ANTICIPATING DEMOGRAPHIC SUPERIORITY

KAZAKH THINKING ON INTEGRATION AND NATION-BUILDING

Printed in Europe-Asia Studies, vol. 50, no1, (January 1998) pp. 51-68.

Professor Pål Kolstø
Dept. of East European and Oriental Studies
University of Oslo
Box 1030, Blindern
N-0315 Oslo, Norway
tel (+47) 22 85 67 99/22 85 67 97
fax (+47)22 85 41 40
home address (weekends and Mondays):
Ramsvig 50 g
N-4015 Stavanger, Norway
tel/fax home (+47) 51 56 20 82
e-mail Pal.Kolsto@east.uio.no

In the communist period, the Soviet republics could be regarded as a kind of pseudo-states or proto-states, which had some of the trappings of true states, but lacked essential elements such as control of their own territory and economy. Today, the state authorities in the successor states are striving to transform these political contraptions into real, modern states. This a complex and multidimensional process, and I do not here intend to cover them all. Instead, I will concentrate on the identity aspect of nation-building. In order to make these states functioning entities, it is essential that the people who live in them transfer their political loyalty to the new state. They must develop a sense of belonging in the state and forge a common identity as 'the People of Latvia' or 'the People of Kazakhstan', in other words, as a Latvian nation, a Kazakhstani nation, etc. At the present, all Soviet successor states are in the grips of hectic nation-building.

The classical literature on nation-building, which originated in the West in the 1960s and 1970s, often assumed that the development of modern communication technologies, standarized educational systems, etc., more or less automatically would undermine all kinds of sub-state sectarian and parochial identities, and supplant them with common, state-centred identities. It seems now quite clear that this optimism was unwarranted. Even in the Western world many old, long-established states are today experiencing a backlash of regionalism and ethnic separatism. Nation-building seems to be a very protracted process at the best, perhaps even a never-ending project. Importantly also, the element of conscious policy decisions and state initiatives is stronger than many analysts believed. Therefore, in order to understand and to forecast what kind of nations that will take shape in the new states of the former Soviet Union it is important to focus on the express objectives and actual strategies of the nation-builders.

Historically, in Eastern Europe in general and in the Soviet Union in particular, the concept of the ‘nation’ has not been identified with the total population of the country, as a political unit. Rather, it has been regarded as a cultural and ethnical entity. While in most Western countries the two terms of ‘citizenship’ and ‘nationality’ are interchangeable, in the Soviet Union they were sharply differentiated. ‘Nationality’ was understood as ‘ethnicity’ and was objectivized, both on the individual level and on the macro level. Every Soviet citizen had an official nationality ascribed to him and written into his passport, and the territorial units which made up the Soviet federal state, were named after particular ethnic groups, the so-called 'titular nationalities'. In some fuzzy sense these republics were seen as ‘belonging to’ the titular ethno-nations as collective, social bodies. This means that as the present-day nation-builders in the successor states set out to mould new nations in the new states, there are already in existence an 'Estonian nation', an Uzbek nation', etc, but these groups are not coterminous with the total population of the state.

All NIS states, then, are faced with the formidable task of relating these two entities, the titular 'nation' and the civic 'nation', to each other in such a way that the entire population will freely identify with and be loyal to the state. Everywhere, the buzzword for the resolution of this task is ‘integration’. It is being asserted the national minorities, that is, the members of the population who do not belong to the titular nation, must be integrated into... well, it is not always quite clear exactly what they are supposed to be integrated into. Either they may be culturally integrated into the titular national culture, or they may be politically integrated into the state, in which case they will retain most of their cultural traits. Very often no explicit distinction between these two aspects of integration is made, and a high degree of ambiguity surrounds the issue.

This lack of clarity is perhaps not very consequential in all new states. In those countries where the titular nationality constitutes 80% or even 90% of the total population, the character and the identity of the state will, inevitably, to a large extent be informed by the dominant ethnic culture. The small minorities are not in a position to challenge the hegemony of the titular group. For that very reason, perhaps, the titular group may feel secure enough to offer them a liberal minority policy, and the matter will not be coming to a head. Things are quite different, however, in those cases where the minorities make up sizeable, strong groups, capable of fighting for their collective interests. If there is strong cohesion not only within each ethnic minority, but also a high degree solidarity among them, the situation is further complicated still. In such cases, the non-titulars may, in theory at least, form a common front to curb eventual hegemonistic aspirations of the titular nation, and they will not so easily yield to the pressure of marginalization. In a worst case scenario, this may lead to ethnic violence and a breakdown of social order.

Potentially, this is the situation we are faced with in Kazakhstan. With no more than some 46% of the total population in Kazakhstan in 1995, the Kazakhs do not even constitute a majority, only a plurality. Furthermore, in this state the minorities should not be regarded as a fragmented hotchpotch of disparate ethnic groups. While it is true that the various communities of Ukrainians, Tatars, Belarusians, etc. in Kazakhstan have retained some elements of their distinctive ethnic traditions, the vast majorities among these groups are nevertheless linguistically Russified, and in many cases also thoroughly Sovietized. For analytical purposes, therefore, it is more meaningful to identify the European non-titular population as a common Russified or Russophone group. This means that Kazakhstan is not really multi-cultural society, but may more aptly be characterized as a bi-cultural society.

