Participants were invited to write essays responding to one of several prompts:
Our identity tomorrow—Kazakhs or Kazakhstanis?
What can I tell the world as an author from Kazakhstan?
The Russian language in Kazakhstan—questions and answers
The future of languages in Kazakhstan
The question of identity is not relevant to me
The selection process was not strict—only those works entirely unrelated to any proposed theme were not considered.
The five cities—Aktobe, Shymkent, Astana, Almaty and Oskemen—span Kazakhstan’s geography and climate zones, and, as I discovered, they also differ linguistically. Before this journey, my experience had been limited to Almaty, my home city, and Astana, the capital. The other cities were entirely new to me, and I made a conscious effort to observe everything—the language spoken by taxi drivers, signage, radio broadcasts, conversations in queues at shops.
Since independence, Kazakhstan has invested substantial resources in the promotion of the Kazakh language through its education system and cultural initiatives. According to the Constitution, Kazakh is the state language, yet Russian also holds an official status: “In the Republic of Kazakhstan, the state language is Kazakh. In state organizations and local self-government bodies, the Russian language is officially used alongside Kazakh”. In this way, the government underscores citizens’ freedom of language, both in services and in education at the primary and higher levels.
However, following the outbreak of war in Ukraine, there has been a notable surge in linguistic patriotism. Kazakh has emerged as a symbol of loyalty—not necessarily to the state, but to society itself. At times, this takes an activist form, such as in so-called “language patrols”, in which bloggers demand service in Kazakh from public institutions. These actions have been swiftly and, at times, harshly suppressed, with some resulting in arrests and imprisonment.
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In practice, Russian accompanied me everywhere during this project. Even without knowledge of Kazakh, I would have encountered no communication barriers in any of the cities I visited. Signage appears in both languages, and often in English, which is favored by local commercial brands, such as Global Coffee, found in Shymkent and elsewhere. The language of a venue’s name reflects its intended audience: Kazakh for national cuisine restaurants, Russian or English for others. The situation is further complicated by the use of Latin script in Kazakh, which sometimes signals the owners’ progressive or patriotic orientation. This multilingual and multi-alphabetic landscape may seem eclectic—even chaotic—at first glance. Indeed, it is a reflection of Kazakhstan’s complex multicultural identity.
Of the five cities, Shymkent stood apart from Almaty, Astana, Aktobe and Oskemen—all of which remain largely Russophone. In Shymkent, I encountered speakers of various ethnic backgrounds freely communicating in Kazakh. People often addressed me in Kazakh, expecting a response. There was no sense of testing or catching me out—it felt entirely natural, even when some participants switched to Russian out of politeness or assuming I was a visitor. This bilingualism struck me as a model for Kazakhstan’s linguistic future. It was in this city that I felt most at ease, especially during our roundtable conversations.
Let me share a few excerpts from the essays of Shymkent participants:
Awareness and preservation of one’s identity are directly linked to knowledge of one’s native language and the ability to think in it. For example, I can properly pass on to my children the values I saw in my parents only in my native language.
I identify with Kazakhstan, my country—multinational, diverse, beautiful and free.
A colonised society has lost far too much. The foremost task is the restoration of language, religion, history and folklore. Yet even now, we are still unable to speak our native language confidently and fully.
Despite this range of opinions, which were polarized along linguistic lines, the conversation in Shymkent developed into a respectful exchange of perspectives and gradually shifted towards a discussion of the technical aspects of working with a text.
The discussion in Aktobe was similarly measured in tone. As you will see, both Kazakh and Russian speaking participants were inclined toward an inclusive vision of the future, and embraced an idea of Kazakhstan in which Kazakh and Russian speakers, Kazakh traditions and other cultures can coexist and enrich each other. Below are two reflections shared by Aktobe’s participants on the question of identity:
No matter how blurred the boundaries between two linguistic traditions may seem, they do exist. Through the cracks of time, each of us interprets the historical experience of our nation in our own way—wherever we may live and whatever language we may speak. And that means that tomorrow, just like yesterday, we will remain Kazakhstanis. Kazakhstanis who elevate the value and significance of cultural heritage through love and respect for ethnicity, nationhood and our country.
