partly fueled by the Cossack communities. As in Russia, the Cossack revival is a fascinating combination of identity folklore giving birth to a new, Anderson-style, “imagined community” founded on the “reinvention of traditions” and a well-organized lobbying dynamic to secure political and economic rights. Unlike in Russia, however, Kazakhstan did not recognize any specific rights for Cossacks and regards them as a throwback to Russian colonialism.
Kazakhstani Cossacks are divided into three main groups that reproduce their historical structures and settlements: Uralsk, Siberia, and Semirechie. The Uralsk Cossack community, located in Uralsk and Atyrau (formerly Guryev) and numbering about 15,000 families, is said to be particularly homogeneous, with many Cossack villages (stanitsa) able to preserve part of their heritage during the Soviet era, mostly because of the remoteness of their location. As early as 1991 they requested a rehabilitation law similar to the one then passed in Russia and claimed rights over fertile lands along the Ural River. Kazakhstani authorities shut down the local Cossack newspaper, Kazachii vestnik, in 1992. The community then divided between those requesting to join the Orenburg Cossacks, based in Russia, and those who funded a new community, the Ural troop (Ural’skoe [yaitsko] voisko). Uralsk Cossacks remain the most isolated from the rest of Kazakhstan, rarely participate in Astana- or Almaty-based activities, and try to be involved in local public life and develop contacts with Cossack stanitsas located in Russia on the other side of the border.
The Siberia Cossacks, located in Petropavlovsk, Pavlodar, and Ust-Kamenogorsk, are cut off from their historical centers of Omsk, Tomsk, and Barnaul. They were very active at the local level in the 1990s, mostly with a secessionist agenda. The two secessionist attempts recorded in Kazakhstan were both in Ust-Kamenogorsk. First, in 1994 the local Union of Eastern Kazakhstan Cossacks (Soiuz kazakov Vostochnogo Kazakhstana), led by ataman F. Cherepanov, stated that, as autonomy was refused to them, then a referendum to join Russia should be organized. After his statement, the ataman rapidly fled to Russia to avoid arrest, and his successor pledged loyalty to the Kazakhstani state. In 1999, a similar scenario occurred: a local nationalist activist, Viktor Kazimirchuk, and his small group, Rus’, close to Limonov’s National-Bolshevik Party, planned to take over the local administration and appeal to Moscow to incorporate the city into the Russian Federation. He was promptly arrested along with 22 other people, including 12 Russian citizens. Nicknamed the “Pugachev uprising,” in reference to the eighteenth-century Cossack insurrection against Catherine the Great, this event was widely discussed in Russian nationalist circles. Kazimirchuk was sentenced to 18 years in prison for terrorist acts, but was released in 2006 and emigrated to Russia.
The third Cossack community, the Semirechie, said to comprise about 30,000 people, also began its activity in 1990. Semirechie does not belong historically to Cossack regions, does not share a border with Russia, and the Cossack presence there was late—the end of the nineteenth century—and superficial. The stanitsas there are often dismissed by the others as “asphalt” Cossacks, that is, urbanized Russians promoting Cossack folklore but not living according to Cossack rules and not engaged in agricultural activities. The community became very politicized and fragmented at regular intervals between radical and more moderate atamans. Today the Semirechie Cossack organization, the Coordination Council of Russian, Cossack, and Slavic organizations, appears to be the most pro-Nazarbayev. Since 2005 it has called Nazarbayev “Honorary High Ataman” and declared that their troops were ready to defend Kazakhstan’s border with China. In 2013 its ataman, Yuri Zakharov, speaking on behalf of the World Congress of Cossack Atamans, located in Astana, requested financial compensation from Russia for alleged Soviet-era genocide, with an implicit anti-Semitic narrative about the “non-Russian ethnicity” of many Bolshevik leaders. In a May 2014 interview, he insisted on the historical friendship between Cossacks and Kazakhs, noting that many Turkic people were integrated into Tsarist-era Cossack troops.
Post-Crimea Russian Associative Life
In contemporary Kazakhstan, the memory of Russian political activism in the 1990s has not been forgotten, but it has been consigned to the past. Given the lack of public space to organize any anti-regime activity, Russian associations today are confined to cultural activities. No famous charismatic leaders have emerged with a national-level legitimacy and outreach. Internet websites and social media have become the only public space of expression for Russian activists. The main platform, Russianskz.info, was launched in 2005 by Kokchetau-based activist Vladimir Namovir, who passed away in 2012. Launching a website that year highlights two parallel processes: the failure of any political expression that would question the Kazakhstani regime—Nazarbayev was re-elected that year with 91 percent of votes and no credible opposition was allowed to compete—and the beginning of Russia’s massive investment in media operations in support of compatriots and promoting a “Russian voice” in the world.
