While some basics on Kazakhstan were covered in the first post on the country, I want to pick up a theme that stuck with me during the trip. With its independence from the Soviet Union declared in 1991, Kazakhstan is a very young country. As it gained independence, only 40% of its population were ethnic Kazakhs, which led to a tricky challenge: how do you build a unifying national identity when your nomadic ancestors left almost no written records, and only a few remember what life was like before the Soviet Union?
A Young Nation searching for its identity
Due to its location in the middle of Central Asia, the area of today's Kazakhstan used to be a major part of the Silk Road, which connected the East and West for one-and-a-half millennia. It brought economic, cultural, political, and religious exchange along the route, and many of the caravanserays in the vast Kazakh steppes developed and grew into the cities which are still present today.
The country had been ruled by the same president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, from the time it claimed independence until 2019. Like all regimes in the region, it is heavily criticized for restricting freedom of speech: Reporters Without Borders positioned Kazakhstan 160th out of 180 in the World Freedom Index in 2016. Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan represent the region even lower, 178th and 166th, respectively.
These might be growing pains of a nation still trying to find its identity. It does feel like Kazakhstan is experimenting with various building blocks, evoking images of the ancient nomad culture of the region, while at the same time trying to move beyond its Soviet past, which still dominates in many ways. In addition its border to China has played an ever-larger role in recent years, as Kazakhstan has aimed at slowly eroding Moscow's once undisputed position in the region. As Peter Hopkirk put it in The Great Game: "The collapse of Russian rule in Central Asia has tossed the area back into a melting pot of History. Almost anything could happen there now, and only a brave or foolish man would predict its future."
As any young nation, Kazakhstan is looking for stories and heroes to establish a joint narrative, a joint myth. In the center of Almaty is a park named after Panfilov's division - a group of WWII soldiers who heroically died in the defense of Moscow. According to official Soviet history, on November 16, 1941, the 28 men, armed only with light weapons, took a heroic last stand on the road to Moscow and stopped a massed German tank attack at the outskirts of the city. All 28 died. A bulky memorial in the middle of the park commemorates the occasion, and the stoic faces and sheer optic weight of the monument is appropriately heroic.
The only problem: It's not true. Well, the division existed and the men took part in the battle, but a special investigation was initiated after two of the martyrs were discovered to still be alive (one had even surrendered to the Germans and was sent to the gulag for “betraying the motherland”). It was revealed that the story had been made up at a time in which Stalin's Soviet Union needed heroes. And those stories have a power of their own. Putin visited Astana in 2016 to watch the movie together with Nursultan Nazarbayev, and Russia's chief state archivist Sergei Mironenko was fired after he published documents proving that the story of the division was pure fiction. Most of the men in the unit came from Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, and from the conversations we had in Almaty, the story of Panfilov's division is still a source of national pride.
As a side-note, I was a bit confused that all WWII memorials show the years 1941-1945 and only learned during the trip that in Russia and other post-Soviet countries, the focus lies on the Great Patriotic War, which starts with the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany, and is accepted as a representation of the most important part of WWII. Conveniently, this leaves out the period 1939-1941, in which the Soviet Union worked with Nazi Germany to conquer Poland (including a joint military parade). History is written by the winners.
A capital in the desert
Kazakhstan's capital Nur-Sultan (formerly known as Astana) is a strange place. First of all, it lies in the middle of nowhere. Kazakhstan is the world's largest landlocked country (and the 9th largest overall) and you keep flying over the flat, empty landscape, a little uncertain whether you are going in circles or if it really is that vast.
And then the city appears, all glass and metal, reflecting the sunlight in all directions as you get closer. Kazakhstan only has a population of 18 million, and considering the significant natural resources the land has, every Kazakh should be living comfortably by now. But one look at the skyline and it becomes clear where the money went. Flashy, tall, kitschy, but almost empty despite it's one million inhabitants, Nur-Sultan feels like a mix between Dubai and the images I have seen of the deserted streets in North Korean cities.
The golden egg on-top of Nur-Sultan's number one landmark Bayterek Tower (seen in the photo above) can be visited, and once you get to the top you have a pretty 360° view of the city. Due to the gold-colored glass everything shines in a yellow-ish tone, as any scene playing in Mexico does in American movies. In the middle of the egg is a golden hand-print of the country's first president Nursultan Nasarbajew. A long line of people wait in line to then one after another put their hands into his hand-print and make a wish - something which is probably not advisable now as I am typing this in the middle of a pandemic.
The personality cult around Nasarbajew might also be linked to the search for a national identity, serving as a placeholder before it is filled with a collective myth the nation can agree on. That is all not to say that we did not enjoy the stroll through the city and its retro-futuristic architecture. We had some of our better drinks in Kazakhstan there, and it was one of our few shashlik-free lunch days. It's definitely a memorable experience to walk from one SimCity 2000 building to the next. If you only have a short stay in the region, you might rather want to dedicate a bit more time to Almaty and its surroundings. As I took off from the airport and stared out into the flat, empty vastness once again, I could not help but wonder if it had all been a mirage, before shrugging and turning my attention back to a slightly outdated movie on the little in-flight screen.
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