In the modern world language policy is a problem overarching the interconnection of the state and society. The growth of interest among social scientists to these issues after the demise of the Soviet Union and the emerging of new post-Soviet republics enhanced application of different theoretical approaches and academic explanations of this phenomenon, whether it is an appeal to E. Gellner’s idea of homogenization of culture along with the state’s political borders [1], or construction of a nation-state under the guidance of the political elite, trying to reach civic unification of its ethnically, linguistically and culturally diverse population [2] (C. Geerz, 1973). Some scholars have connected the sensitivity of these problems with the possibility for the representatives of different groups to get and, more importantly, to keep control over the economic and political spheres of influence [3] (Horowitz D., 1985).
Major scholarship on Kazakhstan language policy issues could be roughly divided into two mainstreams. The first one is mainly focusing on the state’s ability to conduct language policy in order to decrease inter- and intra-ethnic conflicts. Thus, for the purpose of accelerated nation building, the ruling elite of Kazakhstan, as B. Dave argues, was able to establish political control over other ethnic groups, mainly Slavs, identified with the imperial past. The government pressure on the process of legislation provided more opportunities to strengthen access to administration, education and important economic sectors of the newly emerging state for titular nation, yet securing better opportunities for itself. Relatively easy process of the Kazakh language implementation was primarily caused by the notion that a nation-state is represented by a state language defining certain territory, which is driven by “remedial of native population”, especially in such spheres as language, history, culture, etc. [4] (Dave B., 2004, pp. 125-126).
These ideas are close to W. Fierman [5] statement that sharp disputes over language issues are caused by different goals of the two main categories of the republic’s population who are identified as “civic-statists” versus “nation-statists”; both groups succeeded in establishing their culture and language in a privileged position. Departing from A. Khazanov’s [6] point that state provides less nationalism and thus opens more space for nationalist claims of Kazakh intelligentsia, one can say that the abovementioned scholars insist on political and social prerequisites for successful implementation of Kazakh as the only state language.
Another group of scholars are mainly driven by the interest to language politics as a crucial factor in establishing tolerant ethnic relations; they stress those factors of ethnopolitics which diminish inter-ethnic conflicts, including language politics issues [7] (Chaimun Lee). Modern Kazakhstan can thus successfully utilize ethnopolitics through lenient language requirements for ethnic non-Kazakhs that in turn leads to a decrease in ethnic intolerance. Ethnic cooperation of different groups is orchestrated by the state that elaborates strategies to create careful “‘divergent messages’, soft policy on language requirements and ethnic-language ties” (Chaimun Lee). The main problem arising from this situation is the position of ethnic minorities in present day Kazakhstan. If the Russian population keeps emigrating Kazakhstan in large numbers, the process may further decrease the potential of the Slavic people’s political consolidation, which, paradoxically, will create more favorable opportunities for the state administration to solve inter-ethnic issues. Summing up the development of Kazakhstan since late 1990s, scholars point out the de facto failure of any political movements defending ethnic minority interests in Kazakhstan, except those under state patronage. It can be further explained by considerable economic growth and stabilized political situation in the country. But any new factors destabilizing economic prosperity of the country could lead, according to Kostomarskaya [8], to massive repatriation of ethnic non-Kazakhs (primarily, Russians) or their complete engulfment into the alien culture. However, S. Periose [9] [2003] claims that the changes in the status of ethnic Russians in Kazakhstan would result in a different reaction to their minority status: “passive loyalty to a new state, explained by the beginning of the linguistic or cultural assimilation and the development of a double Russian-Kazakh identity”. The latter implies unexpected ways of building interethnic relations.
Yet, one can also posit a question: what if we observe the emergence of an ideology responding to the claims of the new nation-state in the new global world? Few of the major works on problems of language implementation in Kazakhstan have touched upon the essence of both Kazakh and Russian nationalisms as “expressions of ethnic continuity and also of revolutionary change” [10] (Hutchinson 2004). J. Hutchinson insists that nationalists are able to justify innovation because of the “layered” nature of the ethnic past and at the same time because of their mobility to create a new identity on the basis of previous one and to legitimize new national projects. [10, p. 109]. The state itself is unable to create a new ideology but the state could use the innovation approaches of political and cultural entrepreneurs for its own goals and thus suggest more attractive ideas to the country’s population.