Russianskz.info is part of a hub that includes several Orthodox websites, the personal website of Aleksandr Kniazev, the major—but contested—voices among Central Asia-based Russian experts, and several portals of Russian state institutions or NGOs in charge of Russians abroad and compatriots policy (Rossotrudnichstvo, Russkii mir, Okno v Rossii, Russkii vek, Russkie.org, etc.). Although it is difficult to confirm the website as representing any kind of “Russian public opinion” in Kazakhstan without survey data, it nevertheless offers interesting insights into the narratives displayed by Russian activists in Kazakhstan. The website faces a dilemma: Kazakhstan’s information space is largely dominated by Russia-based media, but the issue of Russians in Kazakhstan is beyond the scope of these mainstream narratives.
The worldviews expressed by Russianskz.info can be divided into three broad categories. First the website reflects the trauma linked to the progressive unraveling of the Russian social fabric in Kazakhstan. Articles denounce massive emigration, especially from the northern regions; negative demographic trends; the endangered status of the Russian language; the loss of Soviet-era references; and the emergence of Kazakh-centered cultural values and historical narratives. These topics already constituted the main storyline of Russian newspapers in the 1990s. Second, the website reproduces widespread discourses about the growing “southernization” of Kazakhstan and Central Asia as a whole. Many articles are devoted to China’s rise in power in the region, integration processes with Asia, and the emergence of Islam in the public space, all with a distinct tone of danger and forthcoming instability. A large number of articles are also devoted to domestic political and economic trends. Their tone is more neutral—probably to avoid the legal troubles that other opposition newspapers and portals face—yet one still easily picks up the underlying tone that Kazakhstan is a country “at risk.” Third, the website gives the floor to more Russia-centric worldviews, promoting the official perspective on Russia’s regional integration processes, on Moscow’s policy toward compatriots and the “Russian world,” and so on.
During the Ukrainian crisis, Russian associations and activists remained quite discreet. Russianskz.info mirrored Russia’s perception of the conflict, denouncing the Kyiv authorities as a “fascist junta,” defending the annexation of Crimea and Russia’s support for Donbas separatism, but carefully avoiding any comparison with the situation in Kazakhstan. The site reported the polemics surrounding Limonov’s and Zhirinovsky’s declarations. As early as March 2014, the Union of Cossack Organizations of Kazakhstan declared that they would not fight for Russians in Ukraine. In April, the Eurasianet journalist Joanna Lillis, then visiting Ust-Kamenogorsk, reported that ataman Viktor Sharonov and local Lad leader Oleg Navozov supported Russia’s position and had denounced the Western goal of defeating Russia’s great power status, but both stated that there was no Crimean scenario building up for Altai. In July, the Orthodox Church in Kazakhstan organized a patriotic-military camp in Almaty for Russian Christian youth, but here, too, this was rather traditional activity for the Church, without any specific relationship to the Ukrainian situation. In 2015 the camp was organized in Kaluga region, in Russia, perhaps to avoid the risk of misinterpreting it as military training of Russians on Kazakhstani territory.
The topic of a possible Russian uprising in Kazakhstan following Crimea and Donbas, widely discussed on Kazakh nationalist websites and social media, appears mostly to be a media creation, confirmed by the fact that the majority of articles discussing it extensively refer to the same Eurasianet piece. The topic reemerged briefly in 2015 following a photo essay done among the small Cossack rural community living near Rudnik, in Kostanai region, showing a Cossack family displaying a flag of the Ulyanovsk Cossack stanista that resembles the black, yellow, and white Tsarist flag. Social media with a Kazakh nationalist sensibility criticized what they interpreted as a “flag of Russian nationalists” and the lack of Kazakhstani symbols on display. It does not mean that there is no Russian nationalists trying to activate small groups of young Kazakhstani Russians: this has been the case of Yuri Kofner, the leader of Young Eurasia, a Eurasianist youth movement separated from Aleksandr Dugin’s mainstream organization, but the scale of its influence is minimal.
In Kazakhstan itself, media self-intoxication and disinformation techniques have been part of the public debate over the risk of a Ukrainian scenario in Kazakhstan. The most illustrative example is the case opened by Kazakhstani authorities, in the name of article 164 of the penal code on inciting interethnic hate, against the Russian “white power” nationalist Aleksandr Belov-Potkin, the Moscow-based former leader of the powerful Movement Against Illegal Immigration (DPNI), and one of the main figures of Kazakh nationalism, the social activist Zhanbolat Mamai. In May 2014, as tensions around the Donbas war peaked, the Kazakhstani authorities announced that Belov-Potkin had met with Russian and Cossack organizations in Almaty in February 2012 and encouraged them to organize a military training camp in neighboring Kyrgyzstan. One month later, he allegedly organized a similar training camp for young members of the Kazakh nationalist group Ult-Azattygy, including Mamai. Plans that same year called for representatives of the Russian nationalist movement Narod and Limonov’s National-Bolshevik Party to visit Almaty and meet with local Russian leaders. Belov-Potkin’s project was supposed to have been called “Angry Kazakh” (Zloi Kazakh), a disdainful formulation that became viral on the internet, with many young Kazakh nationalists on social media turning it into a positive reaction to a “revival of Russian imperialism.”
