On Track to a Kazakh Spring?

Nursultan Nazarbayev reigned over Kazakhstan’s destiny for 30 years. He will be remembered for a form of “enlightened authoritarianism” that made his country quite visible on the international scene, and in particular for his championing of global denuclearization. He will also be celebrated for being among the few leaders to have held power for three decades without either dying in office or leaving power in the face of street protests – compare Nazarbayev’s March 19 resignation with the reluctance showed by Abdelaziz Bouteflika in Algeria and Omar al-Bashir in Sudan at the same time.

But Nazarbayev’s legacy will be darkened not only by a poor track record of democratization and political institutionalization, but also by the mismanagement of the transition since his resignation in March.

Nazarbayev’s decision to leave the presidency of his own volition is quite unique in the post-Soviet space, where presidents tend to be ousted by “color revolutions” (as in Ukraine, Armenia, Georgia, and Kyrgyzstan) or die in power (as in Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan). The trick here is that leaving the presidency does not mean leaving power: Nazarbayev remains the head of the Security Council and of the presidential party, Nur Otan, and also leads the newly created “Office of the First President.” He will continue to cast a long shadow over Kazakhstani politics, a reality reinforced by the strong administrative and financial positions occupied by his family members, especially his oldest daughter, Dariga, who is the incumbent chairwoman of the Senate. Nazarbayev thus managed to pull off a double feat: Winning prestige and respect by leaving the presidency peacefully while securing his position probably for life thanks to his continued functions.

Miscalculations of a Pseudo “Denazarbayefication”

The “denazarbayefication” of Kazakhstan will therefore be a long process that will unfold in at least three steps. Step one was leaving the presidency and announcing snap elections for his dauphin, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev; step two will be reigning in parallel with Tokayev, thereby giving Kazakhstan a diarchy perhaps similar to the “tandemocracy” with which Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev toyed between 2008 and 2012; and step three will come when Nazarbayev someday disappears from the scene and the president in power at that time finally becomes the only one. In this still uncertain trajectory, a fourth step could be envisioned: Tokayev could be elected as president for a few years until Dariga, whose political ambitions have never been a secret, can secure enough stature to get elected herself. In that case, Kazakhstan would become a dynastic republic – like its neighbor Azerbaijan – with an interregnum under Tokayev. Yet to date public opinion has shown no support for the former president’s daughter.

Nazarbayev’s well-choreographed strategy has not unfolded smoothly so far. Although Tokayev was elected with 71 percent of the vote in the June 9 poll, this came against a backdrop of serious protests against the handpicking of Nazarbayev’s successor and accusations of a falsification of the vote.

The first protests began just after Nazarbayev announced his resignation, when Tokayev proposed renaming Astana, the capital city, to Nur-Sultan, after the president. Twenty years of laborious branding strategy directed toward making Astana a name with global recognition were reduced to ashes in a few minutes by a “cult of personality” decision. Almost immediately, protesters took to the streets of the capital under the slogan “Nur-Sultan is not my city.” In the weeks that followed, and as the country prepared for the June election, protest sentiment grew steadily, with several thousand protesters turning out in both Almaty, the old capital, and Nur-Sultan, the new one, chanting slogans such as “Old man out!” (shal ket!). The authorities decided to react with repression: Several legal prosecutions and arrests of leaders have taken place since March and on June 18 Kazakh authorities said nearly 4,000 people were arrested over the five days of protests surrounding the election. The result is a clear sign that the change of president was in no way a change of regime, a transition toward democracy, or any kind of liberalizing perestroika.

Now the authorities find themselves in a difficult position. Engaging in more repressive measures could create an escalation scenario that would be risky for the government, which needs social consensus to sustain its rule. There is no way to artificially boost support for the regime: The election, seen as a done deal before election day, pulled in only a 55 percent turnout. The co-opted opposition – the pro-business party Ak Zhol, the Communist People’s Party of Kazakhstan, and the Assembly of People of Kazakhstan representing ethnic minority groups – cannot be transformed overnight into something genuinely pluralistic. The country’s economic situation is stagnant, with no hope for a rapid rise in standards of living that would underpin a new social contract. Moreover, Kazakhstan is not Russia; it cannot generate a patriotic rally-around-the-flag effect based on some external threat. The regime will therefore have to wade into uncharted territory to address public dissatisfaction and disillusionment, risking political confrontation along the way. Whatever the future of the protests, they mark a significant point in the country’s history – there will be a before and an after.

