Kazakh and Russian history and its geopolitical implications.

• Author: Shlapentokh, Dmitry
• Position: ARTICLE

ABSTRACT In 2015, Kazakhstan celebrated 550 years of Kazakh statehood. The extraordinary interest in these events, both among Kazakh officials and some members of the international community, has a clear political message. It underscores Kazakhstan's independence from Russia regardless of Kazakhstan's entering the Eurasian Union in 2015. The celebration also underscores the fact that the borders of present-day Kazakhstan have historical roots and are not just a recent "gift" from Russia. Some Russians living in Kazakhstan, and even some ethnic Kazakhs, protested the 2015 interpretation of Kazakhstan history and the relationship it implies between Kazakhstan and Russia. Ironically, Moscow provided no help for these protestors, and actually helped Astana deal with the Russian Nationalists. The reason was simple: the rise of Russian Nationalism could create problems not just for Astana but also for Moscow.

In the fall of 2015, Kazakhstan officials celebrated the 550th anniversary of what they consider the beginning of their statehood. Not only was this sort of celebration unknown in the past, but the festivities were a major state event. They were broadly celebrated in Kazakhstan and had international implications as well, particularly in the United States. A movie related to the event was shown in Washington, and Kazakhstan officials in the U.S. made a special presentation related to a book on the beginning of Kazakhstan history in front of representatives of American officials and academics; the presentation was done in connection with the 550th anniversary of Kazakh statehood. This extraordinary interest of Kazakhstan officials in what seems to be a purely academic subject had clear political implications. Possibly one of the most important implications of the year-long celebration--definitely noted by the Kremlin--was the message sent to Moscow that Kazakhstan will follow its own policy regardless of Moscow's wishes and will deal harshly with those who challenge them. Several arrests in fall 2015 by Kazakh authorities targeted ethnic Kazakhs, who claimed that Russian and Kazakh history are closely integrated and that therefore Kazakhstan should be geopolitically and economically close to Russia. Kazakhstan police also arrested some ethnic Russians in Kazakhstan just for their belief that Northern Kazakhstan could be attached to Russia. Interestingly enough, Moscow not only ignored these ideological barbs wrapped in historiographic speculation, but actually helped Astana deal harshly with the Russian nationalists and engaged in its own harsh policy toward the Russian nationalists. Moscow's action was clear: catering to Russian nationalism is a dangerous undertaking and could harm not just Astana's, but also Moscow's interests.

Kazakhstan's First Year of Independence and Flirtation with Eurasianism

Like many other Central Asian nations, Kazakhstan was unsure about its fate as a new nation at the beginning of the post-Soviet era. After all, Kazakhstan has a large Russian-speaking population in the north, and the emerging post-Soviet Russia elite, even Yeltsin himself, clearly indicated that this land should belong to Russia. It became clear to Kazakhstan's President, Nursultan Nazarbaev, a pragmatic and sober politician, that irritating Russia would hardly be in the country's interest, and that the opposite geopolitical direction would be much more preferable. Consequently, Nazarbaev wanted to be close to Russia and proposed a loose alliance with Russia in the early 1990s under the ideological umbrella of "Eurasianism."

Eurasianism is a teaching that emerged in the 1920s among Russian emigres, based on the assumption that Russia is, in a way, a descendant of the Mongol Empire, which forged a political-cultural "symbiosis" of Orthodox Russians and minorities, the latter being predominately Muslims of Turkic origin. Eurasianism, with its tinge of "Sovietism," became quite popular in post-Soviet Russia and beyond, as the attraction of Western models declined. Still, most Kremlin occupants ignored "Eurasianists" in early post-Soviet history. The majority of the elites saw Russia as part of the West and ignored Central Asia as a useless heirloom of the Soviet past, hardly a major focus of Moscow's foreign policy. Indeed, Kazakhstan's proposal to build a loose alliance with Russia was basically ignored. It is true that during Evgenii Primakov's tenure as Russia's foreign minister and Prime Minister in the last years of the Yeltsin regime, some members of the Russian elite believed that Russia could build up an alliance with India and China. The "Eurasian" and anti-Western tilt was clear. Still, even here, Central Asia hardly emerged as a major interest for the Kremlin. Even for Putin, at least in the beginning of his term in 2000, Central Asia did not loom large as a geopolitical priority--Putin saw no problems with American military bases in Central Asia after the U.S. invaded Afghanistan and Iraq. In his first term, Putin was still basically a pro-Western leader and his priority was to forge strong ties with the West, if not with the U.S., at least with Central Europe. But by the beginning of Putin's second term, the situation had changed. Putin made it a major geopolitical priority to increase Russia's influence in the former Soviet space, mostly because Russia's attempts to be integrated with the West as an equal partner had become increasingly unworkable. At approximately that point in 2011, "Eurasianism" reemerged as a useful ideological tool.