What exactly does integration mean in such bi-cultural societies? Is one half of the population supposed to be integrated into the other half? Is that at all possible, and if so, what will be the outcome?

These were core questions in a research project which was financed by the Norwegian Research Council in 1996, involving two Norwegian and one Kazakhstani researchers. The project focused on integration and nation-building on three different levels - ideological, political, and social. In this article I will concentrate on the ideological aspect, that is, on official and semiofficial statements outlining the idea of 'the Kazakhstani nation', as Kazakhstani nation-builders would like to see it develop.

In contrast to most other countries in Central Asia, Kazakhstan has a reasonably open debate in the media on many issues. To be sure, some topics are approached more gingerly than others and not all positions are tolerated, but it is nevertheless possible to trace the contours of a Kazakh thinking on integration and nation-building. This thinking, as will be demonstrated below, is far from coherent, but often contains several contradictory strands, sometimes expressed by the same author.

The Kazakhstani nation-building debate may be divided into three separate sections. At the ground level of press articles, the polemics include a wide variety of disparate viewpoints, among which also high-pitched nationalist positions are represented. Hard-line Kazakh nationalists usually vent their rancour in Kazakh language newspapers. These papers hardly any Russophones are able to, or care, to read. Excerpts from these outpourings, however, are sometimes translated into Russian and printed by Russian language papers in Almaty, such as Karavan and Kazakhstanskaia pravda, for the benefit of their monolingual Russophone readers. (This service, of course, not only keeps the readers informed but also, inevitably, may raise their level of anxiety). One extremist Kazakh nationalist paper, Kazakhskaia pravda, was for a while in 1995 published in Russian, but was closed down for racist inflammation.

On the opposite side of the barricades, most Russophone hard-liners write in Russian media published in Moscow or St. Petersburg. Russian language media in Kazakhstan are generally either pro-governmental or non-political. The only major exception, Karavan, represents a liberal rather than a nationalist opposition. However, in the irregularly published organ of the Russian community in Kazakhstan, Russkoe slovo, as well as in the local Russian Orthodox journal Vedi, expressions of right-wing Russian nationalism may be found. The writings of such odious figures as Andrei Barkashov, Alexander Sterligov and the turn-of-century preacher John of Kronstadt are reprinted with approval. Hankering for the unitary Soviet state is expressed openly, and indirectly one may infer that the editors do not accept the legitimacy of the Republic of Kazakhstan.

Elevated above the shadow boxing at the ground level hover the official statements of Kazakhstani authorities, embodied primarily in the dictums of the president and in the constitutional formulae. Nazarbaev's pronounced opinions on a subject are in a sense final. They are not open to overt criticism or disagreement in the public debate. Still, there is a certain leeway for interpretation and elaboration on his viewpoints which in any case are not always unequivocal. Also, the two Kazakhstani constitutions, from January 1993 and August 1995 respectively, were exposed to a measure of lively debate prior to their adoption. However, as soon as they had been promulgated, attacks on them were muted.

In between the official and the ground levels we find the academic discourse on nation-building and integration. This debate is to a large degree played out in small circulation journals which are not readily accessible to the public, not so much because they are high-brow, but because they are simply not on sale at regular news-stands. Adding to the esoterics, certain politically sensitive research reports are translated into English and sold for exorbitant prices in hard currency only. This precaution ensures that they will be read by a limited number of Kazakhstani scholars and by foreign researchers (such as our team), but not by the average Kazakhstani citizen.

The academic debate on ethnicity issues is marked by a peculiar blend of refined scholarly finesse - or at least the ornaments thereof - on the one hand and a sometimes rather rough-hewn nationalist message on the other. In style, it clearly resembles the speeches of the president, in content, however, it is often perceptibly closer to the ramblings of the Kazakh nationalist press. In fact, several authors participate in both discourses, with only minor changes of emphasis and rhetoric.

In the Kazakh language press the nationality debate seems to be premised on the view that Kazakhstan is, or at least ought to become, a national state of the Kazakh nation. The fact that also very many non-Kazakhs inhabit this state is not necessarily seen as a valid reason for including them into the concept of the Kazakhstani nation. A member of the Kazakhstani parliament, Sultan Sartaev, was in January 1995 quoted in Yeremen Kazakstan to the effect that 'with the exception of cosmopolitan states, all other states in the world are the state of one particular nation. Thus, Kazakhstan is the state of the Kazakh nation, since only one nation, the Kazakh nation, lives here. [...] All the others are only representatives of nations, since they have their own ethnic states elsewhere'.

One year later a history professor asked rhetorically:

Another professor, who had visited the United States, rejected the notion of a Kazakhstani multinational state. The distressing fate of the native Americans showed what such a state could lead to. ‘The Indians are an ethnos on the verge of complete disappearance. Perhaps this is what the political "smart alecks" want: the Kazakhs ought to go the same way as the Indians.'

