From End of World War II until 1980, Kazakhstan’s Capital Alma-Ata had Only One Kazakh Language School

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 8 – Between the end of World War II and 1980, the capital of Kazakhstan had only a single Kazakh language school, a reminder that both Moscow and Kazakh elites were anything but supportive of the Kazakh language and that Kazakhstan was nonetheless able to come back from that situation and promote its national language when that became possible.
    On the occasion of the centenary of this school, Kazakh journalist Bauydzhan Makhanov tells the story of a school that originally served mostly rural people and then only girls but expanded to include both genders and people from Alma-Ata at the end of Soviet times (spik.kz/2056-pochemu-v-sovetskoj-alma-ate-byla-lish-odna-kazahskaja-shkola.html).
    Although Alma Ata was the capital of Kazakhstan, its population was overwhelmingly Russian and not surprisingly most Russian parents wanted their children to study in Russian language schools. The Kazakh population grew rapidly from 8.6 percent in 1959 to 16.5 percent in the 1980s as more Kazakhs moved into the city and sought Kazakh language training.
    A second Kazakh language school was opened only at the start of the 1980s, although by 1989, there were seven, although some of these had instruction in both languages. But even then, they remained a minority: there were 163 schools in Alma Ata but only seven had instruction in Kazakh.
    A major reason there weren’t more was that many members of the Kazakh elite wanted their children to have better life chances and in Soviet times they concluded that this would be achieved better if their children spoke Russian well, something that could be achieved if they went to Russian language schools.
    Only when elite parents concluded otherwise did pressure rise for the opening of more schools, Makhanov says; and consequently, while a great deal of the responsibility for this paucity of Kazakh language schools lies with Moscow, much of it lies with Kazakh elites. Only when they changed their calculations did the languages of the schools change.