This story around Belov-Potkin and Mamai shares many features of the current conspiracy theories and counter-messaging that shapes the post-Soviet information space. The Kazakhstani authorities opened the case at a highly opportune moment, allowing them to kill two birds with one stone: they messaged Russia that they were taking the risk of destabilization seriously, and they neutralized the most visible Kazakh nationalist activists at a time of growing popular resentment against Kazakhstan’s entry into the Eurasian Economic Union. Actually, the allegation that Russian and Kazakh nationalists were working hand-in-hand to destabilize Kazakhstan does not look plausible, and little evidence was produced to back up the accusation.
Conclusions
The first point advanced to support a parallel between Ukraine and Kazakhstan is based on Russia’s willingness to activate Russian or pro-Russian minorities in its “Near Abroad.” Russia has followed such a policy in countries where it can no longer influence the decision-making process in its favor. This has not been the case in Kazakhstan, where Moscow maintains powerful—if delicate—inroads of influence among politicians, the military and security services, business circles, and the intellectual world. The Kazakhstani leadership enjoys a unique position in the post-Soviet space: it is both loyal to Russia and supportive of regional economic integration, but it embraces a very distinct national agenda of being recognized as a multivectoral regional power. Since the Ukrainian crisis, Astana’s loyalty to Russia has weakened, and several signs show a discreet distancing from Russia-led projects, but the fidelity path is pursued in many domains, especially the military one. In this regard, Russia’s policy toward Kazakhstan aims at maintaining a political and cultural predominance in the whole of Kazakhstani society, not merely as the protector of Russian minorities.
The second component of the Kazakhstan-Ukraine parallel is based on perceived historical and demographic similarities. However, the territory to designate as “Russian” is unclear, and the notion of “Northern Kazakhstan” is less easily definable than that of, for instance, Crimea. It also poses a problem for some regions such as Karaganda, located to the south of Astana. Moreover, demographic and economic trends do not favor Russian-majority regions. The third argument focuses on local activism and grievances. For sure, many Russians feel discriminated against in Kazakhstan, as they do not speak Kazakh and cannot use kinship solidary networks to enter the state administration. That said, it seems they are grateful to the regime for offering stability, especially interethnic stability, and, at least until recently, a steadily rising standard of living. The 2016 protests against the land reform showed a lack of street activism in the main Russian-majority cities. Moreover, there is no legitimate political representation of Russian minorities at the national level that could unify and mobilize a protest mindset, although one could emerge in a crisis situation.
Even at the peak of the Ukrainian crisis, the Russian minorities of Kazakhstan remained quiet and calm. That many of them, if not an overwhelming majority, agree with the Russian interpretation of events is obvious—and many Kazakhs support Russian media perceptions as well. That Russian nationalists regularly visit Russian association leaders in Kazakhstan is nothing new: Russian associations have always received symbolic support from their Russian nationalist counterparts, and personal connections and friendships exist. However, aside from the attempted Ust-Kamenogorsk coup in 1999, they have not translated into visible political action. Contacts with Russian nationalist figures or with Russian institutions working on compatriot issues may intensify in the future, but this does not create an automatic chain reaction leading to an irredentist agenda.
Narratives on the “risk” posed by the Russian minorities to Kazakhstan’s sovereignty have therefore to be turned toward an unknown future and build on the “what if” uncertainties. One can indeed imagine a scenario in which a post-Nazarbayev regime tries to slow down integration mechanisms with Russia, and a new leader in search of legitimacy promotes a more openly Kazakh national identity against a Kazakhstani, civic-oriented, brand. Some of these trends are already perceptible today. However, they do not inevitably signal a confrontation with Moscow: a nationalist-minded regime in Astana could succeed in demonstrating geopolitical loyalty toward Russia and stimulating Kazakhness at home. Moreover, the future of Russia itself is uncertain, and its ability to act as a regional hegemon could be undermined in the years to come. On the ground—and this is a critical element—the Kazakhification of Kazakhstan is a natural trend driven by demographics, not by politics. Combining emigration flows and slow birth rates, the Russian minority will reduce statistically in the coming two decades. The window of “opportunity” to have it used as a destabilizing tool is quickly fading. The future Kazakhstan-Russia relationship will be driven by what the Kazakh majority population wants and accepts of Russia, not by the potential separatism of a minority.