Most people throughout their lifetime do not dwell on their origin, their historical past (whether it is right or wrong) or their belonging to a certain ethnic group. Thus, there is always an opportunity to instill the ideas, otherwise unlikely to be accepted without criticism, into their minds. For instance, the language which provides an opportunity to be part of the society securing access to better living standards and is one of them. Similarly, before the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the Russian language had long been the “key to the door” that leads to broad opportunities for a brighter future. Yet, while, following the collapse of the USSR, the transition of the Russian language superiority to that of Kazakh in a new independent republic seemed to be inevitable, it remains unclear as to how the state and the society succeeded in sustaining this process relatively peaceful and whether it was stipulated by objective economic and social reasons [11]. The widely circulated proposition that the post-Soviet Kazakhstan shifted from the socially well-established Russian as a lingua franca to the linguistically “less developed” indigenous Kazakh during the first decade of Kazakhstan’s independence at the same time left some “blanks” in the explanation of the latter’s relatively successful implementation in society.
The cluster of the issues that should be addressed in this regard are as follows: what were the political agendas (especially, the problem of the status of Kazakh as the state language) of Kazakh nationalists and Kazakh political leadership in terms of nation building in Kazakhstan? To what extent, given that these agendas were viable, was the state willing to accept some of the Kazakh nationalists’ inceptions in order to make their own program more attractive? Finally, is it possible to estimate the role of the state in the implementation of the Kazakh language and single out the major factors that have driven the process ?
Nationalism in Kazakhstan as a state:
The demise of the Soviet Union at the beginning of the 1990s was clearly marked with two mutually exclusive processes:
1) The growth of nationalistic aspirations, primarily in Baltic and Slavic republics, partly covered the territories of Central Asian republics, including Kazakhstan. The events of December 1986 defined by the Central Committee of CPSU as “Kazakh nationalism” were the striking signs of the beginning of a new period in the history of Kazakhstan;
2) Simultaneously, following the collapse of the USSR, Kazakhstan as well as other Central Asian republics expressed its unwillingness to leave the Union. Before the August 1991 coup Kazakhstan had been one of the most vocal members supporting the project to create a new federation of former Soviet republics. Kazakhstan was the last republic declaring its independence from the Soviet Union.
After the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the Central Asian political leaders leadership found themselves in a fairly uncomfortable position. First, in terms of formulating a nationalist ideology, Kazakh intelligentsia of the early 1990s could not compete with the imperial and, later, Soviet ideology. The Kazakh nationalists were not sufficiently organized nor institutionalized (in comparison with the nationalistic groups in other republics) to struggle for political power. In spite of the fact that the “Brezhnev Thaw” era had promoted the rise of nationalistic feelings in former Soviet republics, Kazakh cultural elite failed to promote nationalism similar to the one secured by the Indian National Congress during the 1920s-40s due to a number of various factors that could not meet all the expectations of the contradictory events of the early 1990s.