In March 1996 the Almaty newspaper Birlik printed an article by a professor with a Turkic-sounding name living in Moscow, Murad Aji. He asserted that 'the peoples of the world are distinguished not only by outward appearances, but also by their culture, traditions, habits, and behaviour. As the biologists have proven, they are also genetically different. For that reason, the offspring of two Negroes will never be a Chinese.' Based on these quasi-insights the professor proceeded to define the national character of the Russians: 'Compared to all other nations they have be distinguished by their remarkable unfriendliness, aggressiveness, and lack of respect towards their own brethren and coethnics'. I should emphasize that this is the only incidence of open racism which I have found in my material.

David Laitin has pointed out that much of what is usually being interpreted as interethnic violence and antagonism, instead ought to be regarded as expressions of animosity and conflict within ethnic groups. Nationalist agitators are devoting much time and energy to the policing of their own group to ensure that all members walk in step and non-one succumbs to the allurement of assimilation into alien cultures. Also, during periods of ethnic revival persons who stand outside the circles of power use nationalistic rhetoric to worm their way into them.

Much evidence suggests that Laitin's explanation fits well the situation in Kazakhstan. In the Soviet period, the political as well as the intellectual elite among the Kazakhs were dominated by persons who had received a Russian language education and often had a better command of the Russian than of the Kazakh language. The 98.5% Kazakhs in Kazakhstan who in 1989 claimed Kazakh as their rodnoi iazyk (mother tongue) was most likely grossly inflated. Modern estimates put the Kazakh literacy among ethnic Kazakhs to somewhere in the range of 60% to 72%. Those who now longer can speak the traditional language of their ethnic group are the targets of some of the most bitter attacks of the Kazakh nationalists.

In February 1996, a local leader in the Kazakh cultural organization 'Qazaq tili' (= 'the Kazakh language') complained that 'one turns on the television and sees Kazakhs in high offices speaking Russian or speaking Kazakh in a very stuttering, clumsy way, having great difficulty with the pronunciation. If this is the behaviour of our best and brightest, what will then happen to our language? [...] First and foremost the Kazakhs themselves ought to show respect for the state language, there can be no question about it.' Another author suggested that 'Qazaq tili' ought to be given the power to conduct language tests of all applicants for important positions in the state apparatus, as well as the right to reject the application of anyone showing an insufficient proficiency in Kazakh. Such suggestions, of course, hit a raw nerve not only of the Europeans, but also of Russophone Kazakhs.

In April 1996, another professor of history (they seem to be rather active among the publicists), lamented that

Here, the concept of 'the Kazakh nation' (in the ethnic sense) has been severely circumscribed. It no longer embraces all those who have 'Kazakh' as their passport nationality, but only those who have a good command of the Kazakh language and no non-Kazakhs in the family.

Another caustic attack against the Russophone Kazakhs was published in Qazaq adebieti, on 30 January 1996.

If such viewpoints should gain wide acceptance in Kazakhstan, this would radically strengthen the hand of the 'true' Kazakhs over their somewhat more cosmopolitan ethnic brethren in the competition for power and influence in Almaty.

This handful of quotations from the Kazakh language discourse represents of course only a haphazard selection. They are quoted from Russian language sources, and this circumstance has inevitably functioned as a kind of screening mechanism. I do not know which criteria the Russian publishers use when they choose to translate excerpts from some Kazakh articles and ignore others. Writing in a Russian language Almaty newspaper a Kazakh journalist expressed sadness over the selection and translation of these articles. 'They are so wretched and primitive, and prepared in such a way that they make the Russophones nervous'. At the same time this journalist claimed that some Kazakh authors deliberately write in such a way they may hope to be quoted by the most popular, Russophone papers in the country. Therefore, when reading these excerpts, we ought to keep in mind the possibility that such psychological mechanisms are at work.

In general, the message conveyed by president Nazarbaev and reflected in official pronouncements of Kazakhstani state authorities, is distinctly different from the rhetoric used in the unofficial, Kazakh language discourse on ethnicity and nation-building presented above. To be sure, Nazarbaev's thinking on the topic is far from pellucid. As Martha Brill Olcott has remarked, Nazarbaev has tried to avoid confrontation on the ethnic issue by asserting that Kazakhstan is both a multinational society and a homeland for the ethnic Kazakh at the same time. In a sense, he has tried to avoid making a choice between an ethnic and a civic nation concept. The duality in the official Kazakh selfunderstanding was expressed by the Kazakhstani president in a speech to a congress of the 'Qazaq tili' society in November 1992:

This ambiguity was also quite apparent in the January 1993 constitution. The preamble opened with a reference to 'We, the people (narod) of Kazakhstan', clearly a non-ethnic entity. Many Russophones, however, were disconcerted by article 1 which hailed the Republic of Kazakhstan as 'the form of statehood of the Kazakh nation (natsiia).' A Russophone professor in Almaty claimed that 'in other words, "the people of Kazakhstan" means the ethnic Kazakhs only'. This was clearly a misreading. Nonetheless, official spokesmen maintained that whatever else Kazakhstan is, it is also a national state of the Kazakhs. This view was reflected in several Kazakhstani laws and in other official documents. The law on citizenship, for instance, allowed dual citizenship for ethnic Kazakhs living abroad but for no other groups. This special arrangement was defended as being necessary to redress the injustice done to the Kazakh nation in the Soviet period when hundreds of thousands of Kazakhs fled to China and Mongolia to escape collectivization. These groups were also granted special privileges in the law on immigration.