Let us respect our native language, learn other languages and raise a younger generation that understands global processes, is open to the world and is culturally developed.
I prepared for a different experience in Oskemen after receiving an especially emotional submission. A young woman shared an essay on being bullied and physically attacked for not appearing like the others in her village. I anticipated a charged discussion during the seminar there. I was not mistaken. Here is a quote from her piece:
Even in my personal experience, the question of identity began to surface in childhood. In the village, neighbouring children threw stones at me and once injured my eye, saying: “You don’t look like a Kazakh girl”.
As expected, her essay made for a difficult discussion around the idea of belonging and the sense of being safe in one’s own country. Yet, while heated opinions were aired, I was constantly impressed by the way participants were open and willing to talk about these sensitive matters. In each city, it became evident that the discussion of identity, the participants’ polyphonic views and the mutual respect towards both the Kazakh and Russian languages had a therapeutic effect. The fact that everyone felt free to speak and be heard in the language of their choice fostered a unique atmosphere of trust and dialogue.
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Here is another quote from an Oskemen participant. This voices a unifying idea that recurred across many of the essays about our national history:
We are all different—yet many of us react similarly to a shared marker in time: the year 1990. Among my fellow participants are descendants of repressed Germans and Poles, individuals with Jewish heritage and Kazakhs who grew up in predominantly Russian-speaking environments. Despite our diverse backgrounds, we share a common experience: we were raised in communities that were neither nationally nor socially homogeneous.
In 1990, every resident of Kazakhstan, even before obtaining a passport of the newly independent state, found themselves in a difficult economic situation where questions of survival took precedence over all else. The loss of Soviet identity, the realisation of their own ethnic background and the fear of change drove some to emigrate. About 3.5 million people left—to Russia, Germany, Poland and elsewhere. However, in most cases, emigration was motivated by financial distress. Engineers, academics and teachers lost their careers and stability. The television spoke of emerging capitalist opportunities and democracy while the majority of people were struggling to survive. Yet, in the midst of this mass exit, ethnic Kazakhs from abroad began to return to Kazakhstan. Often, these returning Kazakhs had no Russian language background at all, adding yet another distinct constituency to the country. Between 1991 and 2016, 1.5 million ethnic Kazakhs returned.
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What made it into the participants’ final essays did not always reflect what was actually said around the table. Discussions reached boiling points not preserved in the writing. Some participants were even brought to tears. I mention this to underscore the stakes and intensity of having such conversations around language and identity in Kazakhstan today. There is one particular remark that I continue to struggle with. In the midst of a conversation, a participant said:
We are allowed to speak Kazakh in our country.
At first, I found this statement unsettling—perhaps even manipulative—and I must admit I still cannot fully decipher its implications. As I’ve written, the Kazakh state has long enshrined the right to speak the state language. Moreover, fluency in Kazakh is a requirement for employment in state institutions, with proficiency tested through formal exams.
The full weight of this statement is not entirely accessible to me simply because Kazakh is not my native tongue. I have a certain command of Kazakh, as do many non-ethnic Kazakhs who make an effort to use it in everyday life, but there is a difference between fluency and native understanding. And yet, I think this statement expresses something deeper: a generational tension within Kazakh society, in which those currently holding positions of power often belong to the Russophone generation. Perhaps it is not even a matter of the language itself. I’ve come to believe this statement speaks to a linguistic trauma within contemporary Kazakh society. A trauma that individuals such as myself can only interpret from the outside despite being Kazakhstani.
I observed another example of the acute emotional tension hidden within the question of Kazakhstan’s language and identity after giving a TEDxAstana talk about the Russian language. In the talk, I argued that no single state (including Russia) holds a monopoly over Russian. Afterwards, a young woman approached me in tears. She explained that my words freed her from the shame she had long felt about speaking Russian—the language of her upbringing in a Russophone Kazakh family.
