The Use and Abuse of Postcolonial Discourses in Post-independent Kazakhstan

Abstract

The article explores the concept of political postcolonialism and how political groups appropriate and contest this discourse. Elites and contesting political groups utilise postcolonial rhetoric to legitimate their political goals by projecting that their country, in this case Kazakhstan, was colonised by the Tsarist Russia and then by the Soviet Union. For President Nursultan A. Nazarbayev’s nationalising regime the status of Kazakhstan as a colony represented a vital item in post-1991 nation-building projects. Political opposition and Kazakh national-patriots contested this official discourse, blaming the regime for scarce efforts towards ‘full decolonisation’. The absence of major intellectual discussion allowed these elites and political players to reappropriate these discourses in the political rather than critical intellectual domain.

This article was presented at different conferences and workshops at the University of Cambridge, Indiana University Bloomington (CESS) and Princeton University (Imperial Reverb) and I want to thank Prajakti Kalra, Boram Shin, Nick Megoran, Eric McGlinchey, Chris Baker, Amanda Wooden, Serguei Oushakine, Ronald Grigor Suny, Harsha Ram, Doug Blum, Marlene Laruelle, and all of the participants for their comments and suggestions, and to the two anonymous reviewers and the editorial staff at Europe-Asia Studies whose comments helped me greatly to improve the final draft of the article.

Notes

¹ Here I quote one of the respondents in my elites’ study questionnaire. A former adviser to President Nazarbayev, he commented on the vast border with Russia (geography) and substantive Russian-speaking minority groups residing in Kazakhstan (demography). Interview with a former adviser to President Nazarbayev, Almaty, 20 August 2013.

² Doktrina natsional’nogo edinstva Kazakhstana, 29 April 2010, available at: http://online.zakon.kz/Document/?doc_id=30501158, accessed 24 May 2016.

³ ‘Results of the 2009 National Population Census of the Republic of Kazakhstan Analytical Report’, National Statistical Agency of Kazakhstan, p. 19, available at: https://www.liportal.de/fileadmin/user_upload/oeffentlich/Kasachstan/40_gesellschaft/Kaz2009_Analytical_report.pdf, accessed 24 May 2016.

⁴ Growing Kazakh language proficiency influenced many opposition leaders of the former party OSDP Azat, for example, to address their supporters in Kazakh language and to publish more material in bilingual media, including Dat or Abay.kz. In another example, the post-Baymenov Ak Zhol party slightly changed its ideological make-up to address issues of authentic Kazakh identity.

⁵ In 2009, 74% of the population claimed to understand spoken language and 62% of the total respondents could write well. Data from Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Education also demonstrate a shift towards a more-Kazakh-speaking education sector. According to these data, the share of Kazakh-speaking schooling increased from 55% in 2004 to 60% in 2008, while the Russian-speaking sector dropped from 39% in 2004 to 35% four years later (Smailov 2010); on the Kazakh language education policy see also Mehisto et al. (2014).

⁶ See also Chatterjee (1986), Suny (1999).

⁷ Interview with a Kazakh political leader, Almaty, 9 August 2012. All of the interviews used in this article were conducted between April 2011 and August 2014 in Almaty and Astana. I utilise data from more than 100 elite interviews conducted with Kazakhstani politicians, party leaders, national-patriots, and leaders of political movements.

⁸ This was the quote from one of my interviewees, who condemned the ruling elites and the Kazakh society in general for being ‘too cowardly to accept realities of independence’ and to get rid of the ‘colonial mindset (kolonial’noe myshlenie)’. Interview with a Kazakh political leader, Almaty, 9 August 2012.

⁹ Andrew March uses the idea of pre-political consensus of elites in Uzbekistan to explain the idea of authoritarian legitimacy, where it ‘relies heavily on the hegemonic strategies of presenting existing political order as natural and uncontroversial’ (March 2003, p. 210). I use the same Gramscian concept of historical bloc in the discussion of post-Soviet nation-states.

¹⁰ Interview with a pro-government party leader, Almaty, 9 August 2012.

¹¹ Interview with a senior official in the former presidential administration, Almaty, 23 August 2012 and 3 September 2014.

