As a thoroughly russified Qazaq kid growing up in the 1980s Almaty, I had deeply internalized the Russo-centric view of Qazaq-speaking Qazaqs as being rural and backwards. Embarrassingly, for many years, I failed to understand what now seems so painfully obvious. 1/10 My infatuation with Russian culture and my contempt toward the language of my own ancestors were byproducts of Moscow’s colonial rule in Central Asia. When the colonized learn to look down on their own language and culture, the settler colonial project is complete. 2/10

May 31 is the Day of Remembrance of Victims of Political Repression and Famine in Qazaqstan. On this day, I remember my grandfather. Unfortunately, as time passes, memories begin to fade. However, one of the stories that he shared I still remember vividly. 🧵 In the early 1930s, he was a young man pursuing his post-secondary education in finance in the city of Semey. His family had long been affluent, which, in Qazaqstan at the time, meant having lots of livestock. At some point, he received a terrifying message from his father.

When 🇷🇺 supporters of Navany respond with insults to simple observations that his legacy includes vicious rhetoric against Central Asian migrants and other minorities, they help illustrate that 🇷🇺 society has a long way to go before it is ready to confront its past. 🧵


Unfortunately, there are no signs that this much needed, and long overdue, reckoning is likely to happen anytime soon. It didn’t happen after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. It took defeat in WW2 for such a reckoning to get underway in Germany.

Mistaking the 1991 disintegration of the USSR for a genuine abandonment of imperial ambitions by Russia is dangerously shortsighted. And yet, this deeply ahistorical take had become prevalent in Washington and many Western European capitals prior to February 2022. 🧵 In 2012, President Obama famously mocked Romney for stating that Russia represented the most significant geopolitical threat faced by the US: “[T]he 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back, because the Cold War’s been over for 20 years."

The unabashed imperial revanchism of Russia’s war against Ukraine belatedly jumpstarted my personal decolonization journey. Attempting to understand the ways in which Russian rule in Qazaqstan impacted multiple generations of my own family has been a part of this journey. 🧵 I recently came across this photo of my grandparents as a young couple. By the time it was taken, both survived incredible hardships. My grandfather was born in 1912, my grandmother in 1918. I wrote about him earlier. Today, I want to share her story.

https://x.com/azamatistan/status/1664309858949111811

Happy to have contributed a chapter to the new open access e-book from @ponarseurasia. I draw on data from in-depth interviews conducted in Almaty in the summer of 2023 to examine how language and age affect perceptions of the Russo-Ukrainian war among ethnic Qazaqs. A short 🧵

https://twitter.com/ponarseurasia/status/1791207945952165938

The reach of 🇷🇺 narratives is surprisingly modest. Among those who consume news & information in Qazaq rather than Russian, support for 🇷🇺 is absent while sympathy for 🇺🇦 is clear. Attitudes toward Russia’s war are remarkably similar among the young (18-29) and the “old” (50+).

Ukraine has defied all odds by resisting 🇷🇺 for 2 years. This was enabled in large part by EU and US support. Scaled up support for Ukraine is urgently needed to stop Russian aggression. In this crucial moment, here’s what Navalny’s widow had to say in Strasbourg this week. 🧵 - Stop financial support of Ukraine
- Stop sending weapons to Ukraine
- Stop the sanctions that make life harder for Russians.
Instead..
- Help @ACF_int to.. drumroll… do more of what it has been doing.

I am paraphrasing; so don’t take my word for it. Google her speech.

Qazaqstan or Kazakhstan. During the Soviet period, the ambition of 🇷🇺 colonial rule in Central Asia went beyond military & economic control. In Qazaqstan, language & even alphabet itself were targeted. Cyrillic alphabet was imposed and we were taught that 🇷🇺 gave us writing. 🧵 This was, of course, untrue since Qazaq was written using Arabic script until about 1929. My own maternal grandfather as well as several other members of our extended family wrote using Arabic letters. But Moscow has never let inconvenient truths get in the way of its propaganda.

One of the most enduring and bitter legacies of Russian colonial rule in Qazaqstan has to do with the destruction of Qazaq language across multiple generations of urban Qazaqs. I’m 47 and my Qazaq is painfully limited. The same is true for my mother (81) and my cousin (27). 🧵 During the Soviet period, Qazaq was ridiculed and disparaged as archaic and unsuitable for science and technology. At school, we were taught that Qazaqs had no written language. That writing itself was supposedly one of the many gifts of modernity bestowed upon us by Russia.

This piece offers a helpful, even if depressing, illustration of the worldview shared by many Russian opposition figures. It is a bleak picture. But looking away is dangerous. A realistic understanding of 🇷🇺 society, of which 🇷🇺 opposition is an integral part is essential.🧵 The very first sentence in the article refers to Russia’s war in Ukraine as “Putin‘s invasion.” The categorical refusal to acknowledge that Russian society bears any responsibility for the horror perpetrated in Ukraine has become a signature of Navalny supporters.

