How Russia Lost Its Influence Over Kazakhstan

Original link: https://365info.kz/2023/05/kak-rossiya-poteryala-kazahstan-ili-durnaya-privychka-moskvotsentrizma

The original text is in Russian. During the Chinese translation, some content that is easy to understand has been slightly added, and the expression of the original text has not been changed as a whole.

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How Russia Lost Influence in Kazakhstan

Before being invaded by Russia in February 2022, Ukraine rarely received the attention and exploration of Westerners, and Kazakhstan, which is located in the hinterland of Eurasia, was completely excluded from the Western vision. The vast majority of people are consciously or unconsciously blinded by the bad habit of "Moscow centrism", and often cannot get rid of the bad habit of equating the Soviet Union with Russia.

As we all know, the theoretical driving force behind Putin's war of aggression against Ukraine comes from his hypocritical historical theory that "Ukraine has no right to exist". What we need to understand now is how the dictator connected this pseudo-historical theory to the Soviet Union and other regions once controlled by Tsarist Russia.

Ukraine is about the size of France and about twice the size of Germany. But the size of Kazakhstan's territory will make Ukraine eclipsed. The territory of Kazakhstan is equivalent to almost the entire Europe from Portugal to Poland, but within this huge land area, there are less than 20 million people living in it.

Like Ukraine, Kazakhstan has a turbulent and tragic history. Central Asia, the region now known as the Republic of Kazakhstan, was conquered by Tsarist Russia in the late 18th and 19th centuries. Just like the "border zone" in North America, Tsarist Russia deepened its control over this steppe zone through a system of military fortresses connected by transportation networks. But unlike the American Midwest or Canada, the region's majority ethnic group has long been non-European. Large numbers of mainly Turkic-speaking Asian nomads roamed the steppes, living in yurts and herding sheep and horses. Kazakhs, on the other hand, were once the largest ethnic group among the Kyrgyz, Uzbeks, Turkmens, Nogais, Tatars and many others living in Central Asia.

After the Russian Revolution of 1917, Central Asia, like other non-Russian regions under imperial control, had a time of freedom. In December 1917, the "Alash Party" with the Kazakh modern political elite as the core formed an independent political entity - the "Alash Republic". In order to ensure the stability of their political system during the transitional period before full independence and to minimize the irritation of the ruling group in the core of the empire, the Arash party named their government "Arash Autonomous Government" in order to mislead Moscow. The interim government believes they have no intention of completely breaking away from Russian control. This approach was successful, and the actual control of the Central Asian region by the "Alash Party" was quickly recognized by the Russian Provisional Government.

The capital of the Alash Republic is located in the present-day city of Orenburg, Russia. It used to be the starting point of the Cossack military government in Central Asia under the control of Tsarist Russia, but between 1917 and 1920, it became the center of the Central Asian independence movement.

As an internal war broke out between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks, the Arashites, led by the Kazakh politician Alikhan Bokeikhanov, took advantage of the window of time when the Russians had no time for Central Asia and tried hard to form a full-fledged government framework, trying to make Central Asia completely free from the shackles of Russia and achieve complete independence.

But with the victory of the Bolsheviks, the effort failed. Under strong military pressure, the Arash Autonomous Government finally chose to submit. The government led by the Arash Party was merged into a new political system established by the Soviet Union on its basis - the "Kyrgyz Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic", and its capital was set in Kyzylorda in the south.

It must be pointed out that the name of this regime actually highlights Russia's confused understanding of Central Asian national identity. They have long referred to the Kazakhs as "Kyrgyz" and randomly named the real Kyrgyz people another name.

It was not until 1925, when the "Kyrgyz Soviet Socialist Republic" was separated from the regional power unit, that this mistake was truly corrected. The "Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic" with its capital in Almaty was established and became the predecessor of the present Republic of Kazakhstan.

It should be pointed out that during this process, members of the "Alash Party" were still active within the political system controlled by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, which to a large extent influenced the division of Kazakhstan's borders and the decision-making of many political and economic affairs. In the subsequent purges, the Arashi party suffered a catastrophe, and most of them were shot for treason.

The most important figure in power in Central Asia at that time was the bloodthirsty Philip Goloshkin. It was this person who called on Lenin to kill the Tsar's royal family and personally supervised the entire process of execution.

