The failure of the "de-Russianization" of Kazakhstan is still inseparable from the Russian language.
Over the past three decades, most countries in the Soviet region have tried to "de-Russianize" to varying degrees. However, at the moment, it seems that only the three Baltic states - Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania - have achieved relative success in this process.
Progress has not been smooth in most other countries. The main reason is that in the early years of independence, after a long period of Russian imperial rule and the Soviet era, the mother tongue of many countries was almost unspoken, especially in urban areas, where most people only spoke Russian.
Regarding the results of the former Soviet republics, they can be broadly divided into three categories. The first is a resolute boycott and a direct abolition, for example, after the color revolution, Ukraine's rejection of the Russian language reached its extreme.
However, many people in eastern Ukraine speak only Russian on a daily basis, and this overly aggressive language policy has had disastrous consequences. The second is to choose to accept and accept the Russian language, which, like Belarus, is still alive with Soviet Xi.
In the early days of the collapse of the Soviet Union, the first Belarusian ** Shushkevich once promoted "de-Russianization" throughout the country and enacted a series of laws to promote the Belarusian language and restrict the use of the Russian language.
However, these laws and decrees have not been endorsed by the majority of public officials and the rank-and-file population. On the streets, in shops and in homes, people still insist on the Russian language and even tend to choose Russian channels when watching TV.
In addition, there are many "jokes" circulating among the people that ridicule *** for speaking Russian when promoting the Belarusian language. However, in 1994, when Lukashenko came to power, he adopted a referendum to solve the problem.
In the end, the referendum retained the status of the Russian language as the official language by an overwhelming majority, despite the fact that the majority of the population of Belarus was predominantly Russian.
Old: Historical changes in the coat of arms of Belarus: on the left is the current coat of arms of Belarus, on the right is the form of the Soviet period, which still retains its original flavor. Unlike other countries of the former Soviet Union, the official language of Belarus is not only Belarusian, but also Russian.
However, in real life, Russian is the main language of communication, and many Belarusians are not very good at using Belarusian. Even officially, Lukashenko uses the Russian language almost exclusively.
NEW: Historical evolution of the coat of arms of Belarus: on the left is the current coat of arms of Belarus, on the right is the version from the Soviet period, which still retains its original flavor. Unlike other countries of the former Soviet Union, the official language of Belarus is not only Belarusian, but also Russian.
However, in real life, Russian is the main language of communication, and many Belarusians are not very good at using Belarusian. Despite the fact that Belarusian is one of the official languages, in everyday communication the Russian language dominates, and even Lukashenko uses it almost exclusively in Russian.
In Central Asia, some countries have taken a more modest approach to gradually reducing the influence of the Russian language. It took them almost 30 years, and although the national language has been widely used, Russian is still widely recognized and spoken in the military, business and academic spheres.
In Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, the Russian language is spoken at the highest rate. In Kazakhstan, even Kazakh-language schools teach Russian from the first grade, almost all urban populations speak Russian, and Kazakhs with higher education are proficient in reading and writing Russian.
The current Kazakh Tokayev has repeatedly stressed the promotion of the Kazakh language, but the status of other languages cannot be violated, including Russian. Tokayev said that the place of the Russian language in the constitution of Kazakhstan is very important, and any political game around the language issue can lead to irreversible consequences.
In the international arena, there have been many examples of such acts, where we do not allow anyone to be discriminated against on the basis of language and ethnicity, and such acts violate the law and endanger the entire country, and must be severely punished according to the law.
Kasymjomart Kemerevich Tokayev, born in 1953, graduated from the Moscow State Institute of International Relations. He worked in the USSR for many years.
There are ultra-democrats in Kazakhstan who are trying to imitate Ukraine, bullying and ** Russian-speaking people. However, unlike Ukraine, Kazakhstan** is opposed to these people and organizations.
For example, the old man Kut Akhmetov, pictured below, created a right-wing organization called the "Language Patrol".
Because he repeatedly led the "language patrol" to enforce the use of the Kazakh language by Russians in restaurants, shops and other public places, and treated them in an insulting and intimidating manner, he was not only banned from Russia for 50 years, but also repeatedly condemned and warned by Kazakhstan**.
His "language patrol" is called "nationalism in a cave" in the eyes of official Kazakhstan. In addition, Kazakhstan** plans to prosecute him for the crime of incitement to hatred.