Kazakhstani Youth: A Brief Sociological Sketch

Even if we have seen a large number of retired people, especially mothers, taking advantage of the current unstable environment to express resentment in the streets, most of the current protesters are young people. Who are the youth of Kazakhstan? What do they think about and what do they wish for? What are their social and cultural practices and behaviors? How do they see the world and Kazakhstan’s place in it?

Half of Kazakhstan’s population was born after Nazarbayev took power three decades ago: Those under 29 now comprise 9 million Kazakhstani citizens, or 51 percent of the population. This Nazarbayev Generation has no direct memory of the Soviet period, only family recollections, though many of them do recall their parents’ struggles in the difficult first decade of the country’s independence. Since the early 2000s, they have lived in a world of political stability and relative material affluence, developing a strong consumerist culture. Even with growing government restrictions on media, religion, and formal public expression, they have been raised in a comparatively free country.

As our edited volume Nazarbayev Generation: Youth in Kazakhstan (Lexington, September 2019) discusses, Kazakhstan’s youth are quite conformist in their life goals. They believe in family values, marriage, having children, healthy living, and material comfort. They are not attracted to a quest for knowledge and see higher education only as a tool for getting a good job; they trust that having the right social connections will help them build their lives and careers. They are far from a revolutionary generation: They do not challenge their parents’ values and ways of life, trust family more than any other institution, and overwhelmingly (more than 90 percent) view their relationships with their parents positively.

They nonetheless differ from older cohorts in some respects. They are more individualistic and believe in their uniqueness; they are more positively disposed toward elements of a market economy, such as a private sector, entrepreneurship, and a banking system; they display greater respect for individual success; and they are less troubled by social inequality and less supportive of state efforts to address it. They are thus very much the children of the economic liberalism that has shaped independent Kazakhstan.

Kazakhstani youths’ support for economic liberalism does not translate into specific support for a democratic regime or liberal values. They are significantly less likely to express support for democracy than previous generations or even their generational counterparts in Kyrgyzstan. Less than a quarter of young adults aged 18 to 29 believe that citizens should be more active in questioning the actions of leaders, compared to 87 percent of the population as a whole. Several surveys confirm how low altruism and participation in citizens’ initiatives fall on youths’ lists of priorities. They are quite happy with society as it is: Women, ethnic minorities, and religious people are considered to have sufficient rights. Just as they are not actively pro-democracy, youth are not especially attracted to so-called “Western values.” They favor a unique path for Kazakhstan and see the Russian model as the next best thing, ahead of the European, U.S., or Chinese models. They believe in a state that delivers public services and protects basic individual rights, but not in today’s Western multiculturalism and promotion of differences.

In terms of national identity, youth display a complex combination of civic and ethnic identities. This reflects well Kazakhstan’s ambivalent nationhood, which balances the promotion of an inclusive Kazakhstani identity focused on prosperity with a Kazakh-centric identity that celebrates Kazakhstan as the homeland of ethnic Kazakhs. Raised with this ambivalence, youth echo its main features: Ethnic identity continues to be most authoritative, but references to Kazakhstani identity are on the rise. Even if youth do not spontaneously identify as Kazakhstani, they show strong patriotism, believing in the country, seeing their future in it, and supporting an inclusive definition of the nation based on territorial identity. Yet this Kazakhstani identity does not take form as the kind of Kazakh-Russian/Slavic compromise expressed by the state-backed Eurasianist ideology. The nonethnic identity that emerges is more a result of globalization and cosmopolitanism than of allocating a specific position in Kazakhstani nationhood to Russia.

The symbolic identity battle will thus be between a closed, isolationist Kazakh identity and an open, globalized Kazakh identity – with the median Russian/Slavic/Eurasian level now only one of many elements of a globalized Kazakh identity. For the Nazarbayev Generation, finding the right balance between cultural authenticity and globalization is a central question. Indeed, the youth finds itself quite divided on critical components of identity. The norms of “Kazakhness” are still in the process of being defined and several contradictory trends create points of contention. In a very diverse youth ecosystem, nationalism occupies a larger space than for older generations. Symptomatically, part of the Nazarbayev Generation can also be described as the “Q-generation,” where Q stands for Qazaqstan, the romanization of Kazakhstan per the Latin alphabet the government adopted. Through this highly symbolic change of letters, the Q-generation is making a strong statement in support of Kazakhstan moving away from Russia, turning toward Asia, and embracing its allegedly unique features.