As in Ukraine, Bolshevik politics in the 1920s combined ruthless political control with limited measures of cultural relaxation. In order to reflect the difference between the new regime and the colonial rule of Tsarist Russia, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union actively promoted the standardization of the Kazakh language and vigorously promoted the construction of new schools. A new generation of Kazakhs was once able to be educated and raised in their mother tongue.

In 1929, however, a catastrophe struck in the form of Stalin's forced collectivization of agriculture. The plan was to convert freedmen into serfs under the state system, but its actual policy was completely unsuitable for the Kazakh region, which has long adopted a nomadic lifestyle.

Coercive settlement policies and the massive plundering of pastoralist means of production sparked a famine that lasted three years and claimed millions of lives. The man-made famine that occurred in Kazakhstan can be called "genocide", because although the death toll caused by it is less than that in Ukraine, the final result is enough to make Kazakhs a minority in their own land nationality.

Beginning in 1930, Kazakhstan became a country that received a large number of deportees. As Stalin's wrath fell on the millions of Ukrainians, Poles, Volga Germans, and North Koreans in the Far East who were judged "unreliable" and who were expelled from their ancestral homelands, in agony, Accompanied by tears and death, they were sent to Kazakhstan batch after batch. These deportees filled the place of the native Kazakhs who died in the Great Famine, stabilized the demographic structure of Central Asia, and left an indelible mark on the diverse ethnic composition of the region to this day.

In 1936, Kazakhstan officially became a Union Republic of the Soviet Union. With the construction of the Turkestan-Siberia railway line, Almaty has also shown a thriving development. However, as mentioned above, Stalin’s purges began, and the Arash Party within the Kazakh government suffered a harsh political liquidation. The Kazakh political elite was uprooted in the great terror. More than half of the intellectuals, People who made meritorious contributions in the fields of education and scientific research were all executed.

Kazakh society was dealt a fatal blow with the death of the first generation of a modernized, educated elite. Thanks to a previous political agreement with the Alash party, the Kazakh Soviet regime itself was based on the Alash self-government, but as the Kazakh political elite was completely destroyed, these positions began to be filled by Russians. Along with the population loss caused by the Great Famine and the disappearance of elites in the field of education, Kazakhs have also been completely reduced to marginalized groups in all social classes.

Ironically, however, Nikolai Yezhov, the promoter of political purges and chairman of the Soviet NKVD, was shot by Stalin in the same way in 1940, and Philip Goloshkin, the initiator of the Kazakh famine, was not. Those who survived 1941 are also being "cleansed".

During the Great Patriotic War of 1941-44, Kazakhstan, as a rear area, became a base for relocated factories and hundreds of thousands of Slavic workers from the western front. This change led to the industrialization of the Kazakhstan region, which again contributed to changes in the local population structure. At the same time, the residents of Central Asia became the Soviet Union's military stockpile, which provided sufficient guarantee for it to consume Germany's manpower (and also consume the native residents of Central Asia) through human sea tactics.

The rapid postwar economic development of Kazakhstan was accompanied by intensive Russification. According to Stalin's order, Russian was the only language not only for inter-ethnic communication in Kazakhstan, but also for future science, mathematics, economics and higher education. It is impossible to integrate into society without mastering the Russian language, so almost all Kazakhs who want to be educated must be proficient in Russian. As for the Kazakh education system, only a formal framework was retained to reflect the Soviet's "respect" for the cultures of various ethnic groups.

During this period, the land of Kazakhstan was also used for intensive nuclear testing.

With the implementation of the Five-Year Plan, mining and manufacturing have flourished in Kazakhstan. The generous nature endowed this Central Asian steppe country with huge mineral resources. Coal from Karaganda, steel from Temirtau, copper from Zhezkazgan, phosphorus from Taraz, oil from Tengiz and natural gas from Karachaganak made Kazakhstan a "mineral resource" for the Soviet Union's economic development. ".

During the same period, the Soviet Union's space base - Baikonur Cosmodrome was also built in Kazakhstan. This city, built on the land of the Kazakhs, was once a place that belonged entirely to Russians, and its urban population is still dominated by Russians.