However, it should be noted that the claims articulated by Kazakh nationalists were not only embedded in the process of declaring Kazakh independence. Kazakh political and cultural entrepreneurs have long been involved in the process of nation building and construction of an ethnic identity based on common territory, language, history and culture. The latter originated from Stalin’s original project on nation building that was intended to become the foundation for modernized, Soviet national republics. Paradoxically, the entrepreneurs’ efforts at nation building were thus embedded in the Soviet framework, yet shaped by the European model of a nation-state. At the beginning of the 1920s the program seemed to start turning into reality, while the state took measures to intensively create educational institutions providing most favorable conditions for the national cultural development. In 1919-1920 Moscow negotiated the first and main condition of promoting Kazakh nationalist program – the development of national culture on which A. Baitursynov insisted – with representatives of “Alash-Orda”. Kazakh government, in return, agreed to accept Soviets as a political power in the future autonomous republic. Kazakh nationalists split into several groups due to their disagreements on the political future of Kazakh people and the telegram signed by Lenin and Stalin promising territorial unity for Kazakhs divided among different general-governors and promotion of the national culture and language in the republic [12]. One group, led by A. Baitursynov, actively participated in the foundation of Kazakh Soviet Autonomic Republic in August 1920. In the early 1920s, one can say that Soviet power seemingly acted up to its promises concerning the development of culture and the promotion of Kazakh language priorities. The real change in Soviet politics that had begun in mid-1920s is closely related to the new program of modernization accepted by the Communist party leadership at the XIV and XV congresses. However, this new concept of the Soviet development had very little in common with the promises of the early 1920s [13]. The Soviet modernization had affected all aspects of the national republics social life and changed it in the state-preferred direction, while the unlimited political power of the center gradually became a taboo subject. On the surface it looked like a continuation of the previous course, but de facto the state limited the development of economics, culture, education and language within the framework of the necessity and needs of the grand “Soviet building” project.
If nationalism, as suggested at the beginning of the article, could be innovative in digesting new ideas and suggesting new national projects linked at the same time with the ethnic past of people, how feasible was the task of Kazakh nationalism to find that ”bridge” connecting the modernization project, alien to the nomadic population, with their future?
The problem of the Soviet modernization was the impossibility of covering this space with native Kazakh nationalist ideas. Even the nationalism that does not seek nation-state building yet aspires for the promotion of the native language or culture is doomed to become part of the political agenda necessary to take into consideration. In the meantime, the Soviet modernized state ruled by Stalin could not allow the “luxury” of having any obstacle on the path of its “grand architectural project.” R. Brubaker’s idea of “architectonic illusion” [14] about proper construction of a territorial and institutional framework that secured the intended outcome is quite close to this case. Stalin’s new architectural project was supposed to legitimize the nationalists’ demands and solve the nationalist dilemma. But the problem of the Soviet modernization was that this “grand project” could transform in the course of its realization due to the various circumstances that could in one way or another influence the intended perfect picture. The problem lay not only with the modernization project itself, but rather with the belief that the modernization project carried out by the Soviet state was veneered with the nationalist claims of Soviet Kazakhs. The state hoped to solve any kind of nationalist conflict and create a perfect national polity defined by common territory, culture and language.
Thus, we are laying out the main future problems of Soviet national policy. National self-determination suggests political authority to be kept by the nations, which entitles them to self-governance and formation of their own state. The perfect “architecture” could not be a legitimate excuse for replacing nationalist ideas by an elaborated state strategy that would invariably have some weak moments because the state selected ideas and created a strategy in the then most preferable way.
“Quasi- states” as R. Jackson [15] called them appeared in the former Soviet Union without moral agency and power to legitimize or delegitimize their own state and nation. The fact widely known in Kazakhstan that Tashkent (with Kazakhs amounting to circa 40 % of the city population) was passed over to Kazakhstan in 1924 by the decision of the All-Union Central Executive Committee yet never became part of the republic due to the request from the Uzbek leadership readily supported by Moscow proves this statement.
However, in those quasi-states it would have been impossible for the nationalists’ aspirations to be a repository for any positive revival of nationalist projects under Stalin’s regime. The fierce campaign against “nationalists” starting in mid-1920s and extending into the 1950s when the most prominent political and cultural entrepreneurs of Kazakhstan were arrested, killed, or exiled turned the focus of the state onto keeping its “architectural project” untainted by any other idea. Thus, nationalism in the modernizing Soviet state was ousted from the public and political life and continued to exist only in the forms presenting no jeopardy for the Soviet state’s task.
The weakness of the republic’s nationalism is further related to the changing strategy of the Soviet leadership starting with 1930s. Stalin persistently implemented the idea of the ethnic Russian superiority in the new Soviet society in order to secure the loyalty of the Russian people, the most numerous and hence important in the context of the modernization project, to the regime [16]. The Soviet patriotism premised on the proclaimed Russian supremacy filled the nation-state building space. So, the nationalism of the Bolshevik leaders eliminated all opportunities for the national republics to express their own approaches to the modernization project. Only Stalin’s death put an end to the regime repressive policies, yet the idea of Russian supremacy became inseparable from the Soviet ideology that guided the development of the country’s cultural and intellectual life. Nevertheless, the nationalist feelings showed through the veneer of the “Soviet national culture” and found expression in a new history, literature, theatre and even in the new Kazakh language.
