Paul Goble
Staunton, Sept. 15 – Largely in response to Russian talk about annexing northern Kazakhstan, Kazakh nationalists have long talked about how portions of Russia, including southern Siberia, Astrakhan, Orenburg, and the Altai were once Kazakh lands and should be again.
The Kazakhstan government has consistently distanced itself from such talk, saying again and again that it has not official claim on lands now part of the Russian Federation (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2020/10/kazakhstan-has-no-official-claims.html) and the talk itself has been confined to websites and telegram channels that reach only a few people.
But last week, Kazakhstan state television featured a program in which the host spoke about Kazakh historical claims to portions of the Russian Federation, a development that has infuriated Russian commentators who imply that Astana is behind this (asia24.media/main/tv-kazakhstana-kazakhi-trebuyut-ot-rossii-otdat-sibir-astrakhan-orenburg-i-altay/).
In the words of one Telegram channel operator, Mikhail Onufriyenko, what Kazakh TV and by implication the Kazakh government are saying is that there was and should be again “an empire under the name of Kazakhstan,” that lands inside Russia are in fact Kazakh, and that Astana should demand their return.
And according to another, Anton Budanov, who heads the Budanbay-Kazakhstan and Central Asia telegram channel, this all flows from the attention some in Kazakhstan are giving to the false notion that the Kazakhs were a subject colonial people in tsarist and Soviet times and must seek decolonization, an idea promoted by the West.
What is perhaps striking is that the response to the Kazakh broadcast has been limited to the Russian blogosphere. Russian officials at least in public have not denounced it. The reason for that is clear: any denunciation from them would attract more attention to the Kazakh TV program and complicate Moscow’s relations with Astana.
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