More than previous age cohorts, the Nazarbayev Generation is polarized on many of its norms, behaviors, and values. This polarization is especially pronounced on issues related to so-called “national traditions,” chief among them gender issues, because of the need to navigate contradictory cultural pressures. On the one hand, Kazakhstan has been retraditionalizing gender roles; on the other hand, young people have become accustomed to cultural products from abroad in which traditional gender identities are challenged or transgressed.

Moral conservatism dominates the youth. Homosexuality is understood as a deviance and disapproved of by 60 percent of ethnic Kazakhs (45 percent of ethnic Russians), with one-third neutral and only 3.4 percent approving. Two-thirds of Kazakhstan’s youth oppose abortion and think it should be illegal or authorized only for medical reasons. Preference is given to a traditional vision of the family. The value codes espoused by youths depend on whether they are urban or rural, whether or not they are accustomed to traveling abroad and being in contact with foreigners, and the regional contexts from which they come. Globally, ethnic Kazakhs are more conservative than ethnic Russians, and rural dwellers more so than urbanites.

Religion is not directly associated with the retraditionalization of gender norms, even if it is connected for those who link gender identity to Islamic norms. On that matter, too, the Nazarbayev Generation is more polarized than their elders, with some groups advancing clear secular values and others promoting a more religious sensibility. A sizable majority of young people (80 percent) consider themselves religious, would like to see religion play a bigger role in the country, and would welcome more religious education, but do not actively take part in any religious practices. Religious identity is growing faster than religious practice: Halal food and Islamic fashion have become “trendy” for part of the youth. These new urban codes are particularly widespread among the middle classes involved in the private sector, for whom a bourgeois Islam goes hand in hand with advancing Islamic business ethics and copycatting patterns inspired by globalized Emirati-style entrepreneurs.

Jana Qazaqstan or Oyan, Qazaqstan?

What will be the political future of youth in Kazakhstan in the (quasi-)post-Nazarbayev era? Two ideological lines have emerged: a nationalist-minded – or, as it is often called, national-patriotic – opposition, and a more liberal one. The first, which emerged as Jana Qazaqstan (New Kazakhstan), formally disbanded on June 20, but will probably remain an influential trend even without that structure; the second, Oyan, Qazaqstan (Wake Up, Kazakhstan), continues so far to grow.

Since the early 2010s and more visibly since the 2014 Ukraine crisis, the Kazakhstani regime has discreetly ceded the floor to nationalist figures who have progressively integrated into the regime’s hierarchy, especially in the media and cultural realms. Protected by Nazarbayev, they have been able to become more vocal on issues such as resistance to Russian language, culture, and media influence, pushing an agenda of linguistic Kazakhification, state-sponsored media productions, cultural heritage promotion, debates about the controversial famine of the 1930s (Asharshylyk, the Kazakh equivalent of the Ukrainian Holodomor), the planned shift to the Latin alphabet (slated for 2025), and more.

With the help of some patrons inside the system, this group – led by Amirzhan Kossanov and his recently disbanded movement, Jana Qazaqstan – negotiated the status of a “nonconfrontational” opposition. Key figures in the movement also included Nazira Darimbet, Aidos Sarym, and Rasul Zhumaly. Kossanov has a long history of political opposition, having worked with former Prime Minister Akezhan Kazhegeldin (now in exile) and then for the more nationalist Azat party. On June 9, he secured the highest vote share of any opposition candidate in the history of independent Kazakhstan: 16 percent. Yet he undermined his legitimacy as opposition by recognizing Tokayev’s victory without even trying to leverage the votes he had won to secure a voice in the new government. This gesture largely contributed to the movement’s flagging credibility and pushed the decision of its leadership to disband.

This disappointing post-electoral performance may confirm that this nationalist movement does not yet constitute a genuine opposition but remains more of a lobby within the current political system. If true, such a reality would hardly be unique to Kazakhstan: In neighboring Russia, nationalists have likewise experienced a “managed” relationship with the authorities that sometimes allows them to be vocally critical but more often leaves them as part of the rank-and-file supporting the government.