At a large conference in Almaty in May 1993, Nazarbaev fleshed out the main goals and elements of a new 'Kazakhstani state ideology'. A major task, he declared, would be 'to combat every chauvinism, nationalism, and separatism'. This should be done by the inculcation of 'Kazakhstani patriotism'.

The nation-building model outlined here was indisputably civic, the prototype being the United States.

Another landmark in Nazarbaev’s thinking on nation-building and ethnic integration was his remarkable speech to the Kazakhstani Supreme Soviet on 9 June 1994. At this occasion, Nazarbaev not so much formulated lofty, positive ideals, but instead subjected the actual nation-building practices pursued by his own state apparatus to devastating criticism. He attacked as simplistic the conventional Kazakh view that Russians were leaving the country for economic reasons only.

This statement was so startling that Nazarbaev, anticipating accusations that he was being pressurized by someone (read: Russia), insisted that he had reached this conclusion quite on his own. His only motivation was his desire to set straight errors committed by state officials, in particular in the field of the language policy. The state program for the development of the Kazakh language and other languages had disturbed not only the Russophone population but also many Kazakhs, the president complained. A new language law therefore ought to be adopted which will 'eliminate all and every discrimination of the Russian language’ at the same time as it would identify effective measures for the advancement of the Kazakh language.

As particularly pernicious Nazarbaev singled out the 'destructive’ policy of changing Russian toponyms. 'The mass renaming of streets, towns and even major cities has had a one-sided tendency. It has not taken into consideration the public sentiment or the ethnic composition of the population. Sometimes it has disregarded even centuries-old traditions and, worst of all, it has ignored the mass psychology of the inhabitants.’

The problems he had detected, Nazarbaev claimed, were caused by 'distortions in the personnel policy'. Such distortions could be found both locally and in the capital, he insisted. 'For instance, 30 Kazakhs as against only three Russians, two Uighurs, and one Azeri are working in the Language committee. And this is an agency which deals with the development of all of our languages, not only with Kazakh.'

Nazarbaev's speech definitely conveyed new signals and left many of his listeners flabbergasted. A Russian nationalist, a leading activist of the Slavonic Lad movement in Eastern Kazakhstan, confessed that when he read this address, he could not believe his own eyes. To a remarkable degree its message coincided with his own views, but if any one activist from Lad had voiced similar opinions, he or she would immediately have been accused of slander and of rousing interethnic animosity, this Russian surmised.

For a while, Nazarbaev's June 1994 address seemed to signal a new departure in the official attitude towards the non-titulars population in Kazakhstan. The new constitution of May 1995 contained some significant semantic changes which Russophone activists had been clamouring for for a long time. The phrase defining Kazakhstan as 'the form of statehood of the selfdetermining Kazakh nation' was deleted, as was the special right of the Kazakh diaspora to hold dual citizenship. Russian was elevated to a status of an ‘official’ language ‘to be used on a par with the state language in state organs and in organs of local administration’. This compromise formula most Russians regarded as an improvement over the previous constitution which defined Russian as a ‘language of interethnic communication’, but it fell short of their optimal goal: full parity of the Kazakh and Russian language in all official usages.

In May 1996, a new official ‘Concept for the Forming of a State Identity of the Republic of Kazakhstan’ was published in Kazakhstani media. The Concept, while performing a delicate balancing act between an ethnic and a civic idea of the nation, nevertheless must be regarded as a retreat from the studious ethnic neutrality of the 1995 constitution.

The Concept noted that the ‘ethnic centre’ of the Kazakhs is Kazakhstan. Nowhere else in the world do Kazakhs possess a statehood which is concerned about the preservation of the Kazakhs as an ethnic group, or about the development of Kazakh culture, language, traditions, and life style. ‘When we define Kazakhstan as a national state, it is this quality of the state we primarily ought to have in mind.’ Acknowledging that Kazakhstan certainly also is a multiethnic state, the Concept nevertheless stated that the other ethnic groups in the country cannot adduce similarly strong claims to be attached to this state as the Kazakhs can. ‘The changes in the national make-up of Kazakhstan have been brought about exclusively by an influx of non-Kazakh ethnic communities, the majority of whom have their own statehood [= elsewhere].’

