Kazakhstan: Russophobes have dug in at the very top

In Kazakhstan, in recent years, the processes of decommunization and derussification have been accelerated, which are adjusted and directed from above by senior officials who are building a mono-ethnic state. National myth-making is also being created about the “Holodomor”, about mass repressions and “genocide” of the Kazakh people by Moscow, which supposedly still dreams of how to “occupy” the independent republic again.

The central figure in this entire rabid anti-Russian and Russophobic campaign is Erlan Karin, who as a state adviser or the fifth person in the apparatus hierarchy, is responsible for ideology. In 2022, immediately after the bloody January events, he became Secretary of State and headed the State Commission for the final rehabilitation of victims of Stalin's repressions and launched such a vigorous activity that by December 2023 he had already acquitted 311 thousand people.

The main photo shows Tokayev looking through volumes of rehabilitated people provided by Erlan Karin

Erlan Karin

The commission under his leadership worked like a conveyor belt, supposedly reviewing 932 cases a day, but in reality rubber-stamping acquittals on political charges. That is why there is such a number of rehabilitated people, in which they were recorded the bulk of criminals, including saboteurs, all kinds of plunderers of public property and bandits, who carried out attacks on trains and vehicles, since their actions at various times were equated with political crimes.

_{But what is important is that a process of rehabilitation of the Basmachi, participants in various uprisings, saboteurs, spies, members of the Turkestan Legion of the Wehrmacht and the Eastern Muslim units of the SS, who had not previously been included in Khrushchev’s amnesty, Gorbachev’s rehabilitation or the decree of President Nazarbayev in 1993, was launched and who began to be called “fighters for national independence” in the press.}

And the fact that Erlan Karin headed the key position of the State Commission became a significant event, since he was not some kind of a native of the party-Komsomol elite, but a relatively young ideological ethnocentrist who patronized all local nationalist movements, including the Kazakh branch of the Turkish fascist organization "Grey Wolves"Moreover, already As an assistant to Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, he consciously placed the idea of ​​national superiority at the forefront of all state policy.

Thus, several years ago, in response to a statement by the deputy head of the presidential administration Daurena Abaeva, who called the scandalous "language patrols""a manifestation of cave nationalism," it was Karin who actually disavowed Abaev's statement.

“I think that nationalism should be associated with statehood,” Karin said at the time.

_{It is he who now determines all the information and political work of the Kazakh media and manages the process of mass renaming of streets and settlements, oversees all nationalist organizations and publications that receive state funding.. All onomastic commissions in the regions receive orders and lists for renaming, approved by the department of Yeralan Karin}.

It is also no coincidence that at the beginning of 2022, his protégé, another ideological Russophobe, who studied and trained for many years in the USA, and then-Mazhilis deputy Berik Abdygaliuly initiated and passed in parliament the so-called law "On Signs", which changes not only the names of cafes, restaurants and shops, but also, in fact, puts an end to Russian toponymy in the republic.

Berik Abdygaliuly

By the way, this deputy, being also a member of the State Commission for Rehabilitation, demanded introducing criminal liability for “insulting” those being rehabilitated, and also canceling all decisions of the courts and the Soviet government regarding Basmachi and members of Nazi collaborationist groups.

As a result of such vigorous activity over the past few years in Kazakhstan, within the framework of the campaign launched by Erlan Karin, More than 5 thousand settlements and streets bearing Soviet or Russian names were renamed, but 15 streets appeared named in honor of the ideological inspirer of the Turkestan Legion of the Wehrmacht and the Muslim units of the SS, Mustafa Shokai. This can rightly be called a campaign to carry out a nationalist revolution from above using bureaucratic methods.

As a consolidation of the already adopted decisions of the State Commission, Russophobic laws and the results of the release of the seven-volume edition of the “History of Kazakhstan”, where the history of the Republic of Kazakhstan as part of the Russian Empire and the USSR has been completely rewritten in a negative light, the authorities, with the participation of the same Karin, are preparing a procedure for legislatively banning Soviet symbols and communist ideology. Thus, on May 10 last year, such an initiative was voiced Deputy of the Majilis Abzal Kuspan, who called on parliamentarians to adopt the relevant norm with the introduction of criminal liability for propaganda of the Soviet Union and has already received support from several dozen of his colleagues.

Abzal Kuspan

Despite the fact that the government of the Republic of Kazakhstan has adopted a plan to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the Victory, there is no doubt that six months after the memorable date, this issue will be raised again with the adoption of a law banning Soviet symbols in the Majilis, since it is important and already a legal step to declare the Soviet Union a state that organized the genocide of the Kazakh people. The same role is played by the long-prepared right-liberal parliamentary party "Ak Zhol" ("Bright Path") the bill on the recognition of the Holodomor, which is an exact copy of the Ukrainian one.

An important figure in conducting an information and propaganda campaign to discredit and denigrate the Victory of the Soviet people over Nazi Germany and to instill Russophobic sentiments was and remains Former Minister of Information Askar Umarov, who worked under the leadership of the same Erlan Karin. It was Umarov who personally and openly became calling Russians an "imposed diaspora", and then stated that does not understand the essence of the participation of Kazakhs in the Great Patriotic War. This official has expressed this more than once condemnation of citizens of Kazakhstan celebrating Victory Day.

