Renaming Drive in Kazakhstan Wrongly More Anti-Russian than Anti-Soviet, Janabergen Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 7 – The current drive to rename cities, towns and streets in Kazakhstan is increasingly anti-Russian rather than anti-Soviet with officials involved in this effort choosing to drop even the names of Russians who helped the Kazakh people while honoring those of ethnic Kazakhs who worked for Moscow against their own nation, Bakhyt Janabergen says/
    The Spike news portal writer says that it is increasingly the case that ethnicity rather than political stance is what matters to those pushing for name changes, something that seriously distorts the history of Kazakhstan (spik.kz/2052-o-pereimenovanijah-v-kazahstane-jetnicheskij-faktor-glavnyj-dlja-onomastov.html).
    Among the numerous examples he gives of this unfortunate pattern is that of Yuri Dombrovsky, an ethnic Russian writer who “unlike numerous embers of the Writers Union of the Kazakh SSR did not bend under the Soviet regime” but instead wrote two, The Keeper of the Antiquities and The Faculty of Unnecessary Things, much valued by Kazakhs and others.
    Dombrovsky lived in Alma-Ata from 1933 to 1956, married an ethnic Kazakk, and was sent to the GULAG twice. According to Janabergen, “it is unlikely that there is another writer who described the capital of Kazakhstan at that time with such skill and love but today no one would suggest honoring him because he was a Russian.
    There is in fact a street named Dombrovsky in that city, the commentator acknowledges, but it doesn’t honor the writer but a Polish revolutionary from 1863 who was in no way connected with the famous author.  Such ethnic “selectivity,” Janabergen continues, needs to be ended, and those who worked for Kazakhstan regardless of nationality must be honored.