Preparación de estacas

As noted in Chapter 2, the post-Soviet concept of natsional’nost’ does not correspond neatly to the western concept of ‘nationality.’ During the Soviet period natsional’nost’

denoted ‘an ethnic identity referring to membership of a people’ while grazhdanstvo

(citizenship) was ‘a civic identity referring to membership in a state’ (Karklins 1989:22). This pattern of sharply distinguished dual identities was inherited by all post-Soviet states,

including Kazakhstan. In the West, on the other hand, ‘nationality’ is generally regarded as a hybrid identity that refers to both ‘a legal relationship involving allegiance on the part of an individual and protection on the part of the state’ and ‘a people having a common origin, tradition, and language and capable of forming or actually constituting a nation-state’ (ibid. 44). Some of my Kazakhs respondents, who had travelled abroad, noted the discrepancy between these terms. Said a 28 year old female lecturer from Petropavlovsk:

A friend of mine went to Italy and tried to explain that her nationality (natsional’nost’) was Russian. The locals, however, couldn’t understand it and called her ‘Kazakh’ (kazashkoi). Once she got really upset and said: ‘I don’t understand why you call me Kazakh when I am Russian, but please tell me if Africans come to Italy and give birth would their children be Africans?’ And the Italians said, confusing my friend even further: ‘No, they would be Italian.’ (P-2)

Some of my Kazakh respondents similarly noted that ‘westerners couldn’t understand why your nationality could be Russian, Ukrainian, Tatar or German if you were born and lived in Kazakhstan all your life.’ (Alm-3) And this happens, as R. Karklins correctly noted, because nationality in the West refers to the membership of a state and its public culture, while in post-Soviet states it refers to the membership of a people or an ethnic group. Interestingly, Kazakh respondents admitted that Russians had a lot in common with Kazakhs, but ‘physically’ (Ast-1)23 _{and ‘genetically’ (Alm-10) they still belonged to the}

Russian nationality. ‘They are really Kazakhs, but a different type of Kazakhs’ (Ast-8). And even ‘if they leave Kazakhstan for their national homeland, they will always have some Kazakh culture in them. Of course, it is not ‘their’ culture, but it has become part of them’ (Alm-5). There was also a belief among the respondents that each nationality has a core that even the most dramatic assimilation cannot change.24 One of these permanent elements, as noted above, is the ‘genetic’ make-up of each nationality and another is a

23 _{For details of my Kazakh respondents see Appendix 1.}

24 _{For an excellent discussion on how primordialism is constructed by both ethnonationalists and ordinary} social actors see Suny 2001, 2004; Laitin 1998:10-19, Khazanov 1995:7-15, Dave 1996, 2003.

cultural and psychological profile of a group that remains supposedly unchangeable. A 24 year-old male TV presenter from Petropavlovsk noted

we are all people and we are all similar in many ways, but there is one ‘but’ here. The very fact that a Russian is a Russian and a German is a German implies that they have certain qualities peculiar to their nationalities only. Everybody notices that Germans are very punctual and honest. We [Kazakhs] are not that punctual, but we are very hospitable and generous. It is in our genes. (P-1)

The above examples show that nationality (natsional’nost’) in the post-Soviet context refers to an ethnic identity understood as a fixed essence rather than a fluid and resilient marker. The term does not necessarily give an indication of where the person was born and socialized, although it links him to the putative national homeland, even if he never lived there. In the West, on the other hand, nationality usually points to the state and society where the person was born and of which he holds citizenship.25

It is worth noting that natsional’nost’ is not the only term that can be used to denote an ethnic identity in the post-Soviet context. Other terms like natsiya (nation), narod (people),

narodnost’ (an ethnic group evolving into a nation – something like A.Smith’s ethnie) and

etnicheskaya gruppa (ethnic group) can also be used. Despite slight differences in the definitions of these terms, my respondents treated them as synonyms applying equally to Kazakhs, Russians or any other ethnic group. For example, a 25 year old surgeon from Petropavlovsk noted that ‘Kazakhs are united by the same things as all other nationalities (natsional’nosti). The very fact that you belong to one nation (k odnoi natsii), that you are a

25_{This peculiarity of the Soviet and post-Soviet definition of ‘nationality’ partially explains why the term}

‘nationalism’ is infused with such negative overtones. It is believed to advocate national (read ethnic) antagonisms, exclusivity and superiority of one’s own nation (ethnic group) and promote chauvinism and xenophobia. There is no positive side to nationalism unless it transcends its limitations and transforms inself into ‘internationalism’. The latter stands for tolerance and respect between nations (ethnic groups) that are capable and willing to live within the boundaries of one state. The above two terms can be equated, although imperfectly, to the western concepts of ethnic and civic nationalism.

