Repression and Regime Survival in Kazakhstan

By Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer

By far the largest of the post-Soviet sovereign states in Central Asia, Kazakhstan has had an unfortunate history, both under Communist terror in the 1930s and more recent repression by its own government.

The Kazakhs emerged as a nomadic confederation in the mid-fifteenth century and came under Russian and Soviet rule in the 19^th century. Much of their territory had been colonized by Russian and Ukrainian peasants in the two decades before the First World War.

Under Soviet rule, Joseph Stalin’s collectivization drive in the early 1930s starved millions of ethnic Kazakhs by forcing nomadic herdsmen to farm.

In 1929, there were six million people in in Kazakhstan. By 1934, a quarter of them were dead –including almost 40 per cent of the ethnic Kazakh population. They would remain under Russian control for another 57 years.

In 1991, with the Soviet Union in ruins, Kazakhstan gained its independence, under the presidency of Nursultan Nazarbayev. On March 19 the first and only president of Kazakhstan announced his resignation. 

For now, the loyalist chairman of the senate, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, is holding the presidency until a new election on June 9, and the seventy-eight-year-old Nazarbayev remains the head of a newly empowered security council and his ruling party, Nur Otan (Radiant Fatherland). 

Since the country attained independence, there has been a deepening of authoritarianism and coercive capacity, as the regime in Astana – now renamed Nur-Sultan in honour of the country's former president -- stepped up authoritarian methods of policing dissent in the wake of violence in remote areas.

Nazarbayev prided himself on creating economic prosperity and social stability. Under his leadership Kazakhstan’s economy had steadily grown, creating the region’s biggest middle class. 

With many ethnic Kazakhs keen to trace their lineage back to Genghis Khan, Nazarbayev drew on nomadic traditions to bolster a sense of national identity.

Nazarbayev had consistently won elections with over 95 per cent support, more through lack of political competition than as a confirmation of his policies. His political party, Nur Otan (Radiant Fatherland), enjoyed almost complete representation in the parliament.

But in December 2011, mineworkers rioted in the towns of Zhanaozen and Shepte, breaking Kazakhstan’s seeming stability. Both cities are far from the country’s major urban areas and are infamous for their difficult living conditions. The unrest resulted in bloodshed between government forces and civilian activists.

A 20-day curfew was imposed and the area was saturated with special police and intelligence forces in the months after the protests. Social media sites were blocked for several days, with major blogging platforms shuttered for years.

Kazakhstan’s government also had to address the voices coming from the one million oralmans, recently naturalized ethnic Kazakhs, who had migrated from neighbouring countries, including China, Iran and Mongolia, since 1991. Many experiencing difficulty integrating into the historical homeland.

The government blamed disgruntled oralmans for fomenting the protests. Some Kazakh media published materials calling for forcing oralmans out of Zhanozen, out of other cities, and even out of the country,

A new government program resettled oralmans in a more dispersed pattern to avoid concentrating them in one area. As well, the regime jailed Vladimir Kozlov, a member of the unregistered opposition party Alga! (Forward!), on charges of instigating the riots in Zhanaozen. He was released in 2016.

The president also expanded existing political institutions, including his Nur Otan party, to better police the periphery, allowing the state to more deeply penetrate potentially restive parts of the country.

Other disaffected groups tend to be urban dwellers with fewer economic opportunities, as well as residents of rural eastern Kazakhstan, which suffered disproportionately from the disintegration of the Soviet economy and the collapse of local industrial sites.

Flagrant repression increased, as opposition leaders and activists were beaten up, hounded out of the country and found dead in suspect suicides. 

Respublika, one of the few papers openly critical of Nazarbayev, after enduring a decade of intimidation, was finally shut down by the courts.

Though many have accepted the trade of freedoms for prosperity and stability, resentments have been building for years, especially in rural areas left out of the oil boom and among ethnic Russians, more than one-fifth of the population, who feel disenfranchised by the ascendant Kazakh majority.

The future of the 18 million citizens of this vast, oil-rich nation remains far from clear.