After the complete failure of the agricultural collectivization movement due to the catastrophic famine, another leader of the Soviet Union, Khrushchev, launched the "Virgin Land Movement", preparing to use tractors and human power to transform this country that has been produced in a nomadic way The land has become an agriculturally developed area. Batch after batch of volunteers from the Communist Youth League flocked from Russia to the grassland where Kazakhs used to graze horses and sheep, reclaiming a piece of farmland equivalent to the size of England. Then, due to poor planning, drought and inadequate infrastructure, this "virgin land" only achieved a bumper harvest before it completely collapsed due to severe desertification and waste and pollution of water resources. This large-scale development movement also destroyed the ecological environment of the grassland hinterland of Kazakhstan, which directly led to the drying up of the Aral Sea and the desertification of the surrounding areas.

However, among the new generation of Kazakh elites who grew up under Russian control, ambitious newcomers have begun to appear among the cadres of the Kazakh Communist Party. Kunayev, a Kazakh who debuted as a student of Brezhnev, became the first secretary of Kazakhstan and served for 22 years. After that, this position was taken over by Nazarbayev.

Under the Soviet class social system based on party membership, all important positions were reserved for "comrades": they enjoyed the privileges of housing, consumer goods, cars, entertainment, better healthcare, and education. As for ordinary citizens, they need to endure various inconveniences and obey the arrangements of their superiors.

In the late 1980s, amid a crisis sparked by Gorbachev's radical reforms, the conservative Nazarbayev sought moderate change. But the Conservatives lost ground entirely due to "increased reform efforts" and an attempted coup in Moscow in 1991. Radical leaders like Yeltsin sought to dismantle the Soviet Union, and eventually made it happen. Faced with this irreversible result, in order to ensure that the ownership of the various facilities remaining in the country is legally transferred from the state-run institutions directly under Moscow to the hands of the Kazakh government, and at the same time realize the control of military power, borders and the grassroots of the regime Taking complete control, the Kazakhstan government under Nazarbayev waited patiently until the last moment until it declared independence on December 16, 1991, becoming the last former Soviet Union country to declare independence.

By the end of 1991, the Soviet Union had completely ceased to exist.

Independence brought many problems that had not been faced before. The central government no longer directs Kazakhstan's administrative policy, and the government is devoid of orders, plans, and mandates from Moscow, but secession from the Soviet Union still opens the door to a whole new future for Kazakhstan. With the large-scale exodus of the Russian "nobles" of the ruling class, the Kazakhs have finally been able to return to the ruling level of the country for decades and control the development of their own country. The suppressed Kazakh nationalist ideology in the former Soviet Union began to recover, and the new Kazakhstan Republic began its journey towards the future.

As an ambitious statesman, then-Kazakh leader Nazarbayev responded deftly to the situation, managed to get himself elected as Kazakhstan's first president, and abolished the emphatic Kazakhstan's first democratic constitution with parliamentary powers and limited presidential powers.

Of course, Kazakhstan is not the only ex-Soviet country ruled by a former communist dictatorship.

Over time, Nazarbayev built a "soft authoritarian" one-party state based on a cult of personality and surrounding his party, the Light of the Fatherland Party. Its politics are dominated by multicultural and multilingual values, and its economy is dominated by nation-state capitalism.

In terms of religious policy, neither the Kazakhs who are Sunni Muslims nor the Orthodox Christians in Kazakhstan are being suppressed. A modern capital, Astana, was also established on the grassland, which to some extent represented the country's expectations for foreign development. With the influx of foreign investment, Kazakhstan's huge reserves of minerals, uranium, oil and natural gas have also been actively developed. The national airline "Air Astana", equipped with the most modern aircraft, took off and became a new calling card of the region.

With geopolitical changes, Kazakhstan has established a close relationship with its immediate eastern neighbor China - the rapidly rising world's second largest country - and actively supports China's "Belt and Road" initiative. Kazakhstan is also actively participating in international arbitration and trying to exert its influence in the Syrian conflict.

In 2019, the aging Nazarbayev, as the "father of the nation," ceded the presidency to his handpicked successor, the Moscow-based sinologist Hasmudromart Toh. Kayev. However, Nazarbayev still reserved the post of chairman of the Security Council for himself, maintaining control of Kazakh politics behind the scenes.