¹² Reference to the Stalinist terror features heavily in the only negative discourse that is used for an open reaction against the Soviet regime. All three groups openly condemn and wage their narratives of domination on the Stalinist regime. The ruling regime, however, does not openly acknowledge important Stalinist discourses such as the mass famine (similar to Holodomor in Ukraine in 1931–1933). National-patriots, in turn, openly use the narrative of famine and condemn the regime for not commemorating it adequately.

¹³ The need for ‘concrete’ and not ‘chaotic’, ‘disorderly’, ‘sporadic’ movement of ideas, notions, and conflicting symbols about Kazakhstan’s national idea was one of the strongest discourses have been identified in my study of unofficial Kazakh- and Russian-language newspapers.

¹⁴ ‘Sultan Akimbekov “Amorfnost’ ideologii inogda dazhe vo blago”’, Central Asian Monitor, 15 October 2012, available at: http://www.dialog.kz/comment/45724, accessed 23 May 2016.

¹⁵ [In our development] ‘we constantly compare ourselves to Russia, but why not to Ukraine?’, interview with a self-identified Kazakh national-patriot, Almaty, 11 August 2012.

¹⁶ ‘Sultan Akimbekov “Amorfnost’ ideologii inogda dazhe vo blago”’, Central Asian Monitor, 15 October 2012, available at: http://www.dialog.kz/comment/45724, accessed 23 May 2016.

¹⁷ During my 2012–2013 ethnography, I attended three anti-Eurasian Union meetings in Almaty organised by the joint forces of the new generation of national-patriots (Mukhtar Taizhan and Rasul Zhumaly) and by then united opposition of OSDP Azat (Bulat Abilov, Amirzhan Kosanov, Ryspbek Sarsembay).

¹⁸ Lisa Wedeen (2011) provides an interesting account to abandon legitimacy completely, due to its amorphous and untraceable (on the empirical level) nature. I partially agree with this argument, as legitimacy in its original form is quite ambiguous. However, legitimacy is used here in the nuanced local political language (which relates to Kazakhstan’s authoritarian framework) as ‘the attempt to transform the fact of obedience into the duty to obey’ (March 2003, p. 210) and also as the elites’ acknowledgment of ‘the existence of a new state that could not automatically claim to be owned by Kazakhs or to be visibly occupied by an ethnic group ruling in the name of its co-ethnics’ (Cummings 2006, p. 178).

¹⁹ Interview with a deputy chairman of an opposition party, Almaty, 28 August 2012.

²⁰ See also, Suny (1999).

²¹ Interview with leader 1, national-patriotic movement, Almaty, 20 August 2013.

²² Interview with a political party leader, Almaty, 3 August 2012.

²³ Interview with a political party leader, Almaty, 3 August 2012.

²⁴ Interview with Aidos Sarym, political analyst and political activist, Almaty, 12 August 2012.

²⁵ The ‘Chinese question’ is a very sensitive issue in Kazakhstani public sphere. Recent land reform spurred protest movement in fears that Kazakhstan’s land would be ‘sold’ to China, which is seen as an expansionist and dangerous power (Syroezhkin 2009; Laruelle & Peyrouse 2012; Burkhanov & Chen 2016).

²⁶ A number of local commentators, including Sergey Duvanov, remarked that the recent land protests mainly mobilised ethnic Kazakhs and mainly on the regional level, in western, eastern, and southern Kazakhstan (Duvanov 2016).

²⁷ The Zheltoqsan-related movements supporting victims of the December 1986 violence include three strong movements and a dozen weaker ones, not including numerous politicians who claim the legacy and symbolism of the events.

²⁸ Interview with one of the leaders of the national-patriotic movement, Almaty, 29 August 2012.

²⁹ See for example, Zemtsov (1985).

³⁰ The 1990s political movement Azat (led by M. Isinaliev among others) is different from the 2006 OSDP (social-democratic) party Azat (current leader, Zharmakhan Tuyakbay). Azat can be translated from Kazakh as ‘Freedom’ and the Azat movement was an opposition and nationalist entity but not a party, whereas the 2006 social-democrat opposition OSDP Azat is a registered political party (Kuttikadam 2010).

