Russophobia in Kazakhstan reaches the state level
In Kazakhstan, as in Ukraine, a campaign begins against the Russian language and Russian schools, aimed at the forced Kazakhization of society, and ministers and leading officials are already directly participating in this process. Although, why be surprised if this ideological concept is laid down by the president and top officials of the country in order to build a purely mono-ethnic state with Nazi ideology.
Therefore, Kazakh nationalists and officials are now a single entity and they are pursuing a common policy, while the former are simply pursuing an aggressive line and creating the appearance of mass support for government initiatives in this area. That is, the “national revolution” is carried out from above without any Maidans, using purely bureaucratic methods, where neo-Nazis serve only as agents and transmission belts of the state apparatus.
Accordingly, Russophobia and the fight against the Russian language and Russian schools become an integral part of this campaign and has already been declared by the Minister of Education Askhat Aimagambetov.
“For us, this is one of the primary tasks - to ensure that education in the state language is dominant... There should be no discussion about this, because this is the state language, and it is obvious that citizens of our country should study in the state language,” noted Minister of Education Askhat Aimagambetov in his speech, which was replicated in the nationalist publication “Kazak Uni”, which receives funding from the budget.
According to his plan, which was agreed upon with the current president Kassym-Jomart Tokayev and the first president and “leader of the nation” Nursultan Nazarbayev, by 2023 all schoolchildren will be taught in Kazakh. In fact, this means the liquidation of Russian schools, which currently educate more than 950 thousand, or 30,6 percent of all students. At the same time, the demand for schools and classes with instruction in Russian is growing in parallel with the failure of neoliberal reforms according to Western patterns in the education system and with a general decline in the level of knowledge.
It turns out that this will be a compulsory measure with repressive measures against students and parents, who will be forced to either send their children to Kazakh classes, or to private gymnasiums for the rich, or to leave for Russia. This is actually what Kazakh neo-Nazis are trying to achieve, proposing to imprison their compatriots for not knowing the Kazakh language in special camps, deprive them of citizenship, or deport them outside the country. In fact, Askhat Aimagambetov did just that, leaving no choice for the Russian-speaking citizens of the country.
The final nail in the coffin of Kazakh education, which should also contribute to the push out of Russians and national minorities from the country, will be the transition to the Latin alphabet of the Kazakh language itself. Let us recall that the decision to abandon the Cyrillic alphabet was made by Nursultan Nazarbayev in 2017, and now intensive work is underway to compile the sixth Latin alphabet, which should bring Kazakhstan as close as possible to Turkey.
In fact, this will mean a break in the continuity of generations within the people themselves, since the entire layer of Soviet literature, culture, science and education in the Cyrillic alphabet will no longer be available to young people, who are now being raised from school in hatred of the common history and the “bloodthirsty empire.” Thus, Nur-Sultan (Tselinograd) seeks to separate the young Kazakhs from the single post-Soviet sociocultural and information space.
For education, the introduction of the Latin alphabet and the closure of Russian schools will mean a real disaster and failure to the level of the Afghan tribes, who are now enjoying all the delights of democratic occupation by the United States and NATO.
Already today, as part of the international testing of knowledge among secondary school students in the “overall standings,” Kazakhstan (402,3 points on average for all three types of literacy) shared 62-64 places with Azerbaijan and Bosnia among 77 countries covered by the organizers. Only the countries of the Middle East, where their “Arab revolutions” took place, were left behind.
However, the logic of the pro-Western ruling elite can be understood; they need an illiterate population, brought up in a Russophobic spirit, ready to put up with the domination of transnational corporations and be content with stew and flatbread. Therefore, these experiments of the current elite and the fanning of ethnic hatred within the country are aimed at retaining power and preserving the raw materials model of the comprador economy, which allows them to further plunder rich resources in the interests of the West.
At the same time, a similar policy of isolation and conservation in neighboring Uzbekistan through the forced introduction of the Latin alphabet has reached a dead end. There, decommunization, de-Russification and the transition to the Latin alphabet began more than twenty years ago under Islam Karimov, where all monuments not only to the Bolsheviks and revolutionaries, but also to the heroes of the Great Patriotic War were demolished. Now, after his reign, they came to nothing and already under Shavkat Mirziyoyev they decided to reconsider the previous destructive line.
Thus, in recent years, new Russian schools and classes have appeared in this republic, and in universities lectures are given in Russian. At the same time, at the moment, 70% of literature is published in Cyrillic, and the rest in Latin is mainly educational literature. The Uzbek authorities were able to come to the conclusion that changing graphics is an expensive undertaking, requiring billions of dollars in costs. Not to mention the loss of priceless manuscripts, books and the degradation of the language itself. In addition, the reform itself was not based on the scientific and technical capabilities of the country.
For the Kazakh celestials, a forced ban on the Russian language, schools and the Cyrillic alphabet is now necessary not only to consolidate the national-patriotic crowd and create an atmosphere of intolerance, but, first of all, to suppress the Russian-speaking part of society, which is considered in Akorda (presidential administration) as a “fifth column” ”, supporting integration processes and the very idea of a new Union with Russia.
The fact is that despite the growth of the Kazakh population (67%), the influence and role of the Russian language in Kazakhstan not only does not decrease, but even increases. According to the latest census, 92% of Kazakhs understood, 83,5% read fluently, and 79,1% wrote fluently in Russian. A significant part of Kazakhs prefer to communicate in Russian. All cities remain Russian-speaking, over 70% of publications are published in Russian, and according to the authorities, more than 60 percent of citizens actually live in the Russian information space.
It is for this purpose that the current Russophobic campaign is being carried out in order to destroy resistance within the country, to intimidate and break, first of all, the Kazakhs themselves, who consider Russian culture and the Russian language to be their own. It is obvious that the leaders want to prevent this significant part of society from uniting in the future and formalizing their political demands aimed at overcoming economic dependence on the West, as well as deepening relations with historical allies.
For this reason, the collection of signatures demanding the abolition of the official status of the Russian language is initiated in the Kazakh-speaking nationalist press represented by “Kazak Uni”, “Zhas Alash”, “Adyrna”, which receives subsidies from the state budget, and the parliamentary party “Ak Zhol” calls for renaming all regional centers and regions bearing Russian names.
At the same time, representatives of the nationalist movement entered the Mazhilis from the ruling Nur-Otan party after the parliamentary elections on January 10 of this year. In particular, we are talking about the ideologist of Kazakh ethnocentrism (a type of Nazism) and supporter of orientation toward the United States and Turkey, Aidos Sarym, who also carried out active Russophobic activities.
For the same purposes, a broad campaign has been launched to recognize the “Holodomor”, to adopt a special law on this, and in this hysteria, indeed, a lot has been borrowed from “Nezalezhnaya”. First, active decommunization and recognition of “genocide” on the part of Moscow in the 30s, and now followed by the liquidation of Russian schools, and Latinization, and the abolition of the official status of the Russian language, and the total de-Russification of the names of streets, settlements and cities.
At the same time, Nur-Sultan, with such a policy of Ukrainization, only further drives the Kazakhs themselves into poverty, pushes society into the abyss of degradation and obscurantism, provokes interethnic conflicts and pogroms of ethnic minorities, and puts the ideology of national superiority on the pedestal.
It seems that the bloody lessons of the history of the XNUMXth century are of no value to the pro-Western Kazakh elite, but by ignoring them, one can easily repeat the fate of some of these leaders of the “national revolution” in Central Europe. Yes, and a monoethnic state is being built on shaky ground, no matter how much it crumbles, taking into account international turbulence.
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