Kazakh, keeps you together’ (P-7). Similarly, a 30 year old journalist from Almaty pointed out that

people in Kazakhstan respect traditions of all nations (natsii) – be they Koreans, Russians, Germans or Tatars. My friends, for example, invite us to celebrate Christmas, Easter and Shrove Tuesday and I treat these holidays as my own. We invite them for Ait and other Muslim holidays. (Alm-5)

It has to be stressed that the terms ‘natsional’nost’, ‘etnicheskya gruppa’ and ‘narodnost’’ can be used only in an exclusive and ethnic sense, while the terms ‘natsiya’ (nation) and ‘narod’ (people) can have both exclusive and inclusive connotations. This is partly the legacy of the Soviet time when all inhabitants of the Soviet Union, irrespective of their ethnic origin, were considered to be the Soviet people (sovetskie lyudi, sovetskii narod) and partly because these terms are now frequently used in the Kazakhstani media

(kazakhstanskii narod, and possibly less frequently kazakhstanskaya natsiya). Other terms that my respondents used to denote a civic identity were kazakhstantsy

(Kazakhstanis), sootechestvenniki (compatriots, fellow-countrymen), zemlyaki (people who reside on the same land) and grazhdane (citizens). The word kazakhstantsy (Kazakhstanis) perhaps has the strongest resemblance to the western concept of ‘nationality’. It refers to all the people that reside in Kazakhstan and partake in its public culture. My respondents talked about the ‘Kazakhstani football team’ (kazakhstanskaya futbol’naya komanda) of which they were proud (Alm-2, Ch-4), ‘Kazakhstani Olympic champions (kazakhstanskie olimpiiskie chempiony) that glorified the new sovereign state (P-1,3, Alm-6,7,9, Ch-1,3) and ‘Kazakhs and Kazakhstanis (kazakhi i kazakhstantsy) who feel comfortable abroad because they are not associated with Russia and its problems, but with Kazakhstan.’ (Ast-2) Some of my respondents, however, believed that the idea of Kazakhstaniness had not been sufficiently internalised by the population in general and the non-titular groups in

In America people are proud that they are American (amerikantsy) and in Kazakhstan people don’t even use the word ‘Kazakhstanis’ (kazakhstantsy). When you ask somebody: ‘Who are you?’ he will say: ‘I am a Russian from Kazakhstan’ and never ‘I am a

Kazakhstani’. Our state should do something to change it. People should be proud that they are Kazakhstanis, but what can they be proud of at the moment? Nothing! Our economy is weak and our people live badly. (Alm-9)

A 25 year old male IT programmer from Chimkent similarly said:

Our national anthem should be like the anthem of the Soviet Union. What was it about? It was about the unity of all the people who lived in fifteen republics, the rapprochement of peoples (sblizhenii narodov), and the importance of being patriotic. In America all people think that they are American (amerikantsy). They don’t think that they belong to separate nationalities anymore. We should do something similar in Kazakhstan and teach people that they are Kazakhstanis (kazakhstantsy), rather than Kazakhs or Russians as you see in the hymn. The anthem should be written in such a way that all people who live in Kazakhstan would love our country, our language and our culture. (Ch-1)

The term kazakhstantsy can be also used in an ethnic sense of the word, as my respondents sometimes did not see the difference between the civic and ethnic meanings of the term. The same can be said about the words sootechestvenniki (fellow-countrymen) and zemlyaki

(people that reside on the same land). The latter may also have a sub-ethnic connotation and refer to co-tribesmen who were traditionally linked to a particular territory.

