Kazakhstan: Astana Refocuses Attention on National Unity amid Economic Uncertainty

With Kazakhstan experiencing a sudden economic downturn, and with memories of the Russian-Georgian war still fresh, officials in Kazakhstan are refocusing attention on the issue of inter-ethnic harmony. President Nursultan Nazarbayev's administration has long sought to forge a unified national identity in Central Asia's most ethnically diverse country. The process, however, is perhaps not as straightforward as the country's leaders might like to think.

There are several reasons for the renewed emphasis on ethnic harmony in Kazakhstan. Among the top concerns is the faltering economy, which could easily increase competition, as well as stoke resentments, among various nationalities, in particular the titular Kazakh population and the country's largest minority group -- Russians, who comprise about a quarter of the country's 15.5 million population.

Russia's war with Georgia in August, along with the Kremlin's subsequent recognition of the separatist territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, also is emerging as a source of concern. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive]. Officials in Astana, keenly aware that most of the country's ethnic Russia live in northern areas that border Russia proper, may be asking; is Kazakhstan's northern border secure?

Nazarbayev in recent months has taken to reminding citizens of the importance of stability and accord. "The strength of any country is in the unity of its people," he told the Assembly of the People of Kazakhstan (APK) in late October. The APK is an umbrella grouping of presidential loyalists representing the country's ethnic groups. It has become the linchpin of the president's strategy for promoting national harmony.

Just before his APK address, Nazarbayev signed a new law enshrining the body's special legal status for the first time. Earlier, the APK gained the right to send nine deputies to the lower house of parliament, sparking criticism that the unelected body has assumed undue significance; the provision was also attacked for infringing the one-person-one-vote principle.

Addressing the APK, Nazarbayev talked up the country's achievements, to which he said all ethnic groups contributed. To prove his point, he cited the different ethnicities of the athletes who brought medals home from this summer's Olympic Games, including Kazakh, Russian, Tartar, Ossetian, Kumyk and Ingush.

More recently, the spiritual leader of the Russian Orthodox Church in Kazakhstan, Metropolitan Mefody of Astana, voiced satisfaction with the state of religious freedom in the country. In a January 7 interview with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, the metropolitan urged lawmakers to maintain the existing spirit of religious tolerance in considering the adoption of a new law on religion.

Kazakhstan's ethnic diversity stems from several waves of immigration -- from the Cossacks who guarded the outposts of the Russian Empire in the 18th and 19th centuries, to the Chechens, Ingush and Koreans deported to Central Asia by Stalin. Immigrants also include those who came from all over the Soviet Union in the 1950s to work on former Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev's ill-fated Virgin Lands program.

"We are convinced that ethnic, denominational, cultural and linguistic diversity are our priceless treasure," Nazarbayev told the APK. He went on to outline some priorities in ethnic policy, including writing a "national unity doctrine" and drawing up an agenda for Kazakhstan's 2010 OSCE chairmanship promoting "the strengthening of international security and a decrease in global tension."

The administration's answer to the thorny problem of how best to promote national unity in a multi-cultural country with more than 130 ethnic groups is to insist on the equality of all groups and on promoting all their languages and cultures. Yet, at the same time, the government has singled out the titular Kazakhs as having a special consolidating role. This leads to a certain haziness in the vision of national identity, since it is not entirely clear what this means.

The problem is exacerbated by the contentious language issue in Kazakhstan: a recent poll showed that only about a third of inhabitants speak fluent Kazakh, while 16.3 percent do not speak the titular language at all. The poll was conducted by the Alternativa Center for Topical Research with the Open Society regional research institute (the organization is not connected to the New York-based Open Society Institute, under whose auspices EurasiaNet operates). Out of the poll's 1,200 respondents, 36 percent characterized their Kazakh-language skills as fluent, while an additional 20 percent claimed a sufficient knowledge of the language. In stark contrast, 90.4 percent of respondents qualified their Russian language skills as either fluent or sufficient, fuelling arguments by ethnic Kazakh nationalists that not enough is being done to promote the spread of the titular language. The polling data was released in November.

This has proved problematic in the wake of the Soviet-era policy of Russification which took strong root in Kazakhstan, where ethnic Kazakhs were in a minority at independence in 1991. "[Russification] had a catastrophic effect on the influence of Kazakh language and culture," Nazarbayev told the APK, which conducts most of its business in Russian. His call for it to be at the center of efforts to promote Kazakh language learning struck some commentators as illogical. "Without having a scientific and linguistic basis, without even speaking Kazakh, how is the Assembly going to develop the state language [Kazakh]?" the Taszhargan weekly asked rhetorically.

The government argues that it is doing everything to promote the spread of Kazakh while protecting the rights of speakers of other languages: some $42 million was allocated in 2008 for it compared to $1.1 million in 2005. However, those trying to learn the language criticize materials and methodology. Children, meanwhile, continue to leave school with little knowledge of Kazakh, despite it being an obligatory curriculum subject.

There is a remarkable linguistic regional disparity: according to the poll, in the West Kazakhstan Region, 83 percent speak fluent Kazakh, but in the Pavlodar Region, with its high concentration of Russian-speakers, just 38.5 percent do.

This has the potential to divide the public, some commentators say. "We [in Kazakhstan] now have two worlds: the Russian-language world and the Kazakh-language world," argued Dos Kushim, head of the Fate of the Nation nationalist organization, at a session on nationalism in politics at Almaty's Polyton discussion club in October.

As the administration confronts the question of ethnic relations and national identity, the same poll had some good news. It showed that 84.4 percent of inhabitants do not think their rights are infringed over language issues, and an overwhelming 93.1 percent expressed overall satisfaction with ethnic relations in Kazakhstan.