A new language law was adopted on 22 November 1996. As we have seen, in June 1994 expressed hope that this law would 'eliminate all and every discrimination of the Russian language’. However, Russophone activists regarded it not as a liberalization but rather as a tightening of the discrimination against the Russian language. The law requires, inter alia, ethnic Kazakhs to know the state language by January 2001 while the Russian-speaking population must know Kazakh by January 2006. There were no requirements for proficiency in Russian. Mikhail Golovkov, the sole remaining leader of the Lad community in the Kazakhstani parliament, in a conversation with the author in September 1996 characterized the (then draft) law as a serious onslaught on the occupational opportunities of the Russophone population. By stipulating different demands on Kazakhs and non-Kazakhs the law is also an important testimony to the ethnic thinking which permeates official Kazakhstani thinking on nation-building.

The vacillations and ambiguities in official statements and regulations on issues related to nation-building and ethnic integration leave considerable latitude for inspired exegesis and imaginative interpretations. A lively and often sophisticated discourse on nation-building and related subjects is unfolding in Kazakhstani academia. The main fora are journals such as Saiasat , Mysl’ , Evraziiskoe soobshchestvo , and Kazakhstan i mirovoe soobshchestvo. Of these, only Mysl' may sometimes be found at regular news-stands. This journal also has the largest number of non-Kazakh writers and has printed several articles which condemns all kinds of ethno-nationalism, including articles by Kazakh authors who reject Kazakh nationalism.

The Russian contributions to the academic journals emphasize, predictably, the multicultural character of the state and try to hold forth a civic, inclusive state model. The title of an August 1995 article in Saiasat written by A. Kotov, a member of the consultative council preparing the new Kazakhstani constitution, asserted that ‘a Unified Citizenship is the Constitutional Basis for Equal Rights in the Republic of Kazakhstan’. The critical edge of Kotov’s article was directed primarily against Russia, a country which has been pushing hard for the institutionalization of dual citizenship. While Kotov in principle found the idea of dual citizenship strongly deleterious, he nevertheless, surprisingly, was willing to make an exception for ethnic Kazakhs living outside Kazakhstan. His acceptance of such positive discrimination of the titular nationality either indicates that accommodation to Kazakh positions on ethnic issues is far advanced in the Russian academic community in Kazakhstan, or that such concessions are deemed necessary to be admitted into the official discourse at all.

By way of contrast, it could be pointed to the fate of a textbook on political science co-authored by a Russian lecturer at the local technical institute in Semipalatinsk in 1993. In his book, Anatolii Syromiatnikov noted that many former Soviet republics are so heterogeneous in their ethnic composition that it is impossible to turn them into ‘national states’ in the ethnic sense of the word. ‘Attempts to confirm the rights of the indigenous populations only will lead to conflict situations such as armed clashes, increased instability, the disintegration of new states, as well as to mass migration and the tragedy of millions of people.’ Syromiatnikov's textbook had the dubious distinction of becoming one of the first scholarly publications in independent Kazakhstan to be banned by the censorship. His conflictology was formulated as a general theory, but its applicability to Kazakhstani conditions was obvious.

As regards the Kazakh authors who write on issues of integration and nation-building in academic publications, no common position can be attributed to all of them, but certain prevailing trends may nevertheless be identified. On the crucial question of the character of the Kazakhstani state a consensus seems to have formed: even if the idea of Kazakhstan as ‘the form of statehood of the selfdetermining Kazakh nation’ has disappeared from the Kazakhstani constitution, it is still alive and kicking among influential opinion makers in Almaty.

In April 1994, a law professor, S. Sabikenov, tried to define the difference between ‘national’ (natsional’nyi’) sovereignty and ‘popular’ (narodnyi) sovereignty. Such a clarification is very much needed, not only in Kazakhstan, but in many new states in the FSU area. The term 'self-determination of nations', which in international law relates to the independence and self-rule of states and their populations, may lead to great confusion in countries where the nation is regarded as an ethnic entity. However, Sabikenov's article did little to disperse the mist which clouds this terminology in the Kazakhstani debate. He concluded that ‘in character’ Kazakhstan is a national state of the Kazakh nation, but ‘in content’ it is a democratic, law-governed state. These two aspects, in his view, do not contradict each other.

Sabikenov therefore considered any attempt to delete from the constitution the passage defining Kazakhstan as the homeland of the Kazakh nation as both unscientific and unjustified.

A somewhat different approach to nation-building was taken by G. Tanirbergenova, a local school administrator from Taldy Kurgan. She regarded the Kazakhs as ‘a state-forming nation’ (gosudarstvoobrazuiushchaia natsiia). As such, they were assigned with the loft task of fostering the spirit of Kazakhstani patriotism among the other nations inhabiting the vast Kazakhstani space. This was the historical mission of the Kazakh nation today, she believed.