All the above terms, however, do not explicitly point to the issues of dominance and subordination between ethnic groups. This relationship is reflected in terms like titul’naya gruppa/natsiya (a titular group/ nation), korennaya/ nekorennaya gruppa/ natsiya (native/ indigenous group/ nationality), natsional’nye menshinstva (national minorities) and

diaspory (diasporas), etc. Interestingly, my respondents did not use the word ‘titular’ (titul’nyi) as much and preferred the word korennoi (native, indigenous) to denote themselves. When asked about the term, most of them did not know what it meant:

‘Titular? Who is it?’ When explained that it is a group in whose name the republic is named, they said: ‘Ah… That’s us, then!’ (Alm-3). The term korennoi (which means native, indigenous or rooted in a particular territory) was generally understood as a synonym for Kazakhs. A 28 year old lecturer from Petropavlovsk, for example, said that it would be nice if all people knew the language and culture of the people who are native (korennye) to this land. I don’t mean that they have to study in Kazakh, but it would be nice if Russians would learn more about the Kazakh culture and language (P-2).

Some respondents believed that the division into natives and non-natives (delenie na korennykh i nekorennykh) should be abandoned as it has a discriminatory overtone: ‘I don’t divide people into ‘indigenous’ and ‘non-indigenous’ said a 30 year old journalist from Almaty. ‘I don’t do this. I cannot say that Kazakhs are indigenous and Russians are not. It is not right. We were all born and lived together’ (Alm-5). A 28 year old marketing director from Almaty similarly imbued the term korennoi with a civic rather than a primordial meaning:

I think that not only Kazakhs, but all people who live on the territory of Kazakhstan are indigenous (korennye). And non-indigenous are those who came here only recently and usually they don’t adapt well. I have talked to an oralman from Mongolia and he could not understand a thing. These people don’t understand anything because they never lived in the Soviet Union. We watched the same films, sang the same songs and listened to the same reports of the CPSU. We understand each other without effort (s poluslova). I think they are unhappy people, these oralmans. You cannot mix them with the native population for many reasons. They have to live with us for many years, understand many things, and only then they will become truly ‘native’. I will never compare them with the Turks who came to Kazakhstan in the late 1980s or Germans who came in the 1940s. These are different things. (Alm-16)

A 24 year old Kazakh programmer from Chimkent also claimed that only an indigenous resident (korennoi zhitel’) can become the President of Kazakhstan: ‘he does not have to be

Kazakh, but he has to be indigenous to the country, to be born here, to speak the language and understand our culture and traditions’ (Ch-1). There is, indeed, a great variety of interpretations of the term korennoi which makes it ambiguous and ‘suspect’ for the purposes of any research. This uncertainty is reflected in Masanov’s early survey (1996) where he asked his respondents to identify indigenous and non-indigenous groups in Kazakhstan:

Table 5.1 Who should be regarded as native or indigenous residents of Kazakhstan? (Multiple Answers Possible)

# of respondents % Kazakhs (%) Russians (%) Others (%) 1. Kazakhs 101 9.8 24.1 2.1 3.2

2. all people who were born in Kazakhstan

458 44.5 55.2 39.7 37.8 3. there shouldn’t be any

division i.e. all citizens are indigenous residents

522 50.7 24.4 64.5 62.8

4. n/a 14 1.4 1.7 1.2 1.3

Total 1095 106.4

Data derived from CMIR survey, see Masanov 1996, p. 18, 108

As we can see from the Table 5.1, there is a relative congruence between the Kazakh and non-Kazakh views on who is indigenous in post-Soviet Kazakhstan. Kazakhs, however, came up with a higher percentage (24%) than Russians (2.1%) and others (3.2%) in their belief that they are native to the republic. In all other respects, the overwhelming majority of Kazakhs attributed considerable value to ‘being born in a place’ as a criterion of indigenousness (55.2%), or believed that the division between the indigenous and non- indigenous population should be abandoned (24.4%). Masanov used these figures to argue that Kazakhs did not position themselves as a dominant group when the state elites

launched, what he called, a ‘programme of political ethnocentrism’ (programmu

politicheskogo etnotsentrizma) (Masanov 1996:18). This question, however, posed as it is by Masanov, asked for a subjective statement of ‘what should be’ and not ‘what is’. It is, therefore, useful only to the extent that both Kazakhs and other ethnic groups attach particular importance to the idea of being ‘born in’ a place but support a ‘Kazakhstani’ or

‘territorial citizenship’ approach.26 Moreover, Masanov used the word combination ‘korennoi zhitel’ (indigenous resident), rather than korennaya gruppa, natsiya or natsional’nost’ (indigenous group, nation or nationality) which, if used, could have produced a different result, more geared towards the Kazakh group.

