CONTEMPORARY EURASIA VOLUME VI (1) Contemporary-Eurasia-VI-1-engl | Page 107

NAREK MKRTCHYAN
on the promotion of other ethnic groups’ languages, especially on
Russian.
To understand contemporary identity and language problems in
Kazakhstan the article will discuss various Tsarist and Soviet
language policies towards Kazakhstan. Due to long-term Tsarist and
Soviet political superiority, the Russian language became a primary
medium of communication while transforming the Kazakh language
into a poor marker of ethnic association.
The publiciziation of the Kazakh language became one of the
necessary policies for the transformation of post-Soviet Kazakhstan
and strengthening the ideas of ethnic identities statehood 1 . The
language policy of post-Soviet Kazakhstan plays a vital role in
shaping national and civic identities. To link native language with
collective identity, the government of Kazakhstan promoted the idea
of common language. Thus, language can be seen as a national-
collective will. By manipulating the idea of language as a national-
collective will, ruling authorities had an opportunity to found their
hegemony 2 . Such kind of hegemonic processes would help
Nazarbayev’s administration to influence and alter people’s sovietized
thinking and worldviews shaped out within more than five decades.
Even after the establishment of independence many Kazakhs still
prefer to speak Russian. The influence of Russian language caused
various sociopolitical difficulties for Kazakhstan’s nation-building
processes. In this context, the establishment of national imagination
among ethnic Kazakhs could be measured as a privileged policy.
Based on Benedict Anderson’s conceptual thinking one can argue that
identity is an “imagined community” 3 shaped out through narration.
The concept of "imagined communities" puts more emphasize on
nation-building rather than nationalism. Therefore, communication
(print-language) creates a sense of nationhood and triggers the rise of
national identity by creating unified fields of exchange and
Fierman W., “Kazakh Language and Prospects for its Role in
Kazakh 'Goriness',”Ab Imperio no. 2, 2005, pp. 393-423.
2
Ives P., Language and hegemony in Gramsci, London: Pluto Press, 2004, pp.
111-112.
3
Anderson B., Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of
Nationalism, London: Verso Press, 2006.
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