Regime-building, identity-making and foreign policy: neo-Eurasianist rhetoric in post-Soviet Kazakhstan

Abstract

This article illustrates the evolution experienced by the identity-making strategies pursued through the propagandistic exploitation of Kazakhstani foreign policy. Periodical readjustments in the focus of foreign policy rhetoric led the Kazakhstani regime to reshape the identity of the population, in order to promote forms of self-perception almost exclusively associable with the leadership that ruled the country in the post-Soviet era. Identity-making, in this context, became a crucial link in (and a key driver for) the progressive subjugation of foreign policy rhetoric to the logic of regime-building, intended here as the ensemble of concerted efforts aimed to increase the population's compliance with the leaderships' authoritarian outlooks.

Keywords:

• Kazakhstan
• Eurasianism
• regime-building
• nation-building
• national identity
• Central Asia

Notes

1. The expression neo-Eurasianism refers to the numerous interpretations of evraziistvo that emerged in the post-Soviet era.

2. Strategy for the formation and development of Kazakhstan as an independent state.

3. Kazakhstanskaia Pravda, May 16, 1992.

4. Author's interview, Almaty, July 2011.

5. The title of the book hints at the Russian word Aziia (Asia), which Suleimenov appositely split into three Slavic words: Az (Old Slavic for personal pronoun I), i (Russian conjunction) and Ia (modern Russian for personal pronoun I). As a consequence, the title of the book might be alternately translated “I and I.”

6. Currently known as Semey (Eastern Kazakhstan oblast’).

7. The author owes this point to Mark Bassin, who kindly shared some observations on his work on the intellectual biography of L. N. Gumilëv.