Given the uncertainty of the word korennoi, I believe that the best term to denote a Kazakh group and its relationship to Kazakhstan is ‘titular’ or ‘titular nationality’. The word ‘titular’ is a Soviet concept that refers to a nation in whose name the republic is named. This, in many ways, resembles Smith’s concept of an ethnic core or ethnie – a pre-national group that usually ‘shapes the boundaries of the nation’ and gives a state ‘a name and a cultural character’ (Smith 1991:39). Moreover, the term ‘titular’ is becoming the accepted label in the current literature on the former Soviet Union (see Laitin 1998, Smith et al 1998, Hagendoorn et al 2001), which makes it an attractive option in itself.

As for the terms that refer to the subordinate groups, there was also a lot of confusion as to whom my respondents should consider national minorities, diasporas, non-titular or non- indigenous groups. ‘I am not sure who belongs to a minority in Kazakhstan’, said a 46 year old civil servant from Almaty, ‘Maybe all these small nationalities? During the Soviet days, we had Chukchas and Eskimos who lived in the Far North and in Kazakhstan we had no minorities. … Yes, we had different nationalities, but we were all equal’ (Alm-15). There was also an understanding that the term ‘national minority’ has a negative connotation. A 41 year old company director from Astana commented: ‘What is a national minority? We have several Russian specialists in our department. How can I call them ‘minorities’ when they are very respected people?’ (Ast-3).

The confusion and uncertainty of my respondents somewhat echoes the results of Malkova, Kolsto and Melberg’s survey (1999) who asked their respondents to identify minority groups in Kazakhstan:

26 _{This argument is supported by the findings of Hagendoorn et al. who claimed that 95% of Kazakhs opted} for a civic definition of citizenship as opposed to 20% who agreed with an ethnic definition. (Hagendoorn et al. 2001:110-111)

Table 5.2 Who are considered to belong to a minority group?

Total Kazakhs Russians 1. All, except Kazakhs 12.3 15.9 15.3 2. All, except Kazakhs and

Russians

32.3 42.5 43.8 3. There are no national

minorities in Kazakhstan

29.6 40.9 39.3 # of respondents 1000 376 408 Data derived from GI survey, see Malkova, Kolsto and Melberg 1999, 229

As we can see from the table 5.2, only 15.9% of ethnic Kazakhs reserved the category of ‘non-minority’ for themselves. 42.5% in this group believed that they shared this status with Russians, and 40.9% still had the ‘Soviet’ attitude to the nationality issue: ‘We have no national minorities’. Interestingly, the Russian response to the same question was almost identical to the Kazakh response: 15.3% for ‘all except the Kazakhs’, 43% for ‘all except Kazakhs and Russians’ and 39% for ‘no minorities’. According to Malkova, Kolsto and Melberg, these results show that the attempts of the new elites and certain Kazakh intellectuals to raise the Kazakhs to a status of a ‘dominant’ or ‘state-bearing nationality’ were not met positively even among ethnic Kazakhs, let alone the population at large (Malkova et al. 1999:23). These data, however, can also mean that the respondents have not yet internalized the meaning of the concept ‘national minority’ and still resort primarily to the Soviet understanding of the term. The data also represent a good snapshot of how Kazakhs and other ethnic groups attempt to pinpoint and possibly reconsider their national status in the new context of post-Soviet Kazakhstan and their attempts reflect both the still present Soviet status quo and the beginning of a reassessment process.

These issues of terminological confusion and uncertainty and the attempts to reconsider one’s identity will be explored in more detail in the next sections, when we examine first the external aspects, then the internal aspects of identity as reflected in the statements of my respondents.