Language and Education in Post-Soviet Kazakhstan: Kazakh ...

Language and Education in Post-Soviet Kazakhstan: Kazakh-Medium Instruction in Urban Schools WILLIAM FIERMAN

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rom the decline of korenizatsiia (indigenization) in the 1930s until the late 1980s, the Communist party (CPSU) actively promoted the Russian language as a common bond uniting the multiethnic “Soviet people.” As Isabelle Kreindler describes, the party supported Russian not only as a common lingua franca, but also as a key component of a common Soviet cultural foundation.1 In these capacities, Russian was assigned a central role in fostering rapprochement (sblizhenie) of the many nationalities inhabiting the USSR. According to official Soviet ideology, linguistic and other differences among nationalities in the USSR would progressively weaken, and eventually lead to their merger (sliianie). The political foundation for Soviet policies of sblizhenie and sliianie disappeared with the disintegration of the USSR in 1991. In the wake of this collapse, the countries which emerged—many with no histories as independent states—faced the urgent task of developing a basis for common identity of their citizens. Among other things, this meant articulation of policies relevant to transmitting cultures of the titular and other nationalities through the educational system. A critical component of this was determining the respective roles in the schools of the state language and Russian, as well as of other local minority tongues. In all of the USSR’s non-Russian former republics, new policies fostered a relative decline of Russian and a rise of the titular state language. This article examines an aspect of the changing language balance in Kazakhstan, the Soviet republic which upon independence had the smallest proportion of titular nationality population. The study will focus on the language shift (from Russian to Kazakh) as medium of primary and secondary school education in the very late Soviet period and the years since independence. As in other former republics, the trends in language of instruction reflect not only the directives of the leadership of the emerging state but also 1 Isabelle Kreindler, “Forging a Soviet People,” in Soviet Central Asia: The Failed Transformation, ed. William Fierman (Boulder, 1991), 219–31.

The Russian Review 65 (January 2006): 98–116 Copyright 2006 The Russian Review

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broad economic, political, and social realities, as well as choices made by individual families. We will concentrate on urban schools. The reasons for this are that in the late Soviet era a high proportion of Kazakh rural pupils were already studying in the Kazakh medium. Moreover, unlike in urban areas, most rural Kazakh children lived in an environment where even without Kazakh-medium education, they learned Kazakh through frequent contact with other Kazakh speakers. Finally, urban areas are especially important because cultural and educational elites, as well as the institutions where they work, are concentrated there. Before turning to the specifics of the Kazakh case, we should note that the language of school instruction was a major concern of many “informal” groups and national fronts that emerged in the late Soviet era throughout the USSR, and that the changes in the area of language policy under Gorbachev reflected the rapid shifts in the Soviet political system itself. In response to pressure from below, republic government and party leaders adopted policies supported by local populations. In the case of language, this was first apparent in the Baltic region, where in 1988 republic government bodies openly challenged Moscow by support of assertive platforms. In 1989, Moscow had little choice but to accede to adoption of language laws in most union republics.2 The events of the late Soviet era suggest that the link between territory and language— rooted in Stalin’s definition of a nation—was very widely accepted in the USSR. That is, each nation, besides being united by a common economy and psychological make-up as manifest in a community of culture, was also said to share a common territory and language. Consequently, as the Soviet Union collapsed, citizens had good reason to expect that the titular nationality in each of the Soviet republics (and later, ex-republics) would promote its own language on “its own” territory.3 This was often viewed with unease by Russians and other nontitular ethnic minorities, who generally did not have a good knowledge of the state language of the republic they inhabited. Kazakh nationalists greeted the loosening of Moscow’s political control and the collapse of the USSR as an opportunity to promote Kazakh language and culture in Kazakhstan with less interference from a distant center of political power. Kazakh nationalist spokesmen often likened the restoration of territorial domain for the Kazakh language to a physical reclaiming of their land. Thus, for example, the poet Temirkhan Medetbekov wrote: The Kazakh language space has receded more than the Aral Sea, and its atmosphere has been more destroyed and polluted than a uranium production site after a bomb blast. Expanding the domain is just as difficult as purifying the atmosphere. This is because there are various social barriers, and moral and 2 Three republics’ constitutions already provided a special status for the titular nationality languages (Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia), so they did not adopt analogous new laws on language. Other than these republics, the only one that did not pass a language law in 1989 was Turkmenistan, which did so in spring 1990. 3 No doubt influenced by what was happening in the Baltic, some Kazakh scholars were very quick to emphasize the link between territory and language, stressing that Kazakh must have a special role in Kazakhstan. In early 1989, prominent Kazakh legal scholar and historian Sadyq Zimanov justified the idea of a state language by saying that Lenin opposed forcing a population to learn a state language, but did not oppose the idea of a state language per se. See S. Z. Zimanov, “Perestroika i ravnopravie iazykov,” Kazakhstanskaia pravda, March 23, 1989.

