Tokayev’s Policies since January Riots Exacerbating Ethnic Russian Flight from Kazakhstan, Kurmanov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Mar. 6 – Since the 1980s, Kazakhstan has seen a net outflow of ethnic Russians every year, as a result of which that community has gone from having a plurality over ethnic Kazakhs there to being a distinct minority. Now, in the wake of the January riots, that outflow is increasing in size and Kazakhstan is becoming ever more Kazakh, Aynur Kurmanov says.

            There are three reasons for that, the ethnic Kazakh opposition figure now living in Moscow says. First, Kazakhs feel that their dominance in the population should be reflected in government policies. Second, many of them resent Moscow’s intervention to end the protests. And third, the Tokayev regime is playing to such attitudes by adopting pro-Kazakh policies.

            As a result, Kurmanov says, ever more ethnic Russians are leaving or planning to leave, a trend that is rapidly changing both the internal politics of Kazakhstan and its relationship with Russia, on the one hand, and Turkey and the Muslim world, on the other (stanradar.com/news/full/48911-politnavigator-v-kazahstane-pri-tokaeve-usilivaetsja-pressing-na-storonnikov-rossii-.html).

            Russian commentator Aleksandr Shustov agrees. He says that the number of ethnic Russians leaving Kazakhstan will likely increase by a factor of two or three this year alone and that as the number left declines, the pressure on the rest to leave will increase as well (vpoanalytics.com/2022/01/20/emigratsiya-russkih-iz-kazahstana-mozhet-vyrasti-v-neskolko-raz/).

            “For Russia,” Shustov says, this trend has “both pluses and minuses.” Among the pluses is that the arrival of ethnic Russians from Kazakhstan will “partially compensate” for the demographic losses of the pandemic and the overall negative demographic trends within the Russian Federation.

            But among the minuses is that this means “the accelerating de-Russification of Kazakhstan which could lead to its culture drift toward radical Islamic organizations.” Even if that is an overstatement, it is obvious that a Kazakhstan with few Russians is far more likely to act like other Central Asian countries than the bridge between them and Russia it has been.