The “decolonization” of Kazakh youth

40% of people between the ages of 18 and 29 state that they always speak Kazakh, with their family and in all environments, but in those over 60 this percentage drops to 25%. And many ironically say that Putin has done more for the Kazakh language in one year than Nazarbaev in 30 years.

Astana () – With the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the term “decolonization” has become very fashionable in many former Soviet countries, which basically indicates the de-Russification of the former Soviet republics, which are less and less willing to remain under the control of Moscow. Especially the younger generations, who have not breathed the air of the old regime, increasingly reject the use of the language of the old masters. The Kazakh section of the BBC carried out a very significant investigation between them.

Kazakhstan is perhaps the country where the issue is most raw, as twenty-year-old Mira Ungarova recounts, who is now ashamed of how much she wanted to learn the Russian language well in primary school so as not to “look like a kazačka,” the term derogatory with which the Russians call Kazakh girls. For her, everything changed in 2019, when the eternal president-patron Nazarbaev left office: “For me and for people my age it was really a shock, and we began to think that something could change in our country.” Today Mira is one of the thousands of activists who fight for the “recovery of national identity.”

Of the 20 million inhabitants of Kazakhstan, there are about 6 million Russian-speakers, who live mostly in the big cities. People over the age of 30 speak Russian fluently, albeit ungrammatically, while younger people no longer want to learn it. Today Russian-speaking Kazakhs are also called Nedokazakhs, “not quite” Kazakhs, who have lost touch with their roots and culture.

After the Second World War, by order of Stalin, higher education in Central Asian countries could only be taught in Russian and “in the 1970s and 1980s, educated people were only those who spoke Russian,” explains the young researcher. Aynaš Mustojapova, author of the book “Decolonization in Kazakhstan”. This led not only to a “colonial mentality” but also to “self-alienation” as Kazakhs were ashamed of their culture, Aynaš says.

Now everything is changing rapidly and surveys and polls show a great demand for the Kazakh language, both in education and in social life. This can be seen, for example, in the increasing popularity of Kazakh-language TV shows and movies: The second episode of the American blockbuster “Avatar” was seen almost exclusively in the local-language version. According to the “Friedrich Albert” sociological foundation, 40% of people between the ages of 18 and 29 state that they always speak Kazakh, in the family and in all environments, while from the age of 60 this percentage drops to 25%. of the citizen.

Precisely the world of art and entertainment has become one of the privileged fields for the recovery of identity, such as the great popularity of the very young singer Sayagul Birlesbek, who combines the popular song of the ancient nomads with the rhythms and melodies of contemporary folk music. Filmmaker and painter Suinbike Suleymenova, 30, remembers the repressions against her great-grandfather, accused of Kazakh nationalism, to the point that her grandfather came into the world in a concentration camp for “traitors to the homeland.” Sayagul’s parents, a sculptor and a musician, spoke almost no Kazakh, and she herself has come a long way of rediscovering her true nature since she painted the painting “I am a Kazakh” in 2012.

Kazakhs ironically claim that Putin has done more for the Kazakh language in one year than Nazarbaev in 30 years. With the invasion of Ukraine, the need for decolonization is imperative and the issue is being discussed more and more in all media, public and private. For the Kazakhs it is clear that the motivation for the horrors of war is mainly the imposition of the language, the only real reason for conflict between Russians and Ukrainians in the Donbass territories in recent years.