Another explanation for the weakness of Kazakh nationalism in the context of the Soviet construction is grounded in the flimsiness of Kazakh intellectual forces. The first wave of nationalists who appeared only at the beginning of the XX century was ousted from Kazakhstan’s political arena two decades later. The new educated stratum close to the ruling elite was brought up both as a result of the policy of korenizatsia (localization) and within the larger framework of the Soviet cultural policy. Contrary to the previous generation accustomed to an imperial “high culture”, the new Kazakh intelligentsia and political entrepreneurs worked under the strong guidance of the party ideology. Additionally, their knowledge was limited by the framework of simple ideas and theories popularized in the 1930s-50s Soviet Social Sciences. The Soviet “national history” of the Kazakh SSR created during the World War II and, aside from imperial sentiments, attacking the Russian ethnicity per se was sharply criticized by the Central Committee and later rewritten in a Party-mediated direction. While the repressive policies successfully restricted any opposition to the regime among Kazakh intelligentsia, the main problem was still the fact that the latter were in shortage of knowledge and charisma necessary to be the real intellectual leaders of society.
In the then colonial Asian societies the thin stratum of educated people despite their small number became powerful enough to influence the process of country development. Similar to the Soviet Union, they enjoyed access to modern knowledge combined with a high position in the administration, but the difference between Soviet and other intellectuals was the understanding of the limits of their power over society aspirations.
At the end of the 1980s and especially in early 1990s Kazakh nationalists reappeared as a force who firmly believed that nationalism and separatism reflected the real interest of the indigenous population. But in their desire to defend the interests of the native population, Kazakh nationalists did not take into consideration the consequences of the Soviet modernization that was accompanied by the “non-capitalist” way of development in Central Asian Soviet republics of 1920-30s. The Soviet state was attempting to incorporate the national elite which was not hostile to the Soviet power and allowed for the development of the nation within the federative framework.
The most paradoxical result of the Soviet nation-building process became the creation of a national territorial autonomy as a basic unit of the Soviet federation of nations. Of course, up until the period of 1970-s we cannot observe the openly expressed idea for the political elite of national republics to play a major role in their own republics and to change the balance in the center-periphery relations in their own, whatever methods for defending their interests they chose or were forced to choose [17].
In Kazakhstan, the period when D.A. Kunaev was the first secretary of Kazakh SSR Communist party was the beginning of replacing the previous elite with ethnic Kazakhs. This period coincided with the growth of nationalism under Kazakh political leadership’s patronage, unthinkable under I.V. Stalin and N.S. Kruschev [18]. One of the examples of this patronage was Kunaev’s desire to see a Kazakh version of Jungar invasion and the Kazakh patriotic war against the dangerous enemy written by the prominent Kazakh author Ilias Esenberlin – “The Nomads” – who was supported by the republic’s first leader. The same thing happened to Olzas Suleymenov when he published his famous “Az I Ya “, a book on the Russian early medieval epic poem Slovo o polku Igoreve, in which the author touched upon some sensitive issues – the interrelation between medieval Turkic peoples and Kievan Rus’ in terms of political and cultural life.
As the power of the nation grew, nationalism became the principal basis of political legitimacy. The events of December 1986 when the people expressed their desire to see a Kazakh, or at least a Kazakhstani Russian, as a leader of their republic, provides some evidence for that statement. It also means that the Kazakh people began to state their interests as citizens of a certain territorial unit different from the interests of the center.
But the same events revealed that the state became inseparable from the dominant national group and Kazakhs were thought to represent their own interests. So, the real political force in early 1990-s was the state and its leadership, while nationalists could become a real opposition to the state power only in case they were organized into a strong political movement. Yet, due to the long lasting state patronage they had lost the necessary preconditions to realize that task. Apart from this process, it was the state that incorporated some nationalistic ideas into its ideology during the soviet period. These ideas, enveloping creation of a national culture, literature, history and language, also became a subject to be changed in a Soviet style.
