The Minutiae
It is in the minutiae that we find the flow of history.
It is in the minutiae that we find the flow of history.
For the sake of clarity:
Kazakh- Is in reference to the Turkic ethnic group native to Central Asia.
Kazakhstani- Is referring to citizens of Kazakhstan, regardless of ethnicity.
Many people use these words interchangeably, but for the next few minutes we will use them like this.
Three of us sat on the hostel balcony overlooking one of Almaty’s many channels. As the sun set and the cool spring air turned cold, our conversation took a controversial turn. Speaking over the sound of rushing water, Noeli said, “But she cannot be Kazakh if she doesn’t speak Kazakh.”
~
Noeli is a French/Argentinian woman, who usually prefers her tent to hostels. She has lived all over the world and speaks at least three languages fluently.
~
We were discussing the manager of the hostel, a middle-aged petite woman, who kept giving us food. She had told us, in Russian, that she only speaks Russian and German, not Kazakh.
Diaz folded his long arms behind his head. “It’s normal here. Lots of people only speak Russian. It’s been like that for a long time.”
~
Diaz is Kazakh. He worked as an engineer for a Russian company based in Siberia. After Russia invaded Ukraine, his company split. Half stayed in Russia, half was taken over by Americans so it could keep its international clients. Diaz went with the American half and now works remotely from anywhere he wants, except Russia.
~
“Knowing Russian gives you more opportunities, you can go to school in Russia, you can work there, you can work with Russian companies or tourists. It’s even more useful here, most Kazakh speakers speak Russian, but not all Russian speakers speak Kazakh.” He shrugged. “English is best anyway.”
“How can you have a culture without a language?” Noeli asked.
“We have three languages and everyone adjusts,” said Diaz. “I am not good at Kazakh, so my friends speak to me in Russian. My aunties only speak to me in Kazakh, even though they speak Russian, and I pretend to understand.”
“How did you grow up in Kazakhstan and not learn Kazakh?” Noeli asked.
Diaz gestured to the last place we had seen the manager, “It’s normal. My parents were journalists in the USSR, so they were writing and speaking in Russian all day. It was just easier to continue speaking it at home.
Now my mother is married to a Hungarian who doesn’t speak Kazakh or Russian, and neither of them speaks English.”
Noeli and I looked at each other. “How does that work?” I asked.
“Google Translate,” said Diaz, looking up at the sky, “I don’t know how, but it does. Language isn’t everything.”
“Do you feel less attached to Kazakh culture, because you don’t speak Kazakh?” I asked.
“I didn’t think about it. I am Kazakh. I like to travel and I would kill for an EU passport, but I will always be Kazakh.”
He paused to light a cigarette, “Speaking Russian doesn’t make me Russian. So how can it make me less Kazakh?”
“It’s the same for all colonized countries. Indians who only speak English are no less Indian.” I said.
“No,” said Noeli. “They are less Indian than Indians who speak Hindi.”
I smiled at Noeli, “I think you are showing your French side while speaking English.”
She grinned back, “When I start shouting you’ll see my Argentinian side in English.”
Jumping back to the topic, I asked, “But they [non-Hindi speaking Indians] would still be more Indian than an Englishman who learned Hindi, right?” I asked.
“Yes,” said Noeli, “But they will not experience or understand a core part of their culture.”
“I kind of agree,” I said. “But they still live in that culture, regardless of how they engage with it, it is theirs. Also can’t a second language become part of the culture, like Spanish in Latin America?”
“It changes the culture. How people think and feel comes from their language.”
Diaz let out a loud sigh, “But culture is always adapting and changing.”
“Do you think being an English speaker has shaped you?” I asked, turning towards Diaz.
“Maybe,” he said.
I leaned in, “World War III starts tomorrow. NATO, Japan, and Australia against China, Iran, and Russia’s Eurasian Union [which includes Kazakhstan]. What would you do? Who would you support?”
Diaz burned through half a cigarette before he answered. “I like Western values and capitalism, but my family is in Kazakhstan. I would support Kazakhstan for my family.” He paused, “But I would hope the West wins.”
Noeli pointed at Diaz with her cigarette, “You are conflicted because you speak English.”
Diaz shrugged, “But I am choosing family and that’s Kazakh.”