Yet, hers was not the whole story—the comment section under the talk revealed a very different reaction. Viewers accused me of aggravating the situation in a country “where Russian is not needed at all.” In response to such accusations, I try to adopt a pragmatic tone, pointing to Russian’s role as a global medium of knowledge transmission. Still, there is no denying that, regardless of how useful Russian may be, the question of what language is used and spoken in Kazakhstan remains fraught and extremely sensitive.
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As may be expected, many other perspectives were voiced over the course of the programme. Here is another statement that struck me and did not make it into an essay:
I don’t see the point of discussing linguistic identity—the country’s demographics are such that the issue will resolve itself naturally.
This comment came from a participant fluent in Kazakh, Russian, English and likely other languages as well. Indeed, Kazakhstan’s demographic data suggests that Kazakh families have higher birth rates than families from other ethnic groups. In contemporary Kazakh families, the number of children typically ranges from 2 to 5, whereas in non-Kazakh families, the norm is 1 to 2 children.
As a result, the generation of people who do not speak Kazakh—and, in some cases, consciously refuse to learn it—is gradually disappearing. When the returning Kazakhs are also taken into account, it is easy to be convinced that Kazakhstan may become a monoethnic state.
It might seem, then, that the question of linguistic identity will resolve itself naturally. Perhaps so—but likely only within the country’s borders. The issue of choosing a language through which to transmit knowledge internationally will remain unresolved. Case in point: English proficiency in Kazakhstan remains extremely low; in 2024, the country’s English fluency ranked 107th out of 117 nations. Russian remains the most widely understood international language within Kazakhstan, a reality that is not easily changed or overlooked.
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Another statement, voiced in the form of a question during the seminar in Almaty, lingered in the air with unsettling weight.
School is one thing, but who forced Kazakhs to speak Russian at home, in their families?
In considering this question, I began to consider the ways that the issue of the Russian language has become an internal division in Kazakh society itself. This division is not new—historically, it manifested as a rural–urban split with villages retaining the Kazakh language throughout the Soviet and post-Soviet eras, while cities were dominated by Russian-speaking Kazakhs. What has changed is the context. Kazakhstan is now a fully urbanized society, and the linguistic divide has shifted into the heart of urban discourse. I find myself in the strange position of being a witness to polemics I am not part of. I and native Russian speakers, who are used to being at the center of cultural discourse, find ourselves on the margins. This sense of exclusion was echoed by participants after the first day of discussion in Almaty; some admitted feeling uneasy, and a few even considered not returning the next day.
Indeed, several did not come back, although they continued to engage individually during the editing of their final texts.
Here is an excerpt from one essay written by an Almaty participant:
Perhaps, like me, you find it completely natural to stroll through the centre of Almaty, meeting friends at various cafés. In Almaty’s cafés, everyone can find what they need: sugar-free, gluten-free and meat-free meals; coffee with alternative milks. Businesses easily build a loyal customer base by embracing an inclusive approach. It’s great, isn’t it? And yet, it’s sometimes strange to realise that in most of these places, you won’t find a menu in Kazakh. It’s as if many of us are collectively ignoring the elephant in the room.
Even more curious is the fact that a request for an almond-milk latte is treated as a personal preference, while a request for a Kazakh-language menu is seen as an aggression. In our country, inclusion and its associated values often remain invisible and intangible—particularly for Kazakh-speaking people.
As a Russian speaker, it can be difficult to notice that there are issues surrounding the Kazakh language. Every day, we encounter a structure that appears accommodating—after all, Russian has become the language of inclusion in Kazakhstan. This is evident not only in the restaurant industry. Consider civil society, or the language used in emergency services such as the general service emergency hotline 112. Even in questions of identity, we tend to examine everything through the prism of the Russian language.
In this quote, a Russian speaker is recognizing traumas associated with the Kazakh language in the urban landscape. This was a theme noted by Kazakh speakers in more existential ways—several participants described how not speaking Russian significantly limits their employment opportunities. As they put it, it is nearly impossible to find decent work without proficiency in Russian. In listening to these conversations, I began to realise that Russian is perceived not necessarily as a language in itself, but as a barrier to full participation in economic and social life.