Jana Qazaqstan’s posture, and that of the national-patriotic sentiment it sprang from, thus highlights the limits of the national-patriotic opposition: Beyond defending ethnic Kazakhs’ rights, its ability to advance a credible political agenda seems quite modest so far. The movement’s political program limited itself to principled statements about democracy, ethnocentric Turkic solidarity, leaving the Eurasian Economic Union, criticizing China, and so on, but remained vague on concrete economic and political reforms (except private land ownership) and sound foreign policy measures. Moreover, while nationalist topics are on the rise among youth, the very limited social media presence of Jana Qazaqstan called into question its ability to develop broader strategies for securing support among both the urban and, to an even greater degree, the rural population.

Another, more liberal direction of political opposition emerged during the protests under the slogan Oyan, Qazaqstan – a direct reference to the nationalist movement of the early 20th century, Alash Orda, which fought against Russian colonial domination, and to one of its main poets and activists, Mirjaqip Dulatuli. Since then, Oyan has become a better-structured movement that has taken the lead of protests by myriad smaller, decentralized groups.

Oyan, Qazaqstan checks all the boxes of a classic example of urban liberalism among the middle and upper classes. It is most prevalent in the two capitals, Almaty and Nur-Sultan, with less representation in provincial cities and probably no footholds at all in rural Kazakhstan. It brings together several leading figures, each of whom act in their own way, through social media, flashmobs, street art, and so on. It relies heavily on social media: Rooted in an Instagram campaign, it has originated several popular hashtags, including #QazaqKoktemi (“Kazakh spring”) and #MenOyandim (“I woke up”), as well as the famous rallying cry “You cannot run from the truth,” displayed on the sidelines of a marathon in Almaty just after Nazarbayev’s resignation. Among the movement’s main figures, one can mention the pro-democracy activist Dimash Alzhanov, the artist Saule Suleimenova and her daughter Suinbike Suleimenova, the pop producer Anuar Nurpeisov, and Beybarys Tolymbekov, who originated the slogan “You cannot run from the truth.”

Around this group are dozens, if not hundreds, of young activists involved in a vibrant “hipster” culture that has thus far mobilized around issues of urban management – from waste and traffic jams to new buildings and heritage preservation – and issues of environmental protection. Since the beginning of the protests, urban and environmental issues have been supplemented by more political slogans around the notion of fair elections, the right to free speech and demonstration, respect for the constitution, stopping illegal arrests, and so on. As Kassymkhan Kapparov, an economist and member of the movement, explained in answer to my questions, Oyan “has a focus on promoting universal democratic values and human rights. There is no political agenda other than changes to the current political system that would allow the exercise of such rights.”

Contrary to the national-patriotic side of the spectrum, this trend is more liberal and cosmopolitan, seeking to articulate Kazakhness with globalization and ready to take from the West without “becoming” the West. A small but active segment of youth is indeed devoted to creating a modern Kazakh culture that would be detached from Soviet legacies and Russian cultural influences, in tune with global trends, and connected to and inspired by Asia – be that South Korea, Japan, Singapore, or Malaysia. A whole range of artists are now using art, and especially street art and performing arts, to create a new public space for the discussion of topics usually considered too sensitive, from historical memory and identity to gender and corruption. Even if focused on issues related to democratization and human rights, it would be premature or excessive to label Oyan, Qazaqstan a pro-Western movement, as it is mostly centered on domestic issues with no foreign policy strategy. Its political agenda is more or less clear: A parliamentary democracy, reform of the judicial system, the election of local akims to develop local governance, and the demonopolization of the economy.

Some of the Oyan, Qazaqstan leaders, such as Alzhanov, were trained in Europe and may thus be able to connect with the famous Bolashak generation, those educated in Western institutions thanks to the Bolashak state-funded program who now constitute the country’s rising elite in the state administration and big public and private firms. But the trend of being educated abroad is broader than just the Bolashak cluster: In 2018, almost 90,000 Kazakhstani students studied abroad, mostly in Russia (69,000), followed by Kyrgyzstan (almost 5,000) and then Turkey, the United States, the U.K., and the Czech Republic. The values and worldviews of this generation remain to be studied in depth, but one might suspect that they will come up with an original combination of national and globalized features and leave their mark on the country in the years to come.

