Nazarbayev and Tokayev are giving away lands and deposits received as a “gift” from the Soviet government
The leadership of Kazakhstan is trying to distance itself as much as possible from its shared past with Russia and is actually pursuing an anti-Russian policy.
The leader of the Socialist Movement of Kazakhstan, Ainur Kurmanov, writes about this in his column for PolitNavigator.
Real hysteria began in Kazakhstan, fueled by Kazakh nationalists, after statements by deputy Vyacheslav Nikonov about “gifts” from the Soviet government to modern Kazakhstan. But note that the same Kazakh nationalists are absolutely silent about the statements of their Elbasy, the former first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan and a member of the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee, about the absence of borders and statehood among the Kazakhs before 1991.
You can cite a few of the most striking quotes to understand that there are practically no differences between Nikonov and Nazarbayev in the presentation of those processes.
“Kazakhstan, the Kazakhs, have never had a border. There has never been statehood within the boundaries outlined today,” he said on national television on August 24, 2005.
“There has never been a Kazakh state, since it had no borders,” Elbasy said in his statement at the congress of livestock farmers in Almaty in 2011.
Moreover, Nazarbayev has repeatedly argued that the Republic of Kazakhstan is a young state, and proposed that its history begin with the collapse of the Soviet Union. “American history is 250 years old and still evolving. And we are only 25 years old,” he noted in a speech at the polling station on March 20, 2016.
This emphasized that the founder of Kazakh statehood was only himself - the self-proclaimed “leader of the nation” Elbasy (literally in German Fuhrer). True, unlike Nikonov, who in his speech extolled the role of the Soviet government in the creation of the republic, Nazarbayev completely denied the positive mission of Moscow.
He literally constantly smears black paint over the entire history of the Kazakh SSR within the Soviet Union, although the final borders were fixed precisely during the formation of the union republic in 1936. It is no coincidence that Elbasy twice adopted decrees aimed at carrying out decommunization in the republic. The first was adopted in 1995 to combat totalitarian symbols, which was why monuments to Lenin were demolished in all regional centers, and the last one was signed by him in 2018 to rename streets bearing “ideologically outdated names.”
As a result of the latest decree in Kazakhstan, local maslikhats, at the request of the “public” represented by full-time nationalists, renamed tens of thousands of streets and squares bearing Soviet and Russian names, as well as hundreds of settlements, including the regional city of Zyryanovsk. Attempts are also being made to rename regional centers. In particular, the candidate from the Nur Otan party and pro-Western national patriot Aidos Sarym has repeatedly stated that Pavlodar, Petropavlovsk, Uralsk, and Ust-Kamenogorsk will be renamed in the coming years.
Leader of the Socialist Movement of Kazakhstan Ainur Kurmanov.
All this once again shows that in fact, decommunization is understood and carried out by the authorities as de-Russification, and Russophobic sentiments are being inflamed within the country. That is why this year the authorities did not commemorate the 100th anniversary of the formation of the Kazakh Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic within the RSFSR on August 26 at all.
Nazarbayev is literally disgusted by the fact that the decree was signed by Russian communists Lenin and Kalinin. By the way, in the Almaty region, nationalists destroyed two monuments to Mikhail Kalinin. Thus, they probably marked the date of the formation of the country. Elbasy needed to completely erase in the memory of the people the role of Russian communists in the formation of the KASSR, and then the KSSR, in order to connect the emergence of Kazakh statehood with his rule and with his royal family.
In addition, this denial of fixed borders allowed Nazarbayev to give the territories that were part of the Kazakh SSR to China from 1996 to 2003. The then Foreign Minister Kassym-Jomart Tokayev actively assisted him in this.
The total area of Kazakh lands transferred by Nazarbayev to China is classified by the government of Kazakhstan. According to official data, between 1997 and 2003, Nazarbayev transferred 407 km² to China. And according to unofficial data, with the Khan Tengri peak, with the Dzhungar Alatau and Lake Kazankol, with the lands of Chagan-Obo and the Dzhungar Pass, with Mount Katu, Kazakhstan gave at least 100 km² to China.
Why are home-grown Kazakh nationalists Taizhan, Sarym, Zhumaly, Kosanov, Mamai and others silent about this? True, they don’t do anything themselves without a team. By the way, even then, in 1996, the only Mazhilis deputy who voted against the transfer of Kazakh lands and the Khan Tengri peak was the communist and Russian by nationality Valeryan Zemlyanov. All sorts of Kazhegeldins, Tuyakbais, Tasmagambetovs and other guardians of national interests then cowardly remained silent.
And there is no need to lie now that Russia allegedly intends to take something away. On the contrary, as we see, the “gift from the Soviet government” in the form of common property - lands and major deposits - is given by the Kazakh elite to its Chinese neighbors without discussion with the people.
