Promoting the Kazakh world: Dmitry Shlapentokh describes Kazakhstan's attempts to please all sides in its approach to ethnicity, a process sped up by the recent violence.

• Author: Shlapentokh, Dmitry

While the Soviet Union was starting to show signs of disintegration by the late 1980s and finally fell apart, the process was approached differently by the different parts of the Soviet elite. From their historical perspective, the disintegration of the Soviet Union and its extended East European empire was similar to the disintegration of the colonial empires of European nations. In some cases, the colonies had acquired elements of common political identity, regardless of ethnic diversity, as was the case with India. The independence was in a way a natural process, despite the split between India and Pakistan, mostly along religious lines. Other states, mostly in Africa, were artificial constructions which embraced people of different ethnicities. They often had nothing to do with each other and, in some cases, Rwanda being one example, engaged in genocidal slaughter.

The same could be said about the Soviet Union. Some republics--for example those in the Baltics and Caucasus --have a strong sense of ethnic cohesiveness and/or tradition of statehood. In the case of other republics, this sense was weak, and the tradition of statehood was not as well developed. Kazakhstan belonged to the latter category. It emerged as a constituent republic of the Soviet Union only in the 1930s and even Kazakhs' identity was questionable, for both Kazakhs and Kyrgyzs actually had the same name before the revolution. In addition, the medieval Kazakh state was an amorphous body.

Additional problems emerged from Kazakhstan's multiethnic composition. It has a big Russian or Russian-speaking population. Apparently not sure that the country would survive on its own, Nursultan Nazarbayev, who emerged as the first Kazakh president, proposed a loose alliance with Russia in 1994. He also emphasised that Kazakhstan is a country not just of Kazakhs but also of Russians and other ethnicities. Here, Nazarbayev appealed to Eurasianism, the philosophical and political theory which emerged among Russian emigres in the 1920s.

While Eurasianism has many modifications, the kernel of the teaching was the same for all proponents of the creed. All Eurasianists believed that Russia is a unique civilisation based on the symbiosis of Slavs, historically Orthodox, and Turks, as other ethnicities of both Russia of the tsars and the Soviet Union. Mongols and their invasion, instead of being one of the greatest evils in Russian history, was transformed into being mostly beneficial for Russia, for the invasion and later what Russia called the 'Mongol Tatar yoke' actually helped Russians to live in peace with a variety of ethnic and religious groups. Nazarbayev eagerly embraced the creed at the beginning of Kazakhstan's existence as an independent state, as a way to reduce tension between Kazakhs and Russians, and between Kazakhstan and Russia. To demonstrate his attachment to Eurasianism, Nazarbayev even launched a university named after Lev Gumilev, whom many admirers called the 'last Eurasianist'.

Friendly relationship

As time progressed, Nur-Sultan (Astana) continued to emphasise its friendly relationship with Moscow in the context of a 'multi-vector' foreign policy. Kazakhstan officials also continued to emphasise that Kazakhstan was the place for all its citizens, regardless of their ethnicity and language. Still, problems with Russia and implicitly with ethnic Russians inside Kazakhstan emerged early on. To start with, quite a few Russians, especially those with nationalistic leanings, continued to believe that Kazakhstan was an artificial state, or at least that the huge northern part of the country, with a considerable indigenous Russian population, should not belong...