Kazakhstan Protests and their defeat increase Putin’s say in Kazakhstan, says researcher: “Rich country, but small elite benefits”

Kazakhstan protests began last Sunday in the western oil city of Žanaozen near the Caspian coast. The reason was the rise in the price of LPG used as fuel for cars. By Thursday morning, unrest had claimed dozens of lives and taken hundreds to hospital, according to news agencies.

Žanaozen, with a population of just under 150,000, made headlines ten years ago for similar reasons: a state-owned oil company fired striking workers and the protest ended in a massacre that killed 15 people, according to official figures.

“There is a lot of oil industry in the area, and the protests have stemmed from inequality there,” says a researcher at the Foreign Policy Institute. Kristiina Silvan.

“There are a lot of guest workers and they are paid better than Kazakhs, and the food is expensive because it is imported from elsewhere. The region produces wealth, but wealth does not stay there, export revenues go to the state treasury. ”

The protests quickly spread throughout the country and were immediately about more than just rising fuel prices.

“There have been a number of socio-economic protests over the last 10 to 20 years, and there have been more and more all the time,” says Silvan.

“The protests are a sign of dissatisfaction with kleptocracy and corruption and are the main cause of the protests. Kazakhstan is a rich country with a lot of oil and gas, but a small economic elite is reaping the benefits. ”

However, there is also political disappointment behind the current wave of insurgency.

Kazakhstan was a one-man country after the break-up of the Soviet Union for three decades. An authoritarian president Nursultan Nazarbayev took up his post in 1990 as Secretary-General of the Communist Party of the Soviet Republic of Kazakhstan.

The dictator proved to be a skilled leader. Kazakhstan’s economy grew, trade and relations were good with Russia, China, Europe and the United States.

The name of the capital, Astana, was changed to Nur-Sultan, and statues were erected for the leader. Still, say, Turkmenistan Saparmurat to Niyazov compared to Nazarbayev was downright modesty itself.

Nazarbayev took over from the presidency in 2019 as chairman of the Security Council for life. His own successor became president Kasym-Zhomart Tokayev.

The new president spoke of a “listening state” and promised more prosperity to the people. However, there were no major changes.

“If a dictator makes concessions, there is a danger that people will take their promises seriously, not just as rhetoric,” Silvan points out.

Political however, dissatisfaction remained low, at least in part due to prolonged economic growth.

“If you compare Belarus and Kazakhstan, the treatment of the corona epidemic has aroused dissatisfaction in both in the same way,” Silvan says.

“But there was no protest in Kazakhstan, during the parliamentary elections a year ago there was no dissatisfaction. Kazakhstan has been the most stable country in Central Asia. ”

Another reason for swallowing bitterness could be Nazarbayev himself.

“Belarus Alexander Lukashenko genuinely hated, not Nazarbayev, ”Silvan says.

By Wednesday, this had already changed: the statue of Nazarbayev was knocked down in Taldykorgan, northeast of Almaty.

Russia did not procrastinate as the uprising grew, but sent his own “peacekeepers” to the scene on Thursday morning. This shows that though Vladimir Putin trusted Nazarbayev, his successor Tokayev does not enjoy Putin’s trust, at least in the same way.

The matter became clear at Putin’s big annual press conference on Christmas Eve in Moscow when a journalist on Kazakhstan’s state television channel Indira Begaidar asked Putin about the future of Baikonur space center cooperation.

Putin did not mention Tokajev at all in his three-minute response but instead praised Nazarbayev, 81, many times. Eventually, Putin spun his response to Kazakhstan’s language policy.

“Kazakhstan is a Russian-speaking country in the full sense of the word!” Putin stressed.

About 20 percent of Kazakhstan’s population is ethnically Russian, and Kazakh and Russian are the country’s official languages. Virtually everyone speaks Russian.

The Kazakh parliament is currently passing a law requiring commercial companies to use Kazakh in their advertising. In addition, the government has a program aimed at replacing Cyrillic letters with Latin ones within a few years.

Language policy seems to annoy Putin, which carries nasty echoes of Moscow’s rhetoric before the war in eastern Ukraine in 2014.

Silvan points out that there are no unified Russian territories in Kazakhstan and thus no basis for intervention.

“National sentiment has strengthened in recent years, and there are nationalist activist groups in Kazakhstan, but demands to remove Russia’s official status are quite marginal,” Silvan says.

However, defeating the protests with the help of Russian soldiers is likely to lead to an increase in Russian say in Kazakhstan.

“In some time, that’s the way it is,” Silvan says.