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William Fierman psychological barriers poisoned by haughtiness and power. They are like twisted electrified barbed wire and metal rails that block tanks. In addition, our own indifference and lack of concern make it difficult to expand the domain or purify the atmosphere.4

Language trends in Kazakhstan, including the medium of instruction in Kazakhstan’s urban schools from 1989 to the present, demonstrate that, unlike the Aral Sea, the domain of the Kazakh language has considerably expanded. However, as we will see, many factors—which Medetbekov would no doubt consider barriers—continue to constrain its further expansion. MAJOR BARRIERS TO RESTORATION OF KAZAKH AT THE END OF THE SOVIET ERA DEMOGRAPHY Some of the key barriers to restoring Kazakh-medium education were inherited from the Soviet era, while others are more a product of post-Soviet events. Demography is one of the critical factors most obviously rooted in Soviet history. In this regard it is worth noting that the CPSU touted the “internationalization” of Kazakhstan—whether achieved through migration, intermarriage, or other means—as a very positive phenomenon that was fostering the formation of a “Soviet people.” Largely because of migration, until the collapse of the Soviet Union, nearly all of Kazakhstan’s oblast centers as well as other larger urban areas were inhabited primarily by non-Kazakhs, especially Russians and other Slavs. With only two exceptions, Qyzylorda and Atyrau, in 1989 Russians were the most numerous group in every one of Kazakhstan’s seventeen oblast capitals. The picture was much the same in most other cities of the republic.5 This was reflected in the 1989 census (See Table 1), according to which only 27.1 percent of Kazakhstan’s urban population was Kazakh, while 50.8 percent was Russian. The only other nationalities exceeding 2 percent of the remaining 22 percent of the urban population were Ukrainians (6.2), Germans (5.0), and Tatars (2.7 percent).6 TABLE 1 Kazakhstan Urban Population in 1989 by Ethnic Group Kazakhs Russians Ukrainians Germans Tatars Others

27.1% 50.8% 6.2% 5.0% 2.7% 8.1%

ARK, Natsional'nyi sostav 4:1 (Almaty, 2000), 6–11.

Temirkhan Medetbekov, “Oz tilinen ketkening, oz tubine zhetkening,” Leninshil zhas, August 9, 1990. Makash Tatimov, Khalyqnama nemese san men sana (Almaty, 1992), 148–58. 6 Agenstvo Respubliki Kazakhstan po statistike (ARK), Itogi perepisi naseleniia 1999 goda v Respublike Kazazhstan. Natsional'nyi sostav naseleniia Respubliki Kazakhstan, vol. 4, pt. 1, Naselenie Respubliki Kazakhstana po natsional'nostiam, polu, i vozrastu (Almaty, 2000), 6–11. 4 5


