-Analysis-
In June, a court in the city of Ust-Kamenogorsk in eastern Kazakhstan sentenced two locals to five years in prison for separatism. The investigators said that, in February, the convicted individuals used the Chatroulette website to discuss the need to hold a referendum on the East Kazakhstan region’s secession from Kazakhstan. During the exchange, they called for a forceful seizure of the territory in case the referendum failed. The Prosecutor General’s Office of the Republic reported the separatism verdict without providing any further details.
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A week before, on June 6, Konaev (a city in the Almaty Oblast) resident Andrei Astakhov was found guilty of inciting social hatred and given three years in a penal colony for trying to contact Russian President Vladimir Putin. Astakhov had recorded a video asking the neighboring country’s leader for help because he was dissatisfied with the situation in Kazakhstan.
“Vladimir Vladimirovich (Putin), help us, save us. I think you will hear us,” Astakhov said in his video. He also threatened the Kazakh president and officials.
On May 30, 2023, the court issued a verdict on the Kazakh woman Tatyana Serebryakova, who used Chatroulette to ask an unknown man from Russia to take over Petropavlovsk. During a one-and-a-half-minute conversation in September 2021, she said “Take our Petropavlovsk for your own, like Crimea, the North Kazakhstan region.” Her interlocutor immediately posted the recording of the conversation online.
The investigation began two years later, when Serebryakova had already forgotten about it. The woman claimed in court that she had been joking, but she was charged with separatist activity and sentenced to three years of imprisonment in a medium-security facility. Serebryakova had been caring for her disabled husband, who was then appointed a social worker. Her 13-year-old daughter was handed over to child services.
Before and after Crimea
Pro-Russian sentiment in the north of Kazakhstan, a region in close proximity to their “big neighbor,” is not a recent phenomenon. From the moment the Kazakhstan gained independence, forces who wanted to seize part of its territory have periodically appeared, citing history, language and other factors, but none of their attempts found widespread support among the population.
After the collapse of the USSR, the Cossack movement was the vanguard of pro-Russian sentiment in the north and east of Kazakhstan – which, however, lost its power over time, and fragmented into many conflicting organizations.
One of the representatives of the Cossacks, who in Kazakhstan is called an “odious separatist” and organized the pro-Russian uprising in the Kokshetau region in 1996, was Ataman Viktor Antoshko. He reportedly fled to Russia after a failed rebellion, and until recently his fate was unknown.
Yet last spring an open letter to Putin appeared in the Omsk edition of independent news source BK55 on behalf of the Council of Atamans of the Cossack People, which asked Putin to grant Antoshko Russian citizenship via a simplified procedure.
The letter said that Antoshko had defended the rights of Russian-speaking residents of Kazakhstan, but the Republic’s authorities began to persecute him and his family members, forcing him to leave the country. All this time he had been living illegally in Russia territory.
“Only in April 2014, he traveled to Donbass to participate in the defense of Donetsk as part of the ‘Vostok’ brigade, in the post of Deputy Commander of the 6th company,” explained the authors of the letter.
Kazakh security officers thwarted another “Russian mutiny” in 1999. The National Security Committee then reported the arrest of 22 members of the Rus organization (12 of whom were Russian citizens) who were preparing to seize power in Ust-Kamenogorsk and declare a “Russian Republic.” The group was headed by Moscow resident Viktor Kazimirchuk. At the same time, local Russian organizations disowned the attempt at rebellion as well as Kazimirchuk, himself.
The conspirators were detained on the eve of then-President Nursultan Nazarbayev’s visit to the United States. The scandal that had so quickly erupted, suddenly subsided. The failed rebels received varying sentences. Kazimirchuk was sentenced to 18 years in prison, of which he served seven, and then returned to Russia. Over the following decade and a half, discussions about the “northern territories” of Kazakhstan abated. But the events of 2014 changed everything.
Fueling separatism
Kazakhstan did not and does not experience any fear in relation to the Crimean events, as President Tokayev stated in an interview with German media in 2019.
