Tokayev’s Praise for the Golden Horde Gives Moscow a Taste of Its Own Medicine and Moscow Doesn’t Like It

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 22 – Earlier this month, Kazakhstan President Kasym-Jomart Tokayev gave a speech in which he praised the Golden Horde and said it was a proper guide for the Kazakhs in the future, a position that echoes Moscow’s talk about an ancient Russian tradition but offends many there by challenging Russian views on the Horde.

            Speaking at an Astana symposium on the Golden Horde on May 19, Tokayev did not simply mention the Golden Horde but argued it was a major Eurasian power in its own right, a civilizational model for the Great Steppe and as such had its own institutions, laws, military and financial system (altyn-orda.kz/vystuplenie-glavy-gosudarstva-kasym-zhomarta-tokaeva-na-mezhdunarodnom-simpoziume-zolotaya-orda-kak-model-stepnoj-tsivilizatsii-istoriya-arheologiya-kultura-identichnost/).

            Every part of his remarks represented a challenge to the Russian imperial tradition that Putin represents. Now as in the past, Moscow treats the Golden Horde as “a yoke,” “a dark age,” and a symbol of Russia’s enslavement and the cause of its suffering.

            For Russians who think this way, “the Steppe was not a civilization but a threat, not a state but a mere raiding party, and not a system of governance but of chaos,” the Altyn-Orda portal says in summing up Tokayev’s remarks. Not surprisingly, many in Moscow are furious (altyn-orda.kz/rech-tokaeva-o-zolotoj-orde-vyzvala-nervnuyu-reaktsiyu-v-rossii/).

            What is especially infuriating from Moscow’s point of view, of course, is not the mere mention of the Golden Horde but that fact, the portal continues, that “Kazakhstan is beginning to construct its own historical narrative—one in which the Ulus of Jochi and the Golden Horde are viewed not as ‘a foreign invasion’  but as an integral part of the history of statehood in the Kazakh Steppe.”

            With his words, Tokayev is “declaring to the world that the Steppe is not some void situated between China, Rus’, and Europe but rather an independent center of power in its own right, a conduit for trade routes, diplomatic ties, cultural exchanges and political models” for now and the future, the portal continues.

            Moreover, the portal says, “while the history of the Great Steppe was previously often written by those observing it from the outside, Kazakhstan has now begun to write it from within. In essence, Tokayev’s speech is not a dispute with Russia regarding the past; it is a declaration regarding the future. “

            That is, Tokayev’s argument about the Golden Horde show that from now on Kazakhstan will be “grounding its identity not in the Soviet legacy or in the role of Moscow’s ‘junior partner’ but rather on the basis of a far deeper historical foundation,” one at least as old or more likely older than the Russian tradition.

            In Tokayev’s vision, the portal says, “the Golden Horde is not ‘a yoke,’ but a civilizational bedrock—not a dark stain on history, but a grand Eurasian project;” and that is “precisely why the Russian reaction has been so agitated. When Kazakhstan reclaimed the Golden Horde, it is reclaiming not just its history but it true self.”

But a curious coincidence, Tokayev’s speech came only four days after Kazakhstan and the Turkic world marked the 90^th anniversary of the  birth of Kazakh writer and philosopher Olzhas Suleimenov  (https://ru.euronews.com/culture/2026/04/15/90-let-olzhasu-sulejmenovu-pisatel-stavshij-golosom-antiyadernogo-dvizheniya ).

Suleimenov’s 1975 book, Az i Ya also challenged the Russian understanding of the Horde and was almost immediately suppressed by the Soviets and has been an underground classic for Turkic and other ethnic groups in the Russian empire ever since . (For background, see  windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2021/09/kazakh-authorities-confiscate-paper-in.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2021/01/pandemic-testing-leaders-and-countries.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2014/09/window-on-eurasia-putin-doesnt-know.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2012/10/window-on-eurasia-cis-continuing-and.html.)