A similar view was held by professor Abdumalik Nysanbaev. Writing together with a junior colleague in Kazakhstanskaia pravda in January 1996, he claimed that Kazakhstan ‘does not exhibit any positive ideas, significant aims, or common dreams capable of uniting and rousing all Kazakhstanians’, except one: ‘the Kazakh (kazakhskaia) idea’. ‘Today, when the Kazakh idea has been embodied in a sovereign state, it ought to acquire a new quality as the integrating principle of the entire poly-ethnic and poly-cultural people in our country.’ Thus, the nation-building process will encompass all inhabitants of Kazakhstan but their respective cultures will not in equal measure influence the end result. Instead, the core and essence of ‘Kazakhstanianness’ will be ‘Kazakhness’.

An article in the August 1995 issue of Saiasat addressed the issue of ‘interethnic integration in Kazakhstan’, head on. The author, associate professor N. Baitenova at the Kazakhstani state university, believed that integration would be a protracted process fraught with conflicting tendencies. The end result would - hopefully - be the formation of ‘a Kazakhstani nation’. In a process of mutual acculturation the people of Kazakhstan would develop ‘a distinctive mentality as Kazakhstanians.’

The major obstacle on the road towards this radiant future lies in the resistance of a large part of the Russian population of Kazakhstan, Baitenova believed. These people do not understand that after independence the two major groups, the Kazakhs and the Russians, are going through significant changes of status.

As a concomitant effect of the elevation of the Kazakhs the Russians have been reduced ‘from a status as the senior brother to becoming an ordinary ethnos, or even better: they are acquiring the status of an ethnic group’. Some Russians, however, do not accept these new conditions, Baitenova complained. As proof of this she pointed out that a leader of the Slavonic Lad movement in April 1995 had appealed to the voters not to endorse the prolongation of Nazarbaev’s term in office beyond the five year period he was elected for. Baitenova's line of reasoning here was based on the premise that loyalty towards the state includes also support for the present political leadership.

Baitenova noted with relief that certain Belarusian, Ukrainian and Polish spokesmen had criticized Lad for its stance on the prolongation issue, and she saw this as evidence of these nations’ greater loyalty. The political disagreements which she had detected within Slavic camp led her to the conclusion that the term ‘Russophones’ was imprecise and incorrect. Not the Russophones, but the Russians alone were the main opponents of the Kazakhs. Such analyses drive wedges into the Russophone group and split it up into smaller, politically less powerful and more manageable components.

One of the favourite themes in the Kazakh nationality debate is demography. The Kazakh ethnic group grows considerably faster than the European groups, for several reasons: increased Kazakh immigration from abroad (in particular from Mongolia and China); growing emigration of Russians, Germans, and other Europeans; and finally, a higher birth rate among the Kazakhs. Thus, according to official sources, the share of the Kazakh group increased from 39.7% in 1989, to 44.3% in 1994, and to 46% by 1 January 1995. Over the same period, the share of the Russians fell from 37.7% to 34.8%; of the Germans, from 5.8% to 3.1%. A Kazakh demographic dominance may be predicted to be in place by the first decade of the next century.

In the Kazakhstani debate these figures and extrapolations are used to drive home two points. First, this development will break the resistance of Russophone activists against the Kazakhification of the state. Second, it allegedly also justifies the present overrepresentation of Kazakhs in the state apparatus and in elected offices. The latter point is somewhat surprising, since one would perhaps expect the growth of 'nationality power' (to use Rasma Karklins' expression), to follow the demographic tendencies with a considerable time lag. After all, not infants but adults fill public offices. However, the political clout of the Kazakhs is clearly running ahead of their demographic weight.

Already in the 1970s, several Soviet nationalities were able to dominate the political scene in their respective republics. Kazakhstan was often singled out as a prime example of this, despite the fact that the Kazakhs were the only titular nationality in a Union republic which made up less than half of the total population. One cause behind the paramountcy of the titular nationality in this republic seems to have been the traditional clan structure of Kazakh society which the Soviets were never able to eradicate. Power and authority in Kazakhstan, like in most other Central Asian states, ran through time-tested clan structures. The Kazakh clans and super clans (zhuzes) competed among themselves for positions and influence. If a member of one group managed to climb high up in the hierarchy, he immediately sought to promote his own kith and kin to prestigious positions. Groups that did not have anyone in the bureaucracy to protect and help them, tended to loose out.

Central authorities in Moscow nevertheless made sure that Russians and other Slavs in most cases got their fair share - in some sectors even a lion's share - of top notch positions in the republics. After independence, this external check was eliminated. In 1994, 60% of the seats in the Kazakh Supreme Soviet were filled by Kazakhs. Only 49 Russians (28%) and 16 other Europeans (Ukrainians, Jews, and Germans) were elected. In the December 1995 elections to the new two-chamber parliament, 26 Kazakhs and 12 Russians were elected/appointed to the upper house, the Senate, while 42 Kazakhs, 19 Russians, and five representatives of other nationalities took seats in the Lower House, the Majilis. Even more glaring disproportions could be found in the state bureaucracies, centrally and regionally.

