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go to Russia to get treatment. This is outrageous, but people don’t bother to take
action against such incidents”, a driver, who gave his name as Sergey, lamented.
“Local Kazakhs wouldn’t do this; she must have been from the south”.
The man said he had not heard people talk about separatism in his region but
noted that many of his friends and acquaintances had considered leaving for Rus-
sia. In addition to interethnic relations, the economic crisis Kazakhstan has expe-
rienced since the collapse of oil prices in 2014 has also increased ethnic Russian
emigration from the country.
Razumov, the Almaty-based journalist, said he decided to immigrate to Rus-
sia after a scandalous incident in 2013 when a former local government official
verbally and physically abused a flight attendant for failing to reply in Kazakh. “At
some point I realised that I would not be able to protect my family from such situ-
ations,” he said.
Chebotarev suggested migration was a “realistic indicator” of ethnic Russian
mood in Kazakhstan, but it could not be considered a political factor because
migration is largely motivated by socio-economic reasons. “I would even call it
educational migration when young people go to study in Russia and stay there to
establish their lives, and later are joined by their relatives”, he says. Chebotarev’s
views are shared by Razumov, who said that in the booming early 2000s many
ethnic Russians adopted a position that could be dubbed as delayed emigration
and which might be materialising now. According to Russian migration authorities,
over 260,000 Kazakh citizens were registered as residents in Russia between Janu-
ary and June 2017, and about 20,200 acquired Russian citizenship in this period
alone. Razumov also believes that outward migration would help keep separatist
mood among Kazakhstan’s ethnic Russians at bay. In order for the Crimean sce-
nario to happen in Kazakhstan, he thinks, there should be serious conflicts within
the ethnic Kazakh community itself.
“There is not much internal conflict potential in Kazakh society at the moment.
There are no large-scale, tectonic rifts that could provoke certain foreign interfer-
ence”, he suggests. On the other hand, like Kazakhstan, Russia is not in such great
economic shape due to western sanctions and low commodity prices.
“In these conditions starting another big conflict which would obviously invite
negative reaction in the world with geography playing out even in the opposite
direction and China being not indifferent to such things would not suit anyone in
Russia. Moreover, there is no need for this”, Razumov concludes.Naubet Bisenov is a freelance journalist and researcher based in Almaty, Kazakhstan. He started
working in journalism in 2000 and has since worked as a contributing writer to various media
organisations including the BBC, bne IntelliNews, the Nikkei Asian Review and Equal Times.Opinion & Analysis The crawling threat of the Crimea scenario, Naubet Bisenov