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With the exception of a few cities, demography discouraged establishment of Kazakh schools because Kazakhs constituted only a fairly small share of the pupils in a particular neighborhood. Non-Kazakh children were extraordinarily unlikely to attend a Kazakhmedium school. This is reflected, for example, in the fact that in the 1989 census, less than 1 percent of urban Kazakhs claimed fluency in the Kazakh language. LINGUISTIC AND CULTURAL ASSIMILATION OF KAZAKHS IN THE SOVIET ERA The demographic factor as an impediment to Kazakh schools was reinforced by the equally formidable barrier referred to in passing above, the very prominent place of Russian in Kazakhs’ linguistic repertoires. According to the 1989 census, 64.2 percent of Kazakhstan’s Kazakhs claimed fluency in Russian. This is in stark contrast to analogous figures among titular nationalities in other republics of the region—37.3 percent in Kyrgyzstan, 30.5 percent in Tajikistan, 28.3 percent in Turkmenistan, and 22.7 percent in Uzbekistan.7 Data for urban areas alone show that 77.8 percent of Kazakhs in Kazakhstan claimed fluency in Russian, meaning that only 22.2 percent did not. At the other end of the Central Asian spectrum was Uzbekistan, where 56.8 percent of urban Uzbeks did not claim Russian fluency. Largely as a result of the demographic and linguistic factors just described, a much larger proportion of the Kazakhstan’s urban population was fluent in Russian than in Kazakh. At the end of the Soviet era, over 80 percent—and quite possibly over 90 percent— of Kazakhstan’s total urban population was literate in Russian. In contrast, even though Kazakh had been declared Kazakhstan’s single “state language,” the share literate in Kazakh was probably no higher than 10–15 percent.8 Indeed, in the late 1980s, even among adult urban ethnic Kazakhs, most had graduated from schools where Russian was the sole medium of instruction, and their children were following in their parents’ paths. A corollary of the above is that many urban Kazakhs were culturally russified. For them, not just the language, but the culture of Moscow and Leningrad (today St. Petersburg), not to mention Siberia, were much closer than the culture of the rural traditional Kazakh 7 “Vsesoiuznaia perepis' naseleneiia 1989 goda,” Vestnik statistiki, 1990, no. 11:77, no. 12:70, and 1991, no. 4:76, no. 5:74, and no. 6:72. Although there are slight differences between data in the published All-Union 1989 census data and those cited for 1989 in the Kazakhstan 1999 published census data, I have taken these statistics from Vestnik statistiki. The reason is that the 1999 Kazakhstan census results do not provide data on Russian language fluency for 1989. The data for Russian fluency, especially in the Uzbek case, may reflect some “fixing” of the numbers. Nevertheless, the general pattern of a higher share of fluency by Kazakhs than other Central Asian nationalities is no doubt valid. On evidence of falsification of census data on Russian-language fluency see Robert J. Kaiser, The Geography of Nationalism and Russia in the USSR (Princeton, 1994), 288–89. Concerning variance between the Soviet 1989 census data published in Moscow and those subsequently cited in the 1999 Kazakhstan census see Kapitan (chitatel'-kommentator), “Ofitsial'naia demografiia: Komu verit'?” Internetgazeta Navigator Kazakhstan, June 29, 2005, http://www.navi.kz/articles 4print.php?artid=9153&sid= 44f79ac059468371cefacbb5d36c4c36 (accessed June 30, 2005). 8 The share of Kazakh literacy among the total population (urban and rural of all nationalities) was probably under 35 percent. This estimate is based on the fact that Kazakhs comprised around 40 percent of the total population, and on the assumptions that no more than 80 percent of Kazakhs were literate in the language, and very few nonKazakhs could read or write it. The calculation of literacy in urban areas assumes that less than half of urban Kazakhs (total about 27 percent of urban population) could read or write Kazakh.

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areas of their own country. Moreover, they had grown up viewing linguistic and cultural russification as valuable assets for upward educational and social mobility. Consequently, they often looked down on the culture and language of their rural co-ethnics. This is a major reason why many urban Kazakhs were ambivalent about cultural and linguistic “kazakhization,” which they often viewed as placing considerable power in the hands of their less educated and less urbane country cousins. THE MIXED SCHOOL One final barrier to promotion of Kazakh language as a medium of education warrants particular attention here. This is the “mixed school,” an institution with groups of pupils studying in different mediums of instruction. Though much more common today than in the 1980s, such schools were not rare in Kazakhstan cities of the 1980s, either. In this article we will juxtapose the “mixed school” (where different groups of pupils receive instruction through different mediums of instruction) to the “pure school” (where all pupils receive instruction through the same medium). The vast majority of pure schools offer instruction exclusively through either Kazakh-medium classes (KMCs) or Russianmedium classes (RMCs). Most mixed schools have both KMCs and RMCs, though some may combine one or both with classes taught in another language, usually Uzbek, Uyghur, or Tajik.9 The mixed urban school, whose numbers grew from 242 in 1988 to 723 in 2004, is a sign of both the difficulties and success in expanding Kazakh-medium education in urban areas.10 Inasmuch as most of the shift to mixed schools involved the conversion of formerly pure RMC schools to mixed schools through the opening of KMCs in them, this marked an advance for Kazakh-medium instruction. On the other hand, many Kazakhs view the mixed school as a problem, primarily because much or all of the communication 9 The number of pupils studying in languages other than Kazakh and Russian is under 4 percent; the share is approximately the same both in urban and in rural schools. Pure schools in languages other than Kazakh or Russian are very few. In 2003, for example, they accounted for less than 2 percent of all pure schools; most of these were Uzbek. It is unclear whether any mixed schools exist with neither KMCs nor RMCs; if so, they are extremely rare and limited to South Kazakhstan Oblast. Unpublished educational data cited in this article for years between 1988 and 1999 were provided to the author by the Kazakhstan Ministry of Education. (The ministry responsible for education in Kