Discussions about Decolonisation in Kazakhstan Following the Russian Attack on Ukraine

The next speaker in this IAMCR 2024 session is Nazira Bairbek, whose focus is on the impact of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on Kazakhstan; some Russian users in Kazakhstan responded to the invasion by asking Putin to annex Kazakhstan as well, for instance, while many Kazakh people took the side of Ukraine and feared Russian aggression against their own country.

This reflects the complicated post-colonial nature of many post-Soviet nations; they have fought for their independence from Russian influence since 1991, but maintain close relationships with Russia, and some people in these countries believe that they cannot survive without such close alignment. Others see the war in Ukraine as a reason to further distance themselves from Russia.

Nazira examined this through an analysis of public discussions on Facebook in Kazakhstan; she understands the full-scale invasion of Ukraine as a focussing event, which heightened discussion on issues which already existed in public debate and policy-making. The data for the study were drawn through a snowball sample from individual Facebook users’ accounts, and collected several hundred posts regarding the decolonisation of Kazakhstan from the month immediately following the full-scale invasion as well as the same timeframe from the previous year, in order to compare pre- and post-invasion themes.

Several thematic categories emerged from the manual analysis of these posts. Post-invasion posting volume was substantially higher, and demonstrated the role of the invasion as a focussing event; key new themes that entered the discussion related to the banning of Russian state propaganda channels in Kazakhstan, and the withdrawal from international organisations that connect Kazakhstan to Russia’s sphere of influence. Discussions on economic and political independence also increased, while discussions on language and cultural policies declined somewhat.

Overall, this reflects a strong desire by Kazakh citizens to reduce Russian influence in their country, strengthen their own national identity, and protect their country’s territorial integrity.