³¹ Interview with an opposition and nationalist leader, Almaty, 15 August 2012.

³² One of the national-patriot leaders, Dos Kushim, for example, called for the official commemoration day for the victims of the 1928–1933 famines in Kazakhstan to be scheduled separately from the 31 May Commemoration Day for victims of Stalinist Repressions. Interview with Dos Kushim, national-patriot leader, Almaty, 5 August 2013.

³³ Here I list the definition of full decolonisation provided by the Kazakh national-patriots themselves. In my numerous interviews with the leaders of this movement, these narratives were well-established as the common truth shared by all members of this dispersed movement. In these discussions they usually started off with some most recent news regarding nation-building in Kazakhstan, promotion of trilingualism in schools, Doctrine of National Unity, monument scandals in eastern Kazakhstan, an article that appeared in Pavlodar regarding the renaming of the city and so on. ‘Soviet-era crimes’ are of a special importance as talks about the 1933 famine have become more pronounced since 2012, possibly after President Nazarbayev presented the Monument to the Victims of Asharshylyq (mass famine in 1932–1933 similar to Ukrainian Holodomor) in Astana.

³⁴ Interview with leader 1, national-patriotic movement, Almaty, 20 August 2013.

³⁵ Interview with leader 2, national-patriotic movement, Almaty, 11 August 2012.

³⁶ The group closely associated with the Young Turks, young and charismatic politicians and members of Nazarbayev regime. Bulat Abilov, a successful businessman was a member of the parliamentary fraction of the ruling Otan (currently Nur Otan) party; Altynbek Sarsenbayev (who was assassinated in 2006) was a former Minister of Culture and Information; and Galymzhan Zhakianov (who now lives in the USA) was a popular regional governor (akim) of Pavlodar oblast’ in northern Kazakhstan.

³⁷ See also Junisbai and Junisbai (2005).

³⁸ Zharmakhan Tuyakbay, a former Prosecutor General and Speaker of the parliament (Majilis) first formed the socio-democratic party and joined forces with all opposition parties in a movement ‘For A Just Kazakhstan’ (Za Spravedlivii Kazakhstan) to run in the 2005 presidential elections. Another opposition leader, Alikhan Baimenov, ran separately from the Ak Zhol party. By then, Ak Zhol was already divided into pro-Baimenov Ak Zhol and the more radical Nagyz Ak Zhol (‘Real Ak Zhol’ included remaining members of the DVK movement who challenged Baimenov, Bulat Abilov, Uraz Dzhandossov, Tulegen Zhukeev). In 2009, OSDP Azat formed fully with a multiple leadership of Zharmakhan Tuyakbay, Bulat Abilov, Tulegen Zhukeev and former prime minister Kazhegeldin’s team-member, Amirzhan Kosanov. The party tried to follow all the procedures and even had regional representation throughout Kazakhstan but did not survive another crisis in 2013, when Tuyakbay expelled former colleagues from the party and remained a sole leader. Bulat Abilov resigned from politics later, in September 2013.

³⁹ Interview with a former member of the presidential administration, Almaty, 8 August 2012.

⁴⁰ Interview with opposition leader 1, Almaty, 10 September 2012.

⁴¹ Interview with opposition leader 1, Almaty, 10 September 2012.

⁴² Interview with leader 2, national-patriotic movement, Almaty, 9 September 2012.

⁴³ Doktrina natsional’nogo edinstva Kazakhstana, 29 April 2010, available at: http://online.zakon.kz/Document/?doc_id=30501158, accessed 24 May 2016.

⁴⁴ Interview with opposition leader 3, Almaty, 5 August 2012.

⁴⁵ Interview with opposition leader 1, Almaty, 10 September 2012.

⁴⁶ The term ‘dekolonizatsiya mishleniya’ (the decolonisation of the consciousness) was used by my other respondent, another opposition leader. He explained that the postcolonial or post-Soviet consciousness of some of the elites and social groups in Kazakhstan was influenced by the sense of being colonial ‘when all decisions were made in Moscow, when we were the colony and there was the metropolis’ in Moscow. Interview with a leader of an opposition party, Almaty, 28 August 2012.

⁴⁷ Interview with opposition leader 2, Almaty, 10 August 2012.