For a long time the overrepresentation of the Kazakhs in the state apparatus was for all practical purposes a taboo in the Kazakhstani press. The first publication to break it was a watershed article in Karavan in December 1993 written by two prominent Russophone journalists. Later, also some Kazakh scholars have acknowledged that real disproportions in the ethnic representation exist. In 1994 a group of researchers from the semi-official Institute for the Development of Kazakhstan computed the ethnic composition of the top echelons of executives in two key bureaucracies - the apparatus of the Cabinet of Ministers and the Presidential apparatus (see table 1).

Table 1. in here

Many Western readers will no doubt see these figures as confirmation of a glaring overrepresentation of the titular nation in Kazakhstani politics. The Kazakh researchers who compiled them, however, are of a different opinion. They claim that

The fact that 'the dynamics of ethnic representation' are anticipating rather than resulting from 'the ethno-demographic development' was not emphasized.

As mentioned, the higher birth-rates of the Kazakhs are also seen by many Kazakh researchers seen as the main factor determining the future ethnic relations in Kazakhstan. This is an important theme in several of the publications which have been discussed already, as well as in many others. The demographer Azimbai Galiev forecasted a rapid decrease in the Russian population in the years to come and concluded that ‘Russian emigration from Kazakhstan is likely to promote socio-economic adaptation among those who stay behind. A loyal ethno-political population will be the result.’

The topic of demography was further elaborated by M. Tatimov, a senior member of the presidential analytical centre. With a terminology reminiscent of Oswald Spengler's Untergang des Abendlandes, Tatimov divided the nations of the world into ‘young’ and ‘old’ by the criterion of their demographic development. A nation is ‘old’ if the older age cohorts dominate over children and youngsters. In Tatimov’s typology the Russians and the Ukrainians as well as the Balts are old nations.

Whenever two ‘old’ nations dominate on the same territory, they will tend to engage in a kind of ‘psychological cold war’ for control, Tatimov maintained. This is the situation in Estonia, Latvia, and Ukraine. In Kazakhstan, however, the situation is much more favourable since one of the two competing nations, the Kazakhs, is young. The Kazakhs, therefore, will win out without engaging the Russians in direct confrontation, simply by biding their time. The ethnic battle, as it were, will be fought in the bed chamber, where the Kazakhs inevitably will be victorious.

However, the Kazakhstani state authorities ought not to sit back smugly awaiting this happy outcome, Tatimov insisted. Instead, they should actively strengthen the natural trends by ‘an effective demographic policy, supporting and promoting the full manifestation of the historically objective tendencies in the development of our population’. In addition, the state should pursue a migration policy geared towards the strategic aim of ‘consolidating the Republic of Kazakhstan as a young, unitary state.’ By contrast, a Russophone professor, Natal'ia Loginova, in a Mysl' article characterized an increased Russian outmigration from Kazakhstan as 'nothing short of a catastrophe'.

On all levels, the Kazakhstani discourse on integration and nation-building is treating these subjects in the categories of the Soviet censuses. The passport entries are regarded as the essential identity markers. Emphasis on subethnical identities such as the zhuzes and supraethnic identities such as ‘the Russophones’ are politically incorrect.

Many Kazakh experts identify Russian-Kazakh (rather than Russophone-Kazakh) ethnic competition as a major problem of integration and social consolidation. This diagnosis, however, does not lead them to desperation or alarmism. On the contrary, the dominant mood seems to be closer to triumphalism. Kazakh intellectuals tend to rest assured that in this ethnic rivalry the Kazakh side will win out without taking recourse to extreme measures. The decisive factor of time is on their side.

The sanguine view of the Kazakh researchers goes against the grain of most Western and Russian analyses, which in later years have been predicting growing interethnic and intraethnic tension in Kazakhstan. In fact, the demographically argued tranquillity scenario of the Kazakh expertise may easily be stood on its head. If the Russophones are feeling that they are gradually loosing (demographic and political) strength vis-á-vis the titular nation, they may conceptualize the situation as a closing window of opportunity. They will have to act before it is too late. They must make a last-ditch defence before they become so numerically and politically weakened that they are no longer in a position to stem the ongoing Kazakhification. Indicatively, in 1993 a Cossack deputy to the Kazakhstani Supreme Soviet, Viktor Vodolazov, saw the equal strength of the two main cultural groups in Kazakhstan as one of the basic preconditions explaining the virtual absence of ethnically motivated bloodshed in country. As long as neither group can hope to prevail over the other, both will be inclined to compromise and accommodate, Vodolazov believed. This analysis may be read as a warning against what might come if the demographic equilibrium is upset.

In a conversation with the author in September 1996 Murat Arenov, director of the Analytical-informational Centre in the Kazakhstani parliament, expressed a higher degree of concern for the future than the optimism that permeates most of the written Kazakhstani debate on ethnic relations. Both the present ethnic balance and a disturbance of this balance might undermine the social peace, he believed.

'In Kazakhstan today, Russians and Kazakhs are engaged in a constant competition in all social spheres, in administration, science, culture, business, and language', Arenov asserted. As long as the ethnic balance is retained, both parties will keep a high alert. ‘When a struggle between two equal rivals are taking place, both sides will feel that they have enough strength left and they will not yield to the other side.’ At the same time, Arenov admitted that ‘when this demographic balance is disturbed, the situation can of course lead to increased tension.’