––––––––––––––––––––
1. Gellner, Ernest. 1983. Nations and Nationalism. Oxford: Blackwell.
2. Geerz, Clifford.1973.The Interpretation of Cultures: selected Essays, New York: Basic Books.
3. Horowitz, D. 1985. Ethnic Groups in Conflict. Berkeley: University of California Press.
4. Dave, B. 2004. A Shrinking Reach of the State? Language Policy and Implementation in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, in “Transformation of Central Asia: State and Societies from Soviet Rule to Independence” ed. Pauline J. Luong, Cornell University Press: Ithaca and London, 2004, p. 125-26.
5. Fierman William. Language and Policy in Kazakhstan Formation in Policy Documents 1987-1997. Communist and Post-Communist Studies, vol. 31, #2, p. 177.
6. Khazanov A.M. The Ethnic Problems of Contemporary Kazakhstan. Central Asian Survey, 1995, 14 (2), p. 253.
7. Chaimun Lee. Languages and ethnic politics in Central Asia: The Case of Kazakhstan in Journal of International and Area Studies, Seoul, June 1004, vol. 11, Iss. 1; p.101. Here we could also mentioned scholars from Kazakhstan who’s research interests are concentrating on Russian population position in modern Kazakhstan. They also touched Kazakh and Russian languages status in republic: Zharmuhamed Zh. Russians in Kazakhstan and Demographic Change: Imperial Legacy and the Kazakh Way of Nation-Building in Asian Ethnicity; Esenova S. Soviet nationality: Identity and Ethnicity in Central Asia: Historic Narratives and Kazakh Ethnic Identity in Journal of Muslim; Nauruzbaeva Zh. Paradoxes of Language Revival in Kazakhstan.
8. Kosmarskay, N. .”Deti imperii” v postsovetskoy Tsenral’noi Azii . Adaptivnie praktiki I mental’nye sgvigi. (russlie v Kirgizii). Moskva: Natalis, 2006.
9. Peyrose, Sebastien. Nationhood and Minority Question in Central Asia: The Russians in Kazakhstan in Europe – Asia Studies, May, 2007, vol. 59, issue 3, pp. 481-501.
10. Hutchinson, John. Myth against myth: the nation as ethnic overlay in “Nations and Nationalism, 10 (1/2), 2004, 109-123.
11. Gleason, Gregory, Dadabaeva Gulnara. The Role of Ethnic Relations in Government Reforms in Kazakhstan. Paper presented at 1998 Conference of APSA, Boston, Sept. 3-6.
12. This episode is in details shown in candidate dissertation of author, devoted to the “Agrarian Reforms in the South of Kazakhstan in 1920-22”, (1995).
13. Krasilschikov V.A. Vdogonku za proschedschim vekom. Razvitie Rossii v XX veke s tochki zrenia mirovyh modernizatsi. Moskva: “ROSSPEN”, 1998.
14. Brubaker, R. Myths and Misconceptions in the Study of Nationalism in John Hall, ed. The State of Nation: Ernest Gellner and the Theory of Nationalism. Cambridge: Cambridge University press, 1998, pp. 272-305.
15. Jackson, R. Quasi-States: Sovereignty, International Relations and the Third World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990, p. 23.
16. Bordugov G., Buharaev V. Natsionalnaya istoricheskay mysl v usloviyah sovetskogo vremeni in Nationalnie istorii v sovetskon I postsovetskom gosudarstvah. Moscow: AIRO-XX, 1999, p.29.
17. Critchlow, Jim. “Corruption, nationalism, and the Native Elites in Soviet Central Asia”, Journal of Communist Studies, 1988, 4,2: 143-61.
18. Schatz E., Dadabaeva G. K probleme “trybalisma” v kazakhskom obschestve. “Otan tarikhi”, 1998, # 3, pp. 81-86.