As Diaz said, almost everyone in Kazakhstan speaks Russian. Unlike in other post-Soviet states, where the use of Russian is often contentious, it was easy in Kazakhstan. During the two months I spent there, I never felt any pressure or need to learn Kazakh. Which raises the question: Why do so many Kazakhstani speak Russian?
Traditionally, Kazakhs are nomadic people, spending the year traveling the steppes with their livestock. This lifestyle started to change around the turn of the 20th century. Under the Russian Empire, large numbers of Russians migrated to Kazakhstan. By the early 1900s, Russians made up one-fifth of the steppes’ population.
This influx of foreign settlements affected local life. Annual migration routes were disrupted. Pastoral land was turned into farms and Russian became the common language.
In 1929, Stalin started his five-year plan to industrialize the Soviet Union. In Kazakhstan, this meant “de-nomadification.” Nomads were forced to settle on collective farms. Dissenters were arrested or killed. Cattle, land, and gold were confiscated.
When the famine started in 1930, what remained of the livestock was eaten or sold for grain. Once the food was gone, Kazakhs also started to leave. Thousands fled. Others protested and were killed or taken, but most just starved.
By the time it was over, 1.5 million people had died, 1.3 million of them were ethnic Kazakhs. The Kazakh population was reduced by a third, making them a minority in their own country. Eighty percent of livestock was gone and the nomadic lifestyle was wiped out.
~
Like Ukraine, which also lost millions in the famine, Kazakhstan blames Stalin and his officials, arguing that the famine was “man-made.” Bolder voices call it ethnic cleansing or genocide. However, unlike Ukraine’s Holodomor, Kazakhstan’s ‘Asharshylyk’ remains mostly unacknowledged, even within its own borders.
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After the famine purged the Kazakh population, thousands of people from all over the Soviet Union were forcibly moved to Kazakhstan. This included Germans, Poles, Chechens, Ingush, Kalmyks, Crimean Tatars, Koreans, Finns, Meskhetian Turks, Kurds, Jewish people, and so on. It was not until Kazakhstan gained independence in 1991, that the Kazakh population surpassed 50% of the general population. By that time, everyone had been educated in Russian, business was conducted in Russian, and Russian was the lingua franca.
As of 2022 census data, Russian is the most widely spoken language in Kazakhstan, by a slim majority, with Kazakh taking a close second. However, this is not the whole story. The majority of Kazakhstani speak both languages. Caucus Barometer’s analysis provides a picture of the changing language landscape, by examining which languages are predominantly spoken at home.
In 2017, 52% of Kazakhstani reported predominantly speaking Russian at home, with 44% speaking Kazakh.
Whereas, in 2022, only 38% of Kazakhstani chose to speak Russian at home, and over 55% reported preferring Kazakh.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine affected the whole world, but nowhere more so than the post-Soviet States. Since the beginning of the war many of Russia’s neighboring countries, including Kazakhstan, have been going through an evolution. There are countless reasons for these changes, but here are a few obvious ones regarding Kazakhstan.
After Russia failed to take Kyiv and marred itself in a cannibalistic war, it lost a bit of its international stamina and influence. From Syria to Georgia, governments and anti-Russian dissidents are taking advantage of Russia’s weakened state to assert their sovereignty and independence.
Even Kazakhstan’s President Tokayev, who owes the Kremlin for his continued political position, refused to acknowledge the independence of Ukrainian territories. He also allowed legislation to prioritize Kazakh media over Russian and snubbed Putin publicly multiple times.
He canceled the Victory Day parade and refused to expel the Ukrainian ambassador when Moscow told him to. Most amusing of all, Tokayev gave a speech to a Putin-led delegation in Kazakh instead of Russian. This move defied expectations and forced the Russian delegation to scramble for their translators.
Since the start of the war, millions of Russians have fled to neighboring countries. For Kazakhstan, this brought up issues of Kazakhstani identity.
~
I twirled thick noodles around my chopsticks and suspended them in the air to cool. The cafeteria was full and a low buzz of conversation filled the background. Our fellow diners were diverse in appearance and language. It was comforting, even in a local cafeteria, I felt like I blended in.
Before I took my bite of laghman, I asked Diaz how Kazakhstani feel about Russians. He said, “Kazakh Russians are cool. You know, the ones who have been here for generations—we love them. But people don’t like Russian Russians. The ones who just came over.
