A Revolt in the Steppe

These introductory remarks are discussing the evolution of Kazakhstani politics from the resignation of Nursultan Nazarbayev in March 2019 until the January events of 2022 as well as summarizing the book’s chapters.

The January events of 2022 resulted in an outcome that was unexpected when Nursultan Nazarbayev resigned as President in March 2019. While everything was pointing in the direction of a perpetuation of his legacy and his capacity to maintain his grip on state’s affairs, these events led to a “de-Nazarbayevification” process that saw him lose his honorary title and his constitutional protections, the renaming of the capital from “Nur-Sultan” back to Astana as well as a purge among his closest allies and family members. By looking at other cases of succession in authoritarian countries, this chapter tries to identify the main factors that can explain what has been one of the major outcomes of the January events.

The January Russian-led, Collective Security Treaty Organization intervention in Kazakhstan on behalf of President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev raised important questions about whether the government in Astana was indebted to Moscow and how much geopolitical leverage the latter could and would exercise over the former. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine the following month put Russia-Kazakhstan ties to the test as Kazakhstan has been forced to maneuver through a difficult situation which includes an irredentist threat on its border, a formal alliance with this source of threat, and its official multivector foreign policy. This chapter examines how Kazakhstan has had remarkable success at carefully balancing its deep-rooted ties to Russia with its goal of maintaining both its foreign policy autonomy and positive relations with the West. It also shows how Kazakhstan has taken concrete steps to demonstrate its rejection of Moscow’s war aims and to secure its territorial integrity and sovereignty against any potential Russian threat. The conclusion considers what the future might hold for Kazakhstan in light of a dynamic international environment.

For 30 years, Kazakhstan’s government prided itself on being the most stable and economically successful country in Central Asia. The January 2022 unrest shook up that image of stability and prosperity. Faced with a serious threat to his regime’s survival, President Tokayev took a number of exceptional measures in an effort to quell the violence and restore order. First, on January 5, he cut off all access to the internet and mobile phone networks after announcing a nationwide state of emergency. Second, at the invitation of the government of Kazakhstan, peacekeeping forces of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), a Russian-led regional security alliance, were deployed to stabilize the situation. Third, Tokayev declared that the violent rioters were connected to foreign terrorist and criminal organizations and gave a “shoot-to-kill without warning” order against the protesters on January 7. These actions came at a high cost to Kazakhstan’s reputation, undermining the regime’s legitimacy in the eyes of domestic and international audiences. How does a state deal with reputational and legitimacy costs of protest repression when the dust settles? In this chapter, we explore the dynamic of the Tokayev administration’s attempt at damage control through strategic narrative framing. We conduct a critical discourse analysis of Tokayev’s speeches and tweets and demonstrate how the government scripted a hegemonic narrative designed to justify the measures it took during the crisis, adjusted the narrative in response to public pushback, and framed the unrest as a teaching moment that ushered in a “New Kazakhstan.”

This chapter looks at the reasons why the Kazakhstani state authorities blamed the January 2022 violence on foreign-trained terrorists. We argue that the authorities shifted the blame to foreign elements for three reasons related to both internal and external legitimation purposes. First, we demonstrate that invoking the Islamic rhetoric represents a typical tactic used by the Kazakhstani government to delegitimize opposition movements. Second, shifting away the blame from the population allows the authorities to minimize and to some extent write off the profound underlying popular discontent. Third, we argue that invoking the presence of “foreign agents” in the unrest was a necessary condition for the involvement of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) forces.