Kazakhstan
From Backstage Struggles to Centerstage Conflict
In the Central Asian country of Kazakhstan, life is regularly turned inside out. During the lifespan of my mother-in-law, for example, its national alphabet changed from Arabic to Cyrillic to Latin. The political transformation has been almost as jolting: it went from Empire to the Soviet Republic to capitalist semi-autocracy in one century. Its main city, Almaty, has been leveled… twice.
The present upheaval isn’t about alphabets or earthquakes, but about equity.
The government is less voracious than others in the region, giving citizens hospitals, roads, and schools. Even so, very few Kazakhs taste the wealth garnered by multinational corporations and hoarded by its small elite class.
This experience emboldens me to offer you a crash course in this dramatic nation, whose charming, low-key citizens are resilient but still sometimes lose their patience.
Context
For more than two millennia, Kazakhstan has been a Silk crossroad between China and Europe. It is one of the world’s largest, most resource-laden nations — and its most landlocked. Its population density is one of the world’s lowest: fewer than seven people per square kilometer. It remains the home base of Russian space exploration and has suffered through most of the world’s atomic explosions.
Its landscape ranges from endless grasslands to Caspian beaches to towering Tian Shan mountains. Kazakhstan is the world’s third-largest producer of wheat, has huge stores of uranium and rare minerals, and has one of the largest reserves of oil. Homes vary from mansions and skyscrapers to adobe farmhouses, like the isolated village, not far from Siberia and Mongolia, that my wife Naila calls home. At its far northeast is one of the world’s most powerful and mysterious landscapes: the Altai mountains.
It is equally a genetic crossroads: most Kazakh bloodlines include proto-Turks, Siberians, Russians, Koreans, and Mongolians. Dozens of other nationalities share the nation. “Kazakh” either means “free people”, or an anagram of the names of vanished populations.
Despite pressure from Muslims and Orthodox Russians, most people feel closest to shamanistic animism. Levels of the shamanistic power range from healing to cultural protection to direct spiritual connection. For many, a shamanic healer is their primary care physician.
Almaty, the world’s greenest large city, is very livable but not very old. It produced the world’s first apple trees then, in the mid-1800s, became a military fort at the far East of the Russian empire. Two now-sleepy cities towns in southwest Kazakhstan were, centuries ago, world-leading centers of education.
Kazakhstan has the world’s newest (and probably strangest) Capital cities. It was recently renamed after the President who, as a young man, was installed as a leader by the U.S.S.R. and who has acted like a 21st-century czar ever since. Nur-Sultan city boasts gleaming, near-empty skyscrapers. Billions of dollars have been poured into the political hub’s gleaming, mismatched buildings but many are almost empty because few people want to live in an artificial city in a Siberian steppe climate.
Battle Lines
Since the Saka or Scythian nomadic civilization (7th — 4th centuries B.C.), Kazakhstan has been a battleground. The battle now is between its people and a self-serving government that has shrewdly balanced Western and Russian influence since 1991, when it gained independence.
The government is less voracious than others in the region — it gives citizens hospitals, roads, and schools. Even so, very few Kazakhs taste the wealth garnered by multinational corporations and hoarded by its small elite class. For example, Naila’s government pension is too meager to even pay her water bill.
The ruler of the country, Nursultan Nazarbayev, recently turned over the presidential title, but still exerts an authoritarian grip that he tries, half-heartedly, to disguise.
Roots of Disputes
The global collapse of oil prices has hit Kazakhstan especially hard, not that the wealthy seem inclined to trim back their luxuries. So, when the state-controlled cost of fuel was doubled, western oil workers — already poorly paid — dropped their tools and raised their fists.
This sparked the recent national protests. After a few days of official flexibility, the government switched to Vladimir Putin’s heavyhanded playbook: telling soldiers to shoot to kill and telling everyone else that the demonstrators were just outside agitators. This obvious lie is insulting and absurd. The streets of every city and most towns were filled with thousands of protesters of every age in near-arctic weather.
Young Kazakhstanis are more impressive than their young capital city. Millennia of travelers forged a culture of adaptation and problem-solving. Many bright, earnest youths now embrace global technology and pop culture and are just as hungry for freedom, opportunity, and a larger piece of the financial pie. The government officially allows, but systematically hobbles, Democratic processes, equating citizen submission with patriotism. Potential leaders outside the official circle are methodically marginalized. All mass media answer to the government.
Even so, most people somehow seek hope for their future.
This hope is hard to sustain when the country’s enormous resources are so unevenly distributed. Kazakhstan, an ancient corridor between empires, continues to make a small sliver of the country powerful and wealthy while most Kazakhs must focus on survival.
Rich Potentials
Kazakhstan is full of human, natural, and material riches. It is a satisfying, intriguing place to live. But its potential is poorly served by those who focus on narrow, short-term goodies and control at the expense of broad, long-term foundations.
From all I know and observe, this underlying conflict between concentrated profits and popular aspirations is the source of unrest, and the main barrier to forming the fully-developed nation it could be.
If you would like to learn more, the site below explains the culture, history, and current conditions of this wonderful nation.
Kazakhstan people, national clothes and dressings (aboutkazakhstan.com)