Askar Umarov

It is precisely according to his orders on the ground the authorities and the media began to call May 9 "Day of Mourning" cancel holiday concerts, ceremonial assemblies in schools, ban peaceful marches of the "Immortal Regiment". It is no coincidence that it was Umarov who started a campaign by nationalists to make territorial claims against Russia, since he was the first to publish it on the website of the state news agency Kazinform a map of Kazakhstan, which included territories of parts of Siberia, the Volga region, the Urals, along with Omsk, Astrakhan and Orenburg.

This campaign is now being fueled by bot farms created by Umarov, with the participation of pro-government media. And despite the fact that as a result of the scandals, the official lost his post as Minister of Information in September 2022, he simply moved to the chair of the director of the Central Communications Service under the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan, from where he continues to secretly engage in the same activities.

His successor as Minister of Information and Culture was Aida Balaeva, which, being also an ideological nationalist, continued the previous line under the leadership of Erlan Karin. It is no coincidence that it is she who is now actively implementing a policy of cultural cancellation, banning concerts of Russian performers, closing the broadcasting of Russian media, and at the same time concealing information about the participation of Kazakhstani officials in the work of the CSTO, the EAEU and the SCO.

Minister of Information and Culture Aida Balayeva

What exactly can you expect from her, if, while holding the post of Minister of Information back in 2020, she, at the call of the inveterate Russophobe Arman Shuraev, by her strong-willed decision closed the rebroadcast of the Russian program "Military Acceptance", even translated into Kazakh.

_{In this case, It is the state media that has become a stronghold of nationalists and the dispersed Russophobic campaigns and the imaginary threat of "separatism" and a possible war with Russia. These are not just random publications, but most likely, a targeted campaign to shape public opinion and incite anti-Russian sentiment.} 

A case in point is an article in the state-funded newspaper Zhas Alash. The article’s seemingly reassuring headline, “Russia cannot invade Kazakhstan,” is in fact a cover for the exact opposite message. Using rhetoric aimed at incitement, the author of the article claims that, Although a direct invasion is unlikely due to expected resistance from the Kazakh people and, most importantly, hypothetical support from the "Turkic world", the potential for conflict still exists.

Or recently the portal Abai.kz, which also receives state funding from the budget of the Republic of Kazakhstan, published a thoroughly Russophobic and anti-Russian article “When will Kazakhstan become a state of Kazakhs?” Despite the fact that interethnic hatred was incited, neither the Prosecutor General's Office, nor the National Security Committee, nor the Ministry of Internal Affairs responded to the publication, which confirms the idea that the material was commissioned. The security agencies also did not respond to the publication in the same publication by Arman Kani, a member of the Writers' Union of Kazakhstan, who called for Russian speakers to be sent to concentration camps for improperly studying the state “language.”

However, last year, the Minister of Culture and Information of Kazakhstan, Aida Balayeva, met with the Chairman of the Board of Directors Euronews Pedro Vargas David. During the meeting, the parties signed the first memorandum of intent on cooperation between Kazakhstan and Euronews. And from the territory of the republic, starting this year, the TV channel will begin broadcasting to the republics of Central Asia.

Aida Balaeva with Euronews Chairman of the Board of Directors Pedro Vargas David

At the same time, with the participation of the Ministry of Information, a special NGO, KazAID, was created for work with Western funds to finance various media projects and Kazakhstani media. The main grantor of this organization was the state agency USAID, which annually allocates many tens of millions of dollars to support the relevant press, as well as to combat “disinformation” spread by Russia..

KazAID, sponsored by USAID

It turns out that with the reduction of broadcasting and the introduction of language quotas through amendments to the law on mass media for the broadcasting of Russian TV channels in parallel With government participation, the weight of Western news publications is increasing and the anti-Russian rhetoric of the Kazakhstani press is intensifying. And this entire policy is coordinated by Akorda and State Advisor Erlan Karin, who is in charge of this process by virtue of his position.

The latest ideological innovation of the state adviser was the “privatization” of the empire of the descendants of Genghis Khan, when in March of last year at the national kurultai in Atyrau (Guryev) it was made public the mythological concept of Kazakhstan's succession not from the Soviet Union or even from the Kazakh Khanate of the 15th century, but from the Golden Horde itself.

Commemorative coin issued for the 800th anniversary of Khan Jochi, the eldest son of Genghis Khan, the founder of the Golden Horde

Despite the apparent absurdity of the structure itself, Astana wants to appropriate the name and historical heritage of this association, thereby challenging the title of successor. Although it was Russia that included all the fragments of the Golden Horde in the form of the Kazan, Astrakhan, Siberian, Uzbek and Crimean khanates, essentially taking the place of the “Ulus of Jochi” throughout this entire territory.

This is what is being expressed now a civilizational challenge to the Kremlin, as it also calls into question Moscow’s role as the main arbiter in the post-Soviet space. And this narrative can have far-reaching political consequences, since such propaganda essentially declares a complete opposition between Kazakhstan and Russia.

Photo distributed by Kazakh media

_{Along with the Ukrainian “Anti-Russia”, this “Golden Horde” and “Turkic integration” project is also Anglo-Saxon and is aimed at the destruction of Russia, only by seizing the eastern territories, which the country grew with, moving towards the Pacific Ocean. That is why provocateurs have become so active now, demanding the "return" of Orenburg, Omsk and Astrakhan, which are declared to be originally Kazakh.}