If the prosecution is successful, he faces up to seven years in prison under the law. Akhmetov, in order to avoid this, chose to flee to Georgia. However, the irony is that in Georgia, since no one understands Kazakh, he still needs to speak Russian.
Akhmetov, who was in exile in Georgia, finally decided to return to the Russian language. Although Kazakhstan has close ties with Russia, it has been engaged in a more radical de-Russification campaign in the past, which included de-Russification.
However, in recent years, Kazakhstan has found that de-Russianization is not very effective, especially after several "near" color revolutions, Kazakhstan has begun to deal with the language issue more calmly.
Back in the 90s of the last century, at the beginning of Kazakhstan's independence, a law was immediately passed requiring every citizen to master the Kazakh language, and stipulating that ** documents are mainly in Kazakh, while emphasizing the need to use the "state language" on official occasions.
Despite the fact that the Kazakhs are more East Asian and distinct from the Slavs, they encountered many challenges in the process of promoting the decree. Due to the long-term "Russification" influence, Kazakhs in Kazakhstan are mostly unfamiliar with their native language.
According to 1989 data, more than 30 ethnic Kazakhs do not know anything about their mother tongue. In urban areas, less than 1 in total people are fluent in the Kazakh language, and most of the leaders of the middle and upper ranks of the Kazakh population do not speak their own language.
On April 24, 1990, at the meeting of the Supreme Soviet of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev was sworn in**. Although he was not very familiar with his "mother tongue", the Kazakh language, after a long period of marginalization, was used in a narrow range, which made it difficult for many modern concepts and theories to express themselves in it.
For example, according to the requirements, the graduation ** of university students must be written in Kazakh. However, none of them, including the instructors, knew how to express these concepts and theories in Kazakh.
Therefore, they first wrote it in Russian and then translated it into Kazakh, which was both exhausting and laborious. To make matters worse, the traditional Uighur alphabet of Kazakhstan has been completely lost due to a long period of "Slavization", and the written spelling of the modern Kazakh language is a "Russian-style" Kazakh script created in the Slavic Cyrillic alphabet during the Soviet era.
The original national script has disappeared, and it is difficult to accept to spell one's own language in the Slavic alphabet. Therefore, from the beginning of this century, led by Nazarbayev**, a high-ranking cadre trained in the former Soviet Union, Kazakhstan began to implement a new Latinized alphabet system, following the reforms of the Kemal revolution in Turkey, and respelling the Kazakh script in Latin to completely separate itself from the Russian language.
Although the Latin alphabet is a foreign product, it is still not their native script.
While the text was being revised, the Kazakhs were also actively passing on their own folk culture, but this move caused confusion throughout Kazakhstan.
The main reason for this is that the Kazakh language has a large number of Russian words and is also influenced by Russian grammar. In this case, after forcibly changing the text to the Latin alphabet, many words related to the Russian language could not be directly converted into the new Kazakh, and could only be explained by adding a large number of apostrophes.
The official language of Kazakhstan is Russian, which is spelled qazaqstan respy'bli'kasy in the Latin alphabet scheme.
At the same time, the Kazakh Cyrillic spelling is , while the Latin spelling is i y li i a men i u ri i ku i ey men a i el attandy, which contains thirteen apostrophes.
These apostrophes not only affect the aesthetics of typography and printing, but also make it very difficult to type and read on a daily basis. Thus, despite the fact that more than a dozen years have passed, the Kazakh language of the Latin alphabet is still not widely promoted.
In this case, Russian became the necessary language of auxiliary communication, widely spoken in ** and among the people.
In 2016, mosques in Kazakhstan still use the Sachic language spelled in Cyrillic, instead of the newly introduced Latin alphabet. Despite the fact that after more than 20 years of independence, the Kazakh language is vigorously promoted, according to 2012 data, only 64 in the whole territory4% of citizens speak Kazakh, most of them are Kazakhs, and some Uyghurs and Uzbeks can also speak Kazakh.
In addition, 944% of Kazakhs speak Russian, and almost all of them speak Russian. Especially in the northwestern cities of Kazakhstan, near Russia, Russian is usually the first language, and even ethnic Kazakhs are Xi to using Russian.
In the northwestern part of Kazakhstan, there is a dark area, which is a gathering place for the Russian population. Surprisingly, this territory originally did not belong to Kazakhstan, but was "forcibly" given by Moscow.
