On January 26, the Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies Program and Council on East Asian Studies of the MacMillan Center presented a roundtable, “Kazakhstan After 2022: What’s Next for the Country?” hosted by Nari Shelekpayev, Assistant Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures (Yale). The panel featured three perspectives on the buildup and fallout of the 2022 Kazakh protests against the Nazarbayev regime which led to over 200 deaths. Botakoz Kassymbekova, Assistant Professor of History at the University of Basel, Erica Marat, Associate Professor and Chair of the Regional and Analytical Studies Department at National Defense University, and Dmitriy Mazorenko, editor of Kazakhstan independent online media “Vlast.kz,” engaged in a discussion on the takeaways of the 2022 uprisings. The session was chaired by Claire Roosien, Assistant Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures and the discussant was Peter Rutland, Professor of Government and Colin and Nancy Campbell Chair For Global Issues and Democratic Thought at Wesleyan University.
During the session, Mazorenko spoke to the underestimated power of the youth movement in facilitating the possibility of a nationwide protest. Kassymbekova reflected on her own involvement in Kazakh communities leading up to the protests. She noted that although in the five years leading up to the event, there was a feeling in the air that something would happen, the fact all parts of Kazakhstan rose up in 2022, as opposed to just the urban centers of Almaty and Astana, surprised everyone and spoke to the shared sentiment of the citizenry against the Nazarbayev regime. She spoke movingly to her compatriots’ powerful displays of emotion and readiness to sacrifice themselves for the cause of freedom in the wake of the protests and ensuing state violence. “I’m tired to be afraid,” was the motto she often heard circulated among Kazakhs.
When asked if there is any positive light on the horizon for the future of Kazakhstan, the panelists unanimously answered negatively. Marat described Nazarbayev as employing a strategy characteristic of totalitarian states where they seek to appease a sympathetic majority and turn them against the protesters without actually addressing the protesters’ concerns. It remains to be seen how Kazakhs will respond to these appeasement attempts by the government.