Language Research

In late 1991 the Soviet Union collapsed, and the independent state of Kazakhstan emerged. The Russian-speaking population for whom Kazakhstan had been their homeland as a member state of the Soviet Union, suddenly found themselves living in a country where the Russian nationality was no longer considered the leading one.

The post-Soviet policy in the country was aimed at strengthening the positions of the Kazakh language at the expense of the Russian. This had been done in spite of the fact that, for the majority of population in Kazakhstan, Kazakh is not the lingua franca.

Ethnic Russian-speaking people feel discriminated against for their lack of the Kazakh language. Kazakhstan's government, however, claims that the requirement to know a specific language for occupying certain positions, especially those requiring communication in different languages, cannot be considered discriminatory.

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Updated (August 2006)

OFFICIAL USE OF RUSSIAN IN THE JAMBYL REGION OF SOUTHERN KAZAKHSTAN BANNED

Kenesbek Demeshev, deputy governor of the Jambyl region in southern Kazakhstan, announced that Kazak would be the only language used in local government. Almost overnight, any dealing with any official institution has now to be conducted in the Kazak language.

According to the 1997 Law on Languages, the state language, Kazak, has a higher status than Russian, albeit that that is defined as an official language and is more widely used, especially in business. Kazak, however, is already used for official local government business in Jambyl, where many other provinces are required only to make the transition by 2010. Nevertheless, the state program that set out the process in 2001 made it clear that documents submitted in Russian would continue to be acceptable across the country.

Ever since the state's independence, efforts have been made to encourage the Kazak language usage but these have been poorly executed. As a result, the use of Kazak has decreased while the number of Russian speakers has steadily grown - today they comprise eighty-five percent of the population in the region.

At present, it is unclear how the government will deal with this issue in the Jambyl region, but there are signs that it wants to devote more energy to increase the use of the Kazak language. Furthermore, it has already instructed the Committee for Languages, which comes under the Ministry of Culture, to come up with new approaches to this problem. Ermukhamet Ertysbaev, Minister of Culture and Information, commented the situation by saying that they must maintain the level of Russian usage and by 2010 bring the development of the Kazak language to the same level.

Government critics are not convinced by such pledges, suggesting that there is little reason to believe officials when their record on promoting Kazak has been so poor over the years. For instance, the head of Russian community in the city of Taraz, Svetlana Chautina, said that government cannot convince people that restricting the use of Russian will in any way assist the development of Kazak, just as one nationality [ethnic group] cannot flourish by infringing the rights of others. Moreover, Dos Kushim, the leader of the nationalist political movement “Destiny of the Nation”, pointed out the fact that even some ministers don’t speak Kazak. According to him and his supporters, if real progress is to be made, the 1997 Law on Languages, which effectively gave Russian and Kazak parity, should be replaced by new legislation whose clear objective is the revival of the local language. In addition, their aim is to make all of the Kazakhstan’s citizens be able to speak Kazak as well as Russian.

Source: Mercator News, July 2006 http://www.ciemen.org/mercator/ and Local Government and Public Service Initiative, Multiethnic Newsletter, July 21, 2006 http://lgi.osi.hu/documents.php?id=1250

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