KAZAKHSTAN-RUSSIA Astana, the Russians in the sister country

According to data from the Ministry of Migration, every day 7,000 people fleeing the war arrive in Kazakhstan. Almost all consider it a transitory stage. The story of those who, like the young historian Ivan Sokolovskij, try to integrate into Kazakh society.

Astana () – Kazakhstan remains one of the countries where Russians who do not want to fight in Ukraine and risk persecution for their anti-war positions go. For most of those fleeing the mobilization, Central Asia is only a stopover to countries in Europe, the United States or where their relatives are. But there are also some who are trying to integrate, like the young Russian historian Ivan Sokolovskij, who has been interviewed by Currenttime.tv.

Ivan was born in Moscow, graduated from the Institute of Asian and African Studies and his specialty is precisely the history of Kazakhstan. That is why he had studied Kazakh at the university and began to investigate the issue of the deportations of Poles, on which he later wrote his thesis. However, the examining commission considered his speech to be an expression of “Russophobia”, and when Putin announced the invasion of Ukraine, Ivan stood on a lone protest picket in front of the Foreign Ministry building, at the beginning of the central street Moscow Arbat.

He was arrested, fined, and the police raided the apartment where he lives several times. He claims that he is “against the colonial war and the Kremlin’s colonial policy, for which everyone suffers, both in the invaded territories and the population of the Russian Federation, and even the Russian capitalists.” Ivan soon realized that he could not stay in his country and moved to Almaty, where he works as a graphic designer in a Kazakh-language press agency, with a temporary residence permit. At the same time, he is preparing a thesis and trying to enter the University of Kazakhstan.

Sokolovskij explains that, as a historian, he is very interested in the chronicles of the persecutions in northern Kazakhstan, which Russian propaganda tries to sell as oppression against the Russians residing in those territories. In his opinion, it is a falsehood that the Kremlin spreads to support its colonial and imperialist projects: “In the north of Kazakhstan, people have always been nomadic and lived by herding, nobody has ever asked to build something or settle in a place fixed. The cities in this area are precisely the result of a colonial project to control the territory,” explains the young historian. “It was not a gesture of benevolence by the Romanovs, the Soviets or any other.”

According to data from the Migration Commission of the Ministry of Labor and Social Defense of Kazakhstan, every day about 7,000 Russians arrive in that country, and almost all leave within a few days. After two strong waves of immigration – one immediately after the invasion of Ukraine and the other after the announcement of the autumn mobilization – the situation has relatively stabilized, and even the “electronic mobilization” of the last few days has not significantly increased the entry of Russians into Central Asia.

The Kazakh authorities do not expect new large waves of emigrants from the neighboring country, especially due to changes in the legislation that regulates the rules of residence in Kazakhstan: the suppression of the visa-run, the extension of the legal stay in the country in function of travel times between bordering territories, and the consequent hardening of the border-run, the forced repatriation of a citizen without valid reasons for residence.

One of the problems of Russian immigrants in Kazakhstan, and in the other countries of Central Asia and the Caucasus, in addition to economic and political factors, is precisely their own ability to integrate and not create disturbances in social harmony. As Sokolovsky tries to do, whose skills in this regard are undoubtedly an exception but also a desire shared by many Russians: to live in peace in the brotherly country, without acting like an intruder or a conqueror.