The main issue is that they’ve raised the cost of everything. But people are also annoyed by their attitude toward Kazakhstan. They only came here because it is easy for them. They can speak Russian and buy Russian products.
They’re either surprised Kazakhstan is so modern or complain about it being shit. Both piss people off.” He stopped to take a bite. “They’re not all like that, but that’s the stereotype.”
“How can you tell if someone is Russian Russian?” I asked.
He smiled, “You can tell just by looking at them. Their clothes, the way they hold themselves, they’re different.” We spent the rest of the meal trying to pick out the “Russian Russians.”
~
Along with Diaz’s subtle tells, speaking some Kazakh has become a way for ethnic Russians to signal that they are not Russian Russians. They respect Kazakh culture and their allegiance is to Kazakhstan, not Russia.
At the same time, learning Kazakh is a way for Kazakhstani to distinguish themselves as a nation from Russia. It shows the world that Kazakhstan is a unique nation with its own culture and future, not merely Russia’s “underbelly.”
Since 2014, the Russian state has accelerated its imperialist rhetoric. The parallels between how they speak of Kazakhstan and Ukraine are unmistakable.
For example:
In a June 2022 interview, Russian politician Konstantin Zatulin said: “There are many towns with a predominantly Russian population that have little to do with what was called Kazakhstan. I’d like Astana not to forget that with friends and partners, we don’t raise territorial matters and don’t argue. With the rest – like, for example, with Ukraine – everything is possible.”
In a post, Ex-Russian president Dmitry Medvedev described Kazakhstan as a manufactured state with former Russian territories and called the resettlement of ethnic Kazakhs to the northern part of the country a “genocide against Russians.” The post has since been removed.
In 2014, Putin said, Kazakhstan’s [then] President Nursultan Nazarbayev “created a state on a territory that never had a state. Kazakhs never had any statehood, and he created it.”
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Given Russia’s treatment of Ukraine, such rhetoric is a threat to Kazakhstan. Sometimes threats are effective. However, these, paired with Russia’s aggressive behavior, have brought a new focus on Russia’s past imperialism and its effects on modern-day Kazakhstan. The Kazakhstan government contributed to these reflections by de-classifying documentation about the Soviet repression of 2.4 million Kazakhs.
Some Kazakhstani are starting the work of re-imagining themselves outside the Russian narrative. There is a new appreciation for Kazakh literature and cinema. Kazakh language clubs and social media channels are booming. A revival of the Kazakh language and the birth of a new Kazakhstani identity seem to be taking place.
While there is momentum in this movement, it is early days and there are some major challenges on the path of national identity. Building an inclusive identity around hundreds of ethnicities, languages, and religions is incredibly difficult. Especially when much of the population did not choose to be a part of the nation.
Kazakhstan’s shared border and economic ties with Russia are another barrier. Though President Tokayev has not completely fallen in line with Putin, it is unlikely he will defy the Kremlin. Russia controls Kazakhstan’s main crude export route, which makes up 60% of the country’s GDP. Even a weak and distracted Russia could damage Kazakhstan’s economy.
Kazakhstan’s path forward remains uncertain, but the growing embrace of the Kazakh language signals a powerful shift. Kazakhstan is claiming a cultural identity and signaling a desire for a future free of further Russian imperialism.
However, that does not mean speaking Russian is submitting to Russia. Kazakhs who speak Russian, like Diaz, are still Kazakh. People like Zelenskyy and Tsikhanouskaya are native Russian speakers, who have adopted their national languages. Speaking Russian does not negate their nationality.
They speak Russian as a result of Russian colonization, not brotherhood. Putin’s Русский мир (Russian World) is not a reflection of unity, but a justification for domination. We should not confuse a common language with shared culture, desires, or future.
As Diaz said, language isn’t everything. But it’s clear that how a nation defines itself—linguistically and culturally—can change its future. With that in mind, the next time I go to Kazakhstan I will learn basic Kazakh. In the meantime, we can take a moment to enjoy the irony. Once again, Russia’s attempts at subjugation through fear have pushed its neighbors to reach for greater independence.
~Kazakhstan’s linguistic shift is just one chapter in a broader story unfolding across post-Soviet states. The political landscape around the Russian language is considerably more contentious in Kyrgyzstan and Georgia, —Where I had several interesting conversations, which I will explore in upcoming articles.