Thirty seven years ago, in December of 1986, Kremlin appointed G. Kolbin as the new head of the “Kazakh SSR.” The appointment of a complete outsider with no prior connection to Qazaqstan perfectly exemplified the brash arrogance of Russia’s colonial rule in Central Asia.🧵 People took to the streets of Almaty to protest this decision. The scale of the protest was unprecedented in Soviet history. Moscow sent in troops from outside the Republic to crush the protesters. This 2016 article by @LadyPutz offers a useful summary. thediplomat.com/2016/12/1986-k…

To halt the resurgence of Russian imperialism, Ukraine is paying with the lives of its sons and daughters. To halt the resurgence of Russian imperialism, the US is paying with a modest percentage of its overall defense budget, much of it going to American manufacturers. 1/4 Fierce Ukrainian resistance dashed 🇷🇺 hopes of a quick triumph over its former colony. Nearly two years into its “three-day” operation, Moscow has been forced to declare mobilization AND scour prisons in search of new soldiers after suffering staggering losses. 2/4

After Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, few expected that Ukraine could resist. Russian officers packed dress uniforms for a victory parade. Within hours of Russia’s attack, with 🇷🇺 army closing in on Kyiv, the US offered to evacuate Zelenskyy. 🧵 I remember the feeling of dread. The full might of Russia’s enormous army bearing down on the smaller nation unwilling to submit to its former colonial master. As someone born and raised in another former Russian colony, I was horrified by Russia’s brazen imperial revanchism.

Russian propaganda extolling the Soviet Union and pushing anti-Ukrainian narratives is a major part of Moscow’s imperial revanchist project in societies that became independent after USSR’s collapse. Is it working? Results from an empirical investigation in Qazaqstan. A long 🧵. The horror of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has clearly catalyzed decolonial perspectives among Central Asian activists and academics. However, we know much less about the views of regular people. Has the propaganda worked on them?

Russian insistence that Ukrainian is merely a quaint dialect of the “great & mighty Russian language” is part of 🇷🇺 imperial narrative. In case of Ukraine, it erases Ukrainians as separate people. In case of Qazaqstan, 🇷🇺 imperial narrative was different but equally brazen. 🧵 When I entered first grade in 1983, out of more than a hundred schools in Almaty - the capital of our “Soviet Socialist Republic,” only two schools used Qazaq as language of instruction. In my school, Qazaq class was offered twice a week and not taken seriously by anyone I knew.

Growing up my last name was Junisbaev. As was the case with most Qazaqs during Soviet rule, my actual family name - Junisbai - was given a 🇷🇺 makeover in the form of a 🇷🇺 ending (-ev). The brazen Russification of Qazaq family names is but one example of Russian colonial rule. 🧵 I had it changed to the proper spelling in my early 20s after Qazaqstan became independent. This change, albeit small, felt right. Yet, my own experience pales in comparison to what previous generations of my family had to contend with.

“Russian is my mother tongue and liberation means ripping it out of my throat.” This sentence by @sasha_weirdsley has haunted me ever since I first read it several months ago. I’m a middle aged Qazaq man born and raised in Almaty. Russian is my “mother tongue”. 🧵… I use it to speak with my 81 year old mother. I use it with her siblings and all the other members of my extended family in Qazaqstan. My family is Qazaq but the last generation to have fluent Qazaq is the one that has been gone for over 30 years. My Qazaq is painfully limited.

As someone who grew up in Soviet-era Qazaqstan, I am struck by how different it feels these days. When I was growing up, Russian language and culture were dominant among young urban Qazaqs. In Almaty, speaking Qazaq was seen as something that only people from rural areas did. 🧵 Qazaq culture was not seen as cool or interesting. It’s striking to hear Qazaq being used by young people downtown or see hipsters integrating traditional Qazaq design elements into their wardrobes. A lot of young people in Almaty now follow Qazaq language artists and musicians.

During the Soviet period, Russian language was portrayed as a priceless gift to all the non-Russian people in the USSR. As a kid going to school in the 1980s Almaty, I was taught that Russian was the all-important gateway to modernity, science, and civilization. 🧵 In contrast, the language of my own ancestors - Qazaq - was disparaged as hopelessly archaic. The opposite of worldly. Woefully inadequate for learning about the outside world and communicating with it. For these tasks, only “the great and mighty Russian language” would do.

Successfully obscuring the reality of the Soviet Union as a ruthless colonial power has got to be one of the most astonishing propaganda accomplishments in modern history and, simultaneously, one of the most consequential and problematic legacies of the USSR. 🧵 Inside Russia, the view of itself as a selfless and benevolent “big brother” that gifted modernity & prosperity to non-Russian societies which comprised the USSR is ubiquitous. The term “colonialism” is routinely used to condemn OTHER nations but the gaze seldom turns inward.

I love being in Qazaqstan. I read, write, & teach about it regularly. Yet, physical presence affords a visceral sense of societal changes taking place that is hard to fully grasp otherwise. And there are big changes underway. A short 🧵… The biggest one is the fact that the Qazaq language is far more prominent than it has been. In the old capital, Almaty, where Russian language was absolutely dominant during the Soviet period, Qazaq is now heard everywhere, all the time.