Three years later, in January 2022, riots broke out in Kazakhstan and swept the country. Taking the demonstrators in the western Kazakh city of Zanauzen as the trigger for the demonstration against the increase in natural gas prices, the protest movement spread to all parts of the country within a short period of time, and escalated from a peaceful assembly to a violent riot.

Under the slogan "Old man step down (Шал Кет)", the Almaty city hall was burned by the protest crowd, and the statue of Nazarbayev was also pulled down, surrounded by him, through the control of the petrochemical industry and the long-term plunder of the country's wealth The "family crony elite" ruling group lost control of the country.

Tokayev, who has always been regarded as a puppet, showed an act worthy of the president at this time. He condemned the "terrorist atrocities", called for the assistance of the Russian-led CSTO security forces, and through some unknown means Persuaded the "Father of the Nation" to completely relinquish all power and directly control the security meeting. When the news came that 3,000 Russian paratroopers were about to arrive in Kazakhstan, the security forces of Kazakhstan, which had been keeping a wait-and-see attitude before, immediately moved into action, quickly restored order, arrested demonstrators and dissidents, and quelled the conflict. It was later characterized as the "January Incident" of an attempted coup d'état.

Tokayev thanked the CSTO for its assistance, and sent the troops from Russia and other countries that rushed out of the country. Everything shows that Russia, as the "suzerain country", has a strong and profound influence on this former Soviet country.

But then, in February 2022, the Russian army suddenly launched an invasion against Ukraine with lightning speed, and fell into a bitter battle more quickly and somewhat unexpectedly.

Circumstances took a not-so-subtle shift, as if overnight. As a leader in a structure that is more like a mafia organization than a political alliance, Putin's Ukraine war almost broke the golden rule of all mafia structures, that is, the boss must ensure the safety of his subordinates. Instead, he aroused the fear of all former subordinates in Russia.

The Kazakhs immediately remembered Goloshkin, Stalin and the completely destroyed generation of Arashites. Tokayev did not explicitly oppose the invasion, but he also refused to endorse it, declaring strict neutrality. He not only refused to recognize the legitimacy of the two puppet republics of Donetsk and Luhansk, but also explicitly declared that he would not recognize Russia's illegal annexation of Crimea and other occupied areas of Ukraine.

Putin received a mild rebuke at a meeting of the China-led Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in Samarkand, showing that Tokayev was not alone.

There are signs that the Kazakh diaspora in Ukraine is supporting Ukrainian resistance to Russia.

How the Kremlin handles trends and changes in Central Asia is not an open book. But some points cannot be disputed.

First, because nationalists rarely get along with other nationalists, it is unlikely that Putin and his followers would like any non-Russian leader in Kazakhstan. Instead, they are more likely to see the Kazakh leadership as "provincial upstarts" ungrateful to Russia and profiting from theft of post-Soviet wealth.

Secondly, as a right-wing neo-imperialist with a strong "Eurasian" color, it is certain that Putin's team is firmly placing Kazakhstan within the sphere of influence of the so-called "Russian world". In their cognition, Kazakhstan does not have any national sovereignty, and at most it is just a subordinate of Russia.

Third, Putin's inner circle is a combination of the St. Petersburg Mafia and the KGB, and by definition they are extremely suspicious of organizations with similar roots. They have no respect for international law, democratic norms or decency. They only care about one point: "Who is the boss".

Once upon a time, Vladimir Putin might well have put Kazakhstan at the top of his next to-conquer list. For him, Baikonur may be as precious as Sevastopol, and there are already signs that the status of Russians in Kazakhstan is no longer superior, which apparently means "discrimination and persecution of Russians".

But such dreams have become a thing of the past. By presenting Russia's real power in an unprecedented and extremely weak display in Ukraine, Putin has alarmed all the former Soviet republics. If Moscow decides to invade them instead at this point, the Russians will find that not only the Kazakhs already have powerful friends and no longer fear Russia, but China may now see Central Asia as its "sphere of influence".

The original author of this article, Norman Davies, is an emeritus professor at University College London, an honorary fellow of St Anthony's College, Oxford University, and the author of several books on Polish and European history.