Nevertheless, in April 2014, less than a month after Crimea “returned to its native harbor,” Kazakhstan decided to toughen its punishment for calls for separatism. Deputies introduced this article in the draft of the new Criminal Code for its second reading (the document was initially considered without it).
For public calls for separatism, the amendments allowed up to 7 years of imprisonment; for propaganda – 10 years; and for actions against the inalienability of the state’s territory (for example, an attempt to organize a referendum) – 15 years.
Previously, only calls for a forceful change of territory were prohibited in Kazakhstan. Under the new code, the authorities were able to punish any agitation in support of separatism, including peaceful ones. “In my view, it would be better to talk about introducing criminal liability for separatism rather than [just] intensifying [this liability],” lawyer Dzhokhar Utebekov said of these amendments.
On August 24, 2014, Nazarbayev told the Khabar TV channel that if all languages except the state language were legally prohibited in Kazakhstan, the country could become a “second Ukraine.” A few days later, Putin made a statement that only increased fears that the Ukrainian scenario could be repeated in Kazakhstan.
In his memoir My Life. From Independence to Freedom, Nazarbayev wrote: “At a 2014 press conference Putin, addressing me with a warm response, said: ‘He created a state on territory where there had never been a state. The Kazakhs did not have statehood. In this sense, he is a unique person for the post-Soviet space and for Kazakhstan too.’ Of course, Putin expressed this to me as a compliment. I am sure that he was far from the idea of negating the history of the neighboring country. At the same time, it is true that the phrase ‘Kazakhs had no statehood’ can be understood in different ways. This statement caused a great stir in our country.”
Disagreements with the Kremlin
In the years following, Russian politicians and public figures would repeat this statement in different ways, each time causing a violent reaction among Kazakhstan’s people. At the end of last year, Russian deputy Evgeny Fyodorov even called Kazakhstan a territory of a “not entirely legal nature,” which prompted his Kazakh colleagues to suggest that he see a psychiatrist.
Although the Kremlin disowned the private opinions of deputies and insisted that Russia has no territorial claims against its neighbors, the Kazakh authorities reacted extremely nervously to every such attack directed at them, gradually tightening the screws and brutally suppressing such discussions on their own territory.
In the media of both countries, statements Russian politicians made about the “northern territories” alternated with the verdicts passed on those in Kazakhstan who supported them. These proceedings provoked new attacks from Russian public figures and mutual grievances reached new heights.
For example, in August 2022, a message appeared on the VKontakte (social media akin to a Russian Facebook) page of the Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council Dmitry Medvedev in which he called Kazakhstan an “artificial state.”
The post was deleted after a few minutes, and Medvedev said that his page had been hacked. However, literally the next day, the Petropavlovsk City Court decided to describe the details of the case of a married couple that had been convicted of separatism, although the case itself had been considered several months earlier.
The case concerned Evgenia and Elena Potopa from Petropavlovsk, who in December 2021 talked with a resident of Ukraine via Chatroulette, telling him that the North Kazakhstan region should go to Russia. In court, the couple insisted on their innocence, saying that they were simply provoked. Under the article on separatism, each was sentenced to five years in prison.
Nostalgia for the USSR
At the dawn of the country’s independence, ethnic Kazakhs made up about 40% of the population, approximately the same percentage as Russians. Now, the share of the titular ethnic group in Kazakhstan has exceeded 70% and continues to grow. This means that it is the Kazakhs who determine the social climate in the country and influence all public processes, including interethnic relations.
At the same time, some of the steps the Kazakh leadership have taken, such as giving cities and streets Kazakh names, are felt quite painfully by Russians, who find themselves in the minority but still make up a significant proportion of the population, especially in the north and northeast of the country.
Attempts to reinterpret the recent Soviet past are no less painful. This year, a new seven-volume book on the history of Kazakhstan is being prepared for release, whose authors “intend to bring attention to the negative phenomena of the Soviet period.” This work, undertaken on behalf of Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, will form the basis of all history textbooks in the republic.
