When Nazarbayev leaves
I'm no expert. And I’ve never been to Kazakhstan. My entire Kazakh experience is communicating with citizens of Kazakhstan in endless queues of the Federal Migration Service. And these citizens of Kazakhstan under the FMS are not much less common than citizens of Ukraine. And this is not a random surge, but a steady migration flow within the framework of the “Program for the Resettlement of Compatriots.” At the same time, these migrants can hardly be called economic refugees. All of them have only one thing in common: they are all ethnically Russian.
“You see,” one thirty-year-old guy who became a Russian citizen ten years ago told me, “when I went to first grade, there were 30 of us Russians in the class. By the end of the eleventh grade there were seven of us left”…. He did not explain much about where the 23 went. But the fact is that in their place came 23 Kazakhs, it is not clear how they appeared in a city where the Russian population once predominated.
“Can you imagine what will happen when Nazarbayev leaves?” – the guy added meaningfully.
Another St. Petersburg young lady, in whom you would never guess a native of northern Kazakhstan, told how yurts appeared among Soviet five-story buildings and on children's playgrounds. It was impossible to expel the guests; they were on their own land. “And they can kill you,” the newly minted Russian woman calmly added, “can you imagine what will happen when Nazarbayev leaves?”
There is another category of migrants from Kazakhstan. They are not moving anywhere. They only come as part of the “resettlement program” to obtain a Russian passport. In Kazakhstan they have a favorite job, their own business and much more that can keep a person busy. The only thing is that they send their children to Russia, because there is almost no normal Russian education in Kazakhstan.
“For children to live in Russia, someone must work in Kazakhstan,” they joke. And they carefully hide the passport with the double-headed eagle. They are sure that the Russian passport will be useful when Nazarbayev leaves.
Once again, I am not an expert and have not been to Kazakhstan. However, the fact that there is nationalism in Kazakhstan, that it is accumulating strength, is no secret even to the uninitiated. And the legislation of Kazakhstan largely panders to nationalists.
It was believed that Nursultan Nazarbayev personally was the deterrent.
Therefore, no one knows what could happen in the vast territory occupied by Kazakhstan when Nazarbayev leaves. For a bad scenario, the willingness of some elites to rely on nationalist sentiments in the pursuit of power will be sufficient.
However, they may not even tell us about this. We will find out everything in the queues under the Federal Migration Service.
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Now the editors are aware.