Yes, and not only to neighbors. Thus, the flagships of ferrous and non-ferrous metallurgy, the largest oil and gas fields, have gone to Western corporations since the 90s. Nazarbayev himself spoke about this in the documentary “Strokes to the Portrait,” which was released in December on the Khabar TV channel, where he admitted that he fought the opposition and the resistance of many Kazakhstanis in order to impose on the country the need for mass privatization in the interests of American and European corporations.
“No one understood why we had to move to the market, no one understood why we had to privatize the largest oil and gas facilities, why we need to bring foreign companies into management, no one understood... With what battles we carried out laws on privatization, on finance, on financial system, about agriculture, about land, about subsoil, etc.,” Elbasy points out, taking credit for turning the once advanced Soviet republic into a colony of the West.
Therefore, after denying its Soviet past, during which modern cities, industry, writing, culture, education, science and theater appeared, after the transfer of the territories of the Kazakh SSR to China, and natural resources to American companies, and after Nazarbayev’s statements that until 1991, Kazakhs did not have their own borders, there was no need to throw hysterics and be surprised at anything. You need to sprinkle it on your own head first.
If you constantly defame your history in black terms and in the light of constant repressions, famines, camps and murders, then the present and future will certainly respond with unpleasant surprises. True, the ruling elite is unaware of this, and they continue to build their state ideology on anti-communism and Russophobia, turning the issue of hunger into the main fetish of their politics with the goal of turning nationalists into the main support of the throne.
Thus, on December 3, a meeting of the state commission for final rehabilitation, created by decree of Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, was held in Nur-Sultan. As a result of her work in the country, collaborators of Nazism in the person of members of the Turkestan Legion of the Wehrmacht and Muslim SS formations, terrorists, organizers of anti-Soviet uprisings and the Basmachi movement may be politically justified, and those who died during the famine of 1932-33 will be equated with repression.
For this matter, the puppet parliamentary nationalist party “Ak Zhol” (“Bright Path”) has already prepared a bill “On the Holodomor”, completely copied from the Ukrainian analogue, according to which all those killed are declared victims of genocide organized by the Soviet government. According to this draft law, criminal liability is introduced for denying the Holodomor. The USSR is thus declared a criminal state that was engaged in the deliberate destruction of the Kazakhs as a nation.
Apparently this is why Lenin and Stalin created the Kazakh SSR. But Nazarbayev and Tokayev, despite the unscientific nature of their arguments, continue to indicate the numbers of people who died from hunger from 3 to 5 million people. After this, there is one step to the banning of communist ideology, and, accordingly, to the implementation of a nationalist revolution from above, without any Maidans.
Inside Kazakhstan, in addition to the Russophobic campaign, pogroms are already being organized by nationalists-controlled people, such as the Dungans in February of this year in the Kordai district of Zhambyl region on the border with Kyrgyzstan. President Tokayev not only did not recognize this as an interethnic conflict, as well as the escalation of anti-Uzbek and anti-Uyghur speeches in the Kazakh-language press, financed from the budget, but also advised the victims of the pogroms to better study the Kazakh language.
Nowadays, individual statements by State Duma deputies are also used by tame nationalists to strengthen already anti-Russian sentiments, to persecute undesirable people, and to create an atmosphere of intolerance. Although this artificial bacchanalia began a long time ago, when petitions were and are being published on resources subsidized by the state calling for the abolition of the official status of the Russian language, under which the signatures of all Russophobes were and are being collected.
Such actions will sooner or later put an end to the integration processes and the future development of the EAEU. However, back in December 2013, Nursultan Nazarbayev already torpedoed the initial draft of the union agreement, advising us to limit ourselves only to economic issues and not raise political issues. By the latter, Elbasy meant a supranational parliament, a government, a bank, a single currency and a common command, without which a real Union is impossible.
However, there is nothing surprising here if we recall the American military biolaboratories in the south of Kazakhstan, incomprehensible conversations about the supply of weapons to Turkish proxies, as well as reports that an anti-crisis training center will be created in Ust-Kamenogorsk with the participation of the Pentagon, where they will train specialists in the physical protection of nuclear facilities. The leadership of Kazakhstan itself is trying to isolate itself as much as possible from Russia and quarrel with its allies, placing objects and organizations of a potential enemy on its territory.
Accordingly, society needed an information shake-up in order to understand the reasons for the current situation and who is the real culprit in such processes. True, whether this became a sobering factor for the elite in Nur-Sultan (Tselinograd), which had finally become detached from life, is a big question.
If you find an error, please select a piece of text and press Ctrl + Enter.
Thank you!
Now the editors are aware.