Meanwhile, nostalgia for the Soviet past is a common sentiment of pro-Russian separatists in Kazakhstan. In December 2023, a resident was sentenced to five years in prison for her idea to restore the Soviet Union. The woman’s comment on an Instagram post, which depicted the demolition of a monument to Lenin in Altai in the East Kazakhstan region, was what prompted the investigation: “Sooner or later, East Kazakhstan will join Russia… and we’ll see where the other monuments fly off to. You did not install Lenin and it is not your place to remove him, especially in this way,” she wrote.
She was charged under the article on separatism. She fully admitted her guilt, expressed regret and stated that she loves Kazakhstan. The court granted the woman a five-year suspension of her sentence as she is raising two children (13 and 7 years old) alone.
Finally, the most high-profile trial in recent years was the that of participants of the self-proclaimed “People’s Council of Workers”: 19 residents of Petropavlovsk who came together and declared themselves “heirs of the USSR.” In March 2023, they held a meeting where they announced their non-recognition of modern Kazakhstan and disobedience to the authorities of the republic.
Footage from the meeting leaked onto the Internet, after which law enforcement officials drew attention to it. Experts found signs of separatism and propaganda to undermine state security in the actions of the “council” participants. The “heirs of the USSR” were convicted in November: the organizer, 48-year-old car mechanic Vyacheslav Zuderman, was sentenced to nine years of imprisonment, and his followers received seven years in prison.
Mutual indifference
Since Kazakhstan’s independence, the number of Russians in the country has almost halved – from 6.23 million people in 1989 to 3.43 million at the beginning of 2022. Up until the start of Russia’s “special military operation” in Ukraine, the outflow trend continued – migrants saw more prospects in the neighboring country.
Many of those who left complained about clan identity and difficulties building a career in Kazakhstan (with so-called “glass ceilings”), some of them did not want to learn the Kazakh language, and some noted the growth of nationalist sentiments.
“As such, while there has been no increase in conflicts between ethnic groups in the country, there has been a decline in mutual interest since 2009,” says head of the Strategy center for social and political research Gulmira Ileuova. “In other words, mutual indifference is formed in society, which gradually turns into rejection,” she told spik.kz.
At the same time, Ileuova called the idea of a Kazakh-Russian standoff in the country “mistaken,” clarifying that in reality the situation is not as dire as it is presented.
One of the most striking cases of discrimination against Russians in Kazakhstan in recent years is called the “language patrols,” whose participants verify whether the Kazakh language in used in shops and government institutions. In Astana, such activity is categorically unsupported, where people are calling it provocation and “cave nationalism.”
Language patrols
Nevertheless, Russian propaganda actively cites “language patrols” as evidence of the oppression of the Russian-speaking population in Kazakhstan. But here, it is worth understanding that the loud and often emotional statements that Russian figures make, which earn them political points, mean nothing in real life – at the highest level, the rhetoric in the relations between the two states is completely different.
The leaders of Russia and Kazakhstan regularly talk about friendship and neighborliness, preferring not to escalate potentially difficult topics.
We must not allow such people to simply apologize the day after, saying that he was drunk.
The case of Yevgeny Bobrov, Consul General of Russia in Almaty, is indicative of this reality: he completed his diplomatic mission and left Kazakhstan after making remarks about the problems with the use of the Russian language in Kazakhstan.
In December 2022, Russian Ambassador Alexei Borodavkin’s statement about “nationalists and Russophobia” in Kazakhstan prompted a wide reaction. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov later said that the ambassador’s statement not only does not reflect the position of the Russian ministry, but that it also “does not reflect the position of Alexei Borodavkin himself.” In turn, the Kazakh Foreign Ministry reported that the Russian authorities apologized for his words.
In recent years, such type of public apology has become popular in Russia and in Kazakhstan in general. Those accused under the article on separatism have also often resorted to this method of avoiding punishment, but in vain.
“We must not allow such people to simply apologize the day after, saying that he was drunk or, as they also say, ‘a chatbot was writing for me,’ and have everyone forgive him. If we close this door, then our pseudo-separatists – or, perhaps, separatists – will simply disappear. They will think two or three times before raising such questions,” MP Aidarbek Khodzhanazarov said indignantly last spring, clearly demonstrating that the state is determined to deal with the consequences, but not the cause, of the phenomenon.