The last two or three months of protests have crystallized two main trends: Jana Qazaqstan (and whatever new association emerges in its place) and Oyan, Qazaqstan. On one side, the national-patriots have been trying – and thus far failing – to become agenda-setters inside the system; on the other, the more cosmopolitan and liberal groups active in the streets and on social media have been trying to influence the system from the outside. This puts on display two possible directions for a future, post-Nazarbayevian Kazakhstan and challenges the current political setup, which does not allow for widespread public participation in decision-making at all levels. Both groups push for a more nationalist, Kazakh-centric agenda, although one is more isolationist and backward-looking and the other more cosmopolitan, globalized, and forward-looking; one is focused on cultural rights and the other on more universal political rights. They also differ in generational terms: Jana Qazaqstan’s core constituency is in their 40s and 50s, while Oyan, Qazaqstan is a genuinely Millennial movement.

Uncharted Political Territory

Intended to be a well-orchestrated, smooth transition of power – or, to put it more precisely, a change of president without a change of regime – Nazarbayev’s resignation and its aftermath have in fact brought about exactly the opposite. The transition has propelled Kazakhstan into uncharted political territory and given rise to an unaccustomed political conflict between the authorities and the population. While the neighboring Putin regime in Russia has been working for years to manage the rights-based demands of its rising urban middle class, Akorda (the Kazakhstani presidential administration) has had no experience in this realm. Both the 2011 workers’ protests in Zhanaozen and the land reform protests in 2016 were riots that originated among the provincial population, not the privileged urban world that has benefitted so much over the past two decades from rising standards of living. Times have changed, and the resignation of the “leader of the nation” – a title Nazarbayev was given in 2010 – has suddenly opened up a space for the middle classes to express their resentment on issues that are now more political than ever.

The geopolitical context in which such transformations have taken root is also conducive. Russia’s youth and middle classes have faced the same blast of social activism. The interaction between external and domestic opposition is likewise quite similar to the Russian case. While both Kazakh oligarchs in exile in Europe, Mukhtar Ablyazov (the number one enemy of the Nazarbayev regime) and Akezhan Kazhegeldin, are trying to support the protests and to be associated with them – just as Mikhail Khodorkovsky is hoping to accelerate Putin’s fall from abroad – they are not the hidden hands behind them. Closer to Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, long “frozen” under Islam Karimov, is now on the move, with deep societal transformations and a genuine liberalization of the public space. China’s policy of mass internment of Uyghurs and other Muslim ethnic groups in Xinjiang such as Kazakhs has created a domino effect with unknown consequences. China’s dangerous strategy has put Kazakhstan in an uncomfortable position and raised concerns among ethnic Kazakhs, especially those supportive of the Oralmans – Kazakh ethnic repatriates. Public figures such as Serikjan Bilash have raised their voices against Nur-Sultan's inaction in the face of the repression of its co-ethnics, compelling the authorities to arrest and detain such opinion leaders in order to avoid incurring the wrath of Kazakhstan’s larger neighbor.

For the second time since independence, Kazakhstani authorities may have to contend with a rising opposition, no longer the pro-Russian and pro-Communist one of the early 1990s, but that of the new urban middle classes born and stabilized during the long decade of oil-related prosperity. Many elements of Nazarbayevian Kazakhstan will not be dismantled any time soon: The country’s international status, its multivector foreign policy, its Singaporean-inspired style of development. All these ingredients, factors of the country’s success, will probably remain untouched, as they enjoy and generate popular consensus. Other issues are more contentious and destined to evolve with generational change: The relationship to Russia is more antagonistic for many young ethnic Kazakhs than for their elders and the social horizontal pressure for cultural Kazakhization – and, with it, the retraditionalization of gender roles and potentially increased status of Islam in the public space – is stronger. The lack of accountability of the authorities, especially at the local level, and the uncertainties around reforming public services such as health and education, which are increasingly privatized, form the core of a growing public dissatisfaction, even if corruption and patronalism will remain entrenched for several decades. It would be a nice twist of history if the Nazarbayev Generation were to be the one that ultimately accelerated the “denazarbayefication” of the country’s paternalistic political system.