Of course, this perception is aggravated by the way our neighbor to the north, Russia—and Putin in particular—often invoke the Russian language and a shared Soviet identity as instruments of soft power, allowing Russia to exert cultural and ideological influence over Kazakhstan. External rhetoric and soft power interventions—especially when tinged with the colours of war and aimed at maintaining the status of the Russian language—provoke an extremely negative reaction from parts of society in Kazakhstan. In many ways, claims about the Russian language and Soviet history by Russia are received as modern invocations of old colonial policies. These thoughts were evident in participants’ essays, as in this example from the Astana cohort on the tensions between Kazakh and Russian, and the possibility of English as an international language.
In some countries, multiple official languages coexist without conflict, whereas in Kazakhstan, the Russian language still dominates over Kazakh in many contexts. This is a legacy of colonisation. The majority of Kazakhstanis continue to rely on Russian in everyday life. In some cases, even legislation is initially drafted in Russian and then translated into Kazakh, often resulting in errors. Some members of parliament struggle to deliver speeches in Kazakh, which has drawn public criticism.
The English language, on the contrary, represents a window into Kazakhstan’s future—a tool for engaging with the world and accessing cutting-edge knowledge. This does not imply a rejection of the national language. Instead, learning English allows Kazakhstanis to strengthen their place in the global community while preserving national values and actively participating in international life.
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Befitting a programme that embraced writing as a way to discuss identity, some essays explicitly considered Kazakh literature, pointing out the paucity of writing about Kazakhstan’s experiences of war, famine and relocation in the long twentieth century. The absence of such artistic explorations of our history creates a significant gap in Kazakhstan’s self understanding. As one participant put it:
A sincere literary work, free from political propaganda, would be of interest not only to the world but to ourselves as well. Who are we? How do we envision our future? What shared identity unites all those who live in this country? These are the questions that should be explored in new works of literature.
Another participant reflected on the contradictions of receiving a literary education in Kazakhstan.
At school, our Kazakh classes were hopeless. Kazakh literature was poorly taught, whereas Russian and world literature were taught well. Naturally, I grew up as someone who—according to my polyglot friends—embodied a full set of colonial values and a damaged sense of national self. It’s when you speak a lot about things like enlightenment and progress, while your grandparents survived despite those very values. When your misaligned worldview—a pride in the haughty banner of civilization—keeps getting snagged by the mountain of skulls behind it, shyly dusted over with soil.
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All these questions about the role of language in Kazakhstan center around the binary of Kazakh and Russian, yet there is another, final question which captures the heart of the matter even more succinctly. While we debate definitions of identity within Kazakhstan, global discourse increasingly tends to conflate the terms “Kazakhstan” and “Kazakh”. This tendency is evident in automated translation tools such as Google Translate, where “Kazakh” often appears as the default ethnonym for references to the country. As Russian poet and critic Dmitry Kuzmin has observed, all literature written in Russian today is categorised in global search databases as “Russian literature”, regardless of the geographical or cultural background of its authors.
One participant articulated this conflict when they wrote:
Our words shape our reality. And when we say that we are “Kazakhstanis”, we unintentionally create a mental distinction between Kazakhs and non-Kazakhs—a binary opposition that ultimately does not foster national unity.
In the title of this essay, I speak of voices emerging from Kazakh cities. The question of how to identify those voices, whether as Kazakh or Kazakhstani, is one I leave to readers. It is an open question, not only for us within Kazakhstan, but for the global community that seeks to understand who we are.
The voices expressed in these essays reveal a polyphony of perspectives, tensions and definitions. They capture the nuanced and evolving nature of linguistic and cultural self-understanding in Kazakhstan today. In the course of this programme, I would say that I have come to value ambiguity, even the open voicing of disunity, as a strength rather than a weakness. The fluidity and dynamism I see in the contemporary Kazakh identity seems to me an essential element of how meaning and belonging are formed. It is precisely the preservation of this polyphony—the recognition that identity need not be singular, rigid or final—that can underpin societal stability in Kazakhstan today. Our long-standing history of multiethnic coexistence offers hope for the future; a future that promises the continued development of a distinctive, historically rooted, pluralistic national identity.