Kazakhstan also reembraced "Eurasianism" at this time, but its interpretation was different: for Kazakhstan, Eurasianism implied not just the equal treatment of all states involved in a planned "Eurasian Union," but also freedom for each party to engage in relationships with other powers, even if these powers were at odds with each other. This was hardly Putin's plan. The Kremlin not only intimated that Russia should play the leading role in the Union but tried to preclude members of the union from forging "strategic" relations with other powers, especially those not on friendly terms with Russia. Moreover, the Kremlin hinted at the artificiality, not only of the present borders, but of certain post-Soviet states in toto, and intimated that these could disappear, with large chunks appropriated by Russia. In Ukraine, for example, Putin had asserted long before the present crisis going on that Ukraine should be dismantled; his support of East Ukrainian separatists indicated that this was not just talk.

In 2014, Putin noted that Nazarbaev was a great leader because he had created the state from scratch. (1) While this statement could be seen as a compliment to Nazarbaev, it had another, potentially ominous meaning. It implied that Kazakhstan was an artificial state and that Northern Kazakhstan could be taken by Russia. These statements coincided with problems in Northern Kazakhstan; this section of the country had a large Russian or Russian-speaking community, and was also, at least potentially, unstable. Astana took note of this development, which explains the extraordinary attention given to the reinterpretation of Kazakhstan's past and the celebration of what Astana called the 550th anniversary of the creation of Kazakhstan state as an event of grand importance, (2) and why deviation from the prescribed historical narrative became a serious crime. Astana's new ideological stand emphasized the deep historical roots of the Kazakhstan state and its historical geopolitical ways as being independent from Russia.

From Eurasianism to Kazakh Nationalism

Soviet/Russian versions of Eurasianism implied that the great Mongol Empire in the heartland of Eurasia had passed its torch to Russia, which picked up the legacy of the Mongol commonwealth over time. Kazakhstan was part of this legacy. Actually, Kazakhstan as a state did not have a place in this Russian narrative: it was simply dissolved in the Turkic world, which lived in a happy "symbiosis" with Russia. In this interpretation, which dominated postwar Soviet/Russian historiography, Kazakh received real statehood only recently when the Kazakh Socialist Republic was created as a constituent part of the USSR. This narrative implies that Kazakh statehood is a gift from "elder brother" Russia. First, the state itself was constructed by Moscow, a central power that was mostly culturally and linguistically Russian despite the presence of ethnic minorities among early Soviet leaders. Second, a large portion of the territory of modern Kazakhstan, notably the northern part, was Russian Siberia, "given" to Kazakhstan on the implicit condition of Kazakh geopolitical loyalty.

Kazakhstan official historians challenged in the 2000s or even before this vision of the past. To start with, they emphasized the emergence of an ancient civilization in the Asian heartland with Kazakhstan at its heart. A special place was allotted to the Turkic Khaganate, the ancient Turkic state. There are several reasons why the Khaganate became so important in the official narrative. First, it indicated that the Turkic civilization and states had emerged centuries before the rise of "Kievan Rus," (3) a loose configuration of Slavic tribes which Russian historians usually regard as the forerunner of Ukraine, Russia, and Belo-Russia. (4) The Khaganate embraced not just most of Northern Central Asia but a good part of Eastern Europe. Thus it was a true Eurasian empire, implicitly a progenitor of Eurasian civilization.

The rise of the empire of the Mongols and their descendants was the next phase in Kazakh history. In the new interpretation, most important was not space--as in traditional Eurasianism--but ethnicity. The Chingis Khan Empire and its descendants were basically Turkic states and transmitted their legacies not to imperial Russia but to the Turkic people of Central Asia; to be precise, the Mongol Empire transmitted its torch to the Kazakhs...