***

At least three levels of the Kazakhstani nation-building debate may be distinguished, and different varieties of the concept of the 'nation' dominate on each of them. Perhaps the Kazakhstani nation concept may be compared to an iceberg: the official documents and the presidential speeches make up the small tip that protrudes above the surface and is visible from afar. In these statements a supraethnic nation-state with few special rights for the titular nation is proclaimed. Less known is the thinking on nation-building which enfolds in the Kazakh language press and in the academic journals. This takes place, as it were, in the murky depths of the ocean. Here, ethnic cultural renaissance and political nation-building are often commingled.

If this description is correct, a question naturally arises: How are these three levels of the debate related to each other? In particular, what is the position of president Nazarbaev himself with regard to the ethnocentric nation concepts published in such semiofficial organs as Saiasat? Does he approve or disapprove, prod or restrain? Are his official pronunciations only some kind of pokazukha, or smoke screen, intended for foreign consumption, while the true objectives of the nation building are expressed by his lieutenants? Are the vicissitudes and the disparate view-points that may be observed at the top the result of a cynical 'division of labour' - the bad guys scare while the good guys soothe? Or do they express genuine pluralism and real power struggles in the leadership?

Not being privy to the deliberations of the Kazakhstani presidential team, I have no definite answer to these questions. My tentative answer can be no more than an exercise in informed speculation. It should be noted that even those who have had a chance to discuss such matters with Nazarbaev personally are often at a loss to understand his real motives. The Lad leader Mikhail Golovkov has related to me how he for hours had been discussing the plight of the Russophones with the president, believing that he had gained Nazarbaev's sympathy and support, only to learn shortly afterwards that policies contrary to those which the president seemingly had endorsed during their discussions, were being initiated.

Two pitfalls of interpretation must be avoided. On the one hand, we should not see Nazarbaev as the mastermind of a Grand Conspiracy, and on the other, not as a benevolent but isolated and powerless 'little father' - the batiushka tsar'. These two archetypal myths, of which Russian and Soviet history is replete, are standard, opposite grassroots interpretations by which the common man tries to fathom what is going on 'up there'. Applied to contemporary Kazakhstani affairs, however, I believe that, while both views are caricature exaggerations, the former is somewhat less removed from the real world than the latter. This conclusion is based on my general understanding of Kazakhstani politics. Having twice dissolved the parliament and promulgated a new constitution tailor-made to a strong presidency, Nazarbaev does not seem to be anybody's puppet or a powerless figurehead. He is free to appoint anyone he wants and dismiss those in his entourage who should have the temerity to pursue an agenda of their own.

In the first years after independence Nazarbaev owed his strong position partly to the fact that he enjoyed the support of the vast majority of the Russophones. They saw him as a clearly preferable alternative to nationalist Kazakh groups such as Azat, Alash, and Zheloqsan. Today, these and similar groups are completely marginalized, and many Russophones have withdrawn their support for Nazarbaev, seeing him as in the last resort responsible for the on-going Kazakhification of the country. As expressed by a Lad leader, Alexandra Dokuchaeva: 'You all remember the fairy-tale of the good, just tsar and the negligent, ill-intentioned boyars. Only our "boyars" have been placed there by the president himself.' Trying to locate the source of the excessive renaming of Russian toponyms in Almaty, which, as we saw, Nazarbaev had scathingly criticized in his June 1994 address, a Russophone journalist in Karavan concluded that the culprit(s) must be found 'very high up' in the hierarchy.

Both the 1993 and the 1995 Kazakhstani constitutions granted the president the right to appoint a certain number of members to the national parliament, the socalled gosspisok list. A semiofficial Kazakh scholar has claimed that this provision was made in order to ensure that the parliament would heed the interests of the national minorities. Allegedly, the appointed president's men would valiantly defend the non-Kazakhs against possible nationalistic onslaughts from the side of the popularly elected MPs. However, the record of the presidential appointees is a mixed one. In December 1994, president Nazarbaev asked the parliament to carry out a preliminary vote on four nationality related issues under reconsideration in the new Constitution. Among the presidential nominees a majority voted against the introduction of two state languages, a priority Russophone demand. Even more startlingly, two thirds of the gosspisok group did not want to delete from the constitution the clause defining Kazakhstan as 'the form of statehood of the selfdetermining Kazakh nation'. Less than 20% of the gosspisochniki supported this motion, as against 37.7% among the total number of MPs. This voting pattern shows that, although there certainly may be differences of opinion within the presidential team, one should not expect this team as a group, or the president himself, to be necessarily staunch defenders of a civic, non-nationalist nation-building concept in Kazakhstan.

Why then, was the reference to 'the selfdetermining Kazakh nation' nevertheless deleted in the 1995 constitution? I have no clear answer to this, but a reasonable conjecture will be that in the contemporary Kazakhstani political context such an constitutional clause is expendable. The Kazakhification of Kazakhstan may proceed unabatedly also without it.