Observations on Kazakhstan
Authoritarian Development Has Rebuilt Kazakhstan into a Eurasian Power by @lijukic
I quite liked this essay I just came across, even though it was published last year. Here are some of the key quotes I found surprising:
“Alexander Solzhenitsyn—who himself spent years in prison in Soviet Kazakhstan—called for a new Russian state to annex the northern provinces of Kazakhstan populated by Russians. “
“Russians now only make up about 20% of the country, while Kazakhs are a healthy majority of around 65%. This is not only thanks to Russian out-migration, but also to the high birth rate in Kazakhstan, which heavily skews towards ethnic Kazakh families. In fact, while birth rates plummet across the developed world, Kazakh birthrates have steadily risen and are now higher than they ever have been in the country’s post-Soviet history, with the rate hovering around 2.7 births per woman from 2014 onward.“
“98% of ethnic Kazakhs identify as Muslim, even if most of them aren’t answering the calls to prayer. Instead, you can find them in the many fashionable bars and restaurants knocking back beers and vodkas and smoking their lungs out well into the night with their non-Muslim countrymen.“
“Part of the Russian colonial program of the 18th and 19th centuries in Kazakhstan was actually encouraging Kazakhs to be more Muslim. This was a move to ‘civilize’ the nomads who were seen as savage due to their clearly non-Muslim, traditional nomadic beliefs.“
“Islam has experienced a revival in recent years across the Muslim world, and Kazakhstan is no exception. Even if it has been far more controlled than elsewhere, in the 1990s hundreds of mosques were opened, mostly with funding from Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey.“
“Considering Kazakhs are an ever increasing ethnic majority, a more homogeneous Kazakhstan could lead to a more assertive Kazakh national ideology, which would be in direct conflict with Nazarbayev’s Eurasianist ideology and undermine his entire geopolitical strategy for Kazakhstan.“