The Invasion of Ukraine Accelerates Kazakhstan’s Turn Toward Linguistic Sovereignty
The Kazakh government promotes the Kazakh language through strategic initiatives, such as mandatory Kazakh language testing for civil servants, while its use by the general population is gaining momentum across various sectors. Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Kazakhstan has sought to reshape its language policy.
The 2023–2029 Language Policy Concept aims to expand the use of Kazakh across science, IT, media, and governance, including the transition from the Cyrillic script to the Latin alphabet. Recently, 13 projects in media and information services were launched to establish modern approaches and address the challenges facing the Kazakh language.
According to the Minister of Culture of the Republic of Kazakhstan, Aida Balaeva, Kazakh-language media consumption is now dominant, with “80 percent of the audience consuming media content in Kazakh.” Although independent statistics cannot confirm this figure, it does reflect an upward trend.
The inclusion of the Kazakh language in Hollywood dubbing, one of just 30 languages, signals growing international recognition, driven by rising domestic demand. Besides, social media, bloggers, and the integration of the Kazakh language in various apps and video games make the language more accessible for the younger generation.
This has not always been the case, however. These changes have unfolded as a slow trend, according to Rustam Burnashev, Associate Professor at the Faculty for Global Politics at the German-Kazakh University in Almaty.
In an interview with Global Voices, Burnashev recalled: “Kazakh, as a language of education, has been overlooked since the dominance of Russian during the Soviet period. Nowadays, it is the civic symbol of the country.”
Figures show that the number of enrollments into Kazakh schools rose from 32.4 percent in 1991 to 66 percent in 2019. This may indicate that knowledge of Russian and its use are declining among the youth. Russian proficiency is regionally concentrated, mostly in the north and central parts, which house large populations of ethnic Russians.
Demographics and the use of the Kazakh language
The widespread use of Russian as a lingua franca is rooted in Kazakhstan’s Soviet legacy, during which many ethnic minorities were deported to the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic, forcing Kazakh to private life and rural entities.
These resettlements often led to the formation of multiethnic communities, where Russian emerged as the practical medium of communication.
Here is a YouTube video about the aftermath of the Russification of Kazakhstan.
Now, 34 years after the country gained independence, much has changed. Many non-Kazakhs left, new people migrated to Kazakhstan, and many more have been born during Kazakhstan’s independent era.
During the first years of Kazakhstan’s independence, the question remained how to form a Kazakh titular nation, where ethnic Kazakhs comprised less than half of the population. Today, this number is over 70 percent.
On the one hand, repatriated Kazakhs are accelerating linguistic shifts in both rural and urban areas. Since 1991, Kazakhstan’s “Oralman” (Returnee) repatriation program has brought around one million ethnic Kazakhs, many of whom do not speak Russian, back to Kazakhstan.
On the other hand, the number of ethnic Russians has been decreasing since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Many of those who chose to stay see the Kazakh language as a means of empowerment.
“Nowadays, there are groups of ethnic Russians that started learning Kazakh to set a staple: We belong to Kazakhstan, not to our imperialistic neighbor up north,” explained Beate Eschment, Researcher at the Centre for East European and International Studies in Berlin, Germany, in an interview with Global Voices.
From Soviet legacy to national strategy
In 1989, the law on languages in the Kazakh SSR gave Kazakh the title of official language, while Russian remained as the language of inter-ethnic communication. Two years later, Kazakhstan gained independence from the Soviet Union. In 1995, the constitution gave the Kazakh language the title of state language and granted Russian official status. Since then, several initiatives have followed.
The National Program for the Development and Functioning of Languages for 2011–2019 aimed to boost fluency in Kazakh, Russian, and English, with ambitious goals of increasing it by as much as 90 percent for the Kazakh and Russian languages. While official reports see the initiative as a success, independent assessments remain skeptical, given that, as of 2019, only 67.9 percent of the population were ethnic Kazakhs.
Nonetheless, the program helped reposition the Kazakh language in society. Kazakh educational institutions gained popularity, and Kazakh-language entertainment began to flourish. Rather than diminishing the penetration of the Russian language, the result appears to be a side-by-side development, with growing emphasis on Kazakh in almost all spheres of society.
The first and former president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, promoted the idea of “unity through diversity,” which was successful in interethnic relations.
“Nazarbayev had to rebuild the Kazakh nation from scratch. He couldn’t tell all the minorities: “Go back home, we don’t want you here.” Looking at inter-ethnic tensions in Tajikistan [at that time], it would have been a very risky maneuver,” explains Olivier Ferrando, Research Professor at the Human Rights Institute of Lyon Catholic University in France, in an interview with Global Voices.
“Under the current president, [Kassym-Jomart] Tokayev, especially the rhetoric has changed. What is striking, however, is his shift of focus from a diverse nation to an inclusive one,” elaborates Olivier Ferrando.
Nowadays, the Kazakh language is viewed as a necessary means for all citizens to participate in political, social, and economic life.
Civil society and linguistic tensions
The changes in Kazakhstan’s language landscape are unfolding together with public scandals, court cases, and tensions in society. One example of it is the case of Yermek Taichibekov, a blogger who was imprisoned for labeling Kazakhstan’s language policy as “Russophobic” in 2021. Another case involves Temirlan Yensebek, the founder of the satirical news site Qaznews24, who was charged with inciting interethnic discord for sharing an offensive rap song about the Russian minority in Kazakhstan.
There are two opposing camps in this debate. One side is advocating for decolonization and aggressively promoting national identity and linguistic sovereignty. The second is warning against what they perceive as growing anti-Russian sentiment in Kazakhstan.
Here is a YouTube video about the current state of the Russian and Kazakh languages.
Activists on both sides of the spectrum are increasingly in conflict with each other, each advancing their agendas through the lens of ethnic identity. This is expected given that language has never been a neutral medium. It is both shaped by politics and a tool that shapes the political order itself.
The rise of Kazakh as a national language is not simply the outcome of state enforcement. “It is not only to be considered an aversion of the ‘russkij mir’ (Russian world)-ideology, but much more of an intrinsic motivation of self-preservation,” says Beate Eschment.
Given the Kremlin’s increasingly aggressive and hostile rhetoric toward Kazakhstan since the start of the war in Ukraine, it is unlikely that Russia is content with the current linguistic and social discourses in Kazakh society.
The Kazakh government is balancing a fine line between linguistic sovereignty, the dominant position of the Russian language, and an erratic and unpredictable neighbor. Under these circumstances, the fate and flourishing of the Kazakh language falls on the shoulders of people in Kazakhstan, who will be a driving factor and ensure state policies take shape.
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