At that time, the Supreme Soviet was worried that if the territory of the union republic was to be based on the areas where ethnic Kazakhs were concentrated, there might be a situation in which ethnic Russians would become a minority and ethnic Kazakhs would become the majority, and this would make it difficult for the Soviet Union, which was dominated by ethnic Russians, to maintain its ruling authority and discourse for a long time.
Therefore, the Soviet Union directly assigned to Kazakhstan several oblasts in the northwest of Kazakhstan where ethnic Russians and Slavic Kazakhs gathered that originally belonged to the Russian republics, and vigorously promoted the policy of "Slavization", hoping to achieve anti-Hakism and gradually assimilate ethnic Kazakhs through the influence and integration of ethnic Russians.
The effect of this operation is very significant. In addition, in the process of helping Kazakhstan to industrialize, Big Brother also emigrated a large number of ethnic Russians to the region.
By the end of the 1980s, the proportion of ethnic Russians almost exceeded the Kazakh population, making Kazakhs almost a minority in Kazakhstan.
In the summer camp activities in Kazakhstan, among the Young Pioneers who took a group photo, can you recognize the faces of several ethnic Kazakhs?After the collapse of the Soviet Union, ethnic Russians gradually moved out, and ethnic Kazakhs from all over the country poured in.
At the beginning of the 21st century, out of the 131 ethnic groups in Kazakhstan, the Kazakhs finally became the most populous again, accounting for 66% of the country's population, followed by ethnic Russians, which accounted for about 24%, and about 16% of ethnic Ukrainians, most of whom also speak Russian as their mother tongue.
Therefore, despite the large number of ethnic Russians, they are still a group that cannot be ignored, and together with the strong influence of Russia, if provoked, it can pose a threat to the unity and social stability of the country.
The Baikonur space base in Kazakhstan, once an important base of the former Soviet Union, is now leased by Russia. Due to its geographical location and the complexity of its demographic structure, Kazakhstan has frequent exchanges with Russia, and 131 ethnic groups live on its territory.
The status of Russian in Kazakhstan is similar to Mandarin in China, and it is the lingua franca of communication between different ethnic groups.
In 2018, at the Kazakh National Integration Conference, Nursultan Nazarbayev cordially met with representatives of ethnic minorities in Kazakhstan. This means that if you know Russian, you can get around Kazakhstan without any problems;However, if you only speak Kazakh, you may encounter a language barrier in Kazakhstan and be restricted from finding a job.
Especially among city dwellers and educated groups, the majority of the population speaks Russian. Many ethnic Kazakhs also like to send their children to Russian language schools. Because, this is their "necessity".
For many years, Kazakhstan, as a major member of the CSTO, has been privately promoting "de-Russification", but both official and non-governmental exchanges and cooperation with Russia have been very frequent.
People who speak Russian tend to get more jobs and promotions, and locals are very fond of studying Xi and working in Russia.
Among the CSTO member states, the Kazakh language in Kazakhstan has not been promoted well. Especially young and middle-aged people who grew up in the process of "de-Russification" are more fluent in Russian.
* There are fears at the top that under the banner of "de-Russification and revival of national languages", some radical nationalists have begun to collude with Western forces to brew color revolutions. Before Nazarbayev's retirement, a large number of non-** organizations appeared in Kazakhstan, which began to pay attention to the Russian language, reopened Russian language schools, and emphasized the status of the official Russian language.
At present, Kazakhstan has a bilingual policy.
In Kazakhstan, the successor of the Orthodox Church, Tokayev**, continued the language policy of the old Na before his retirement. He stressed that the Russian language has an important place in the constitution of Kazakhstan, and the political game around the language issue can have irreversible consequences.
In the international arena, such examples abound. Therefore, we must preserve the unity of the people as much as we cherish our own eyes, because we are a people who can establish a common language with the people.
We are categorically opposed to any form of linguistic and ethnic discrimination, which not only violates the provisions of the law, but also poses a threat to the entire country and must be severely punished in accordance with the law.
Kazakhstan celebrates Victory Day, still in the Russian style. In conclusion, the Russian language spoken by citizens of Kazakhstan is a spontaneous act mainly due to the living environment and the needs of personal development.
In this case, coupled with the diverse ethnic composition and unique geographical location of Kazakhstan, it is indeed too hasty to simply treat the Russian language and the Cyrillic alphabet as a "colonial language" without taking into account the actual situation and public opinion, and radically ostracize and abandon it, and may even lead to a huge catastrophe that cannot be achieved.
Fortunately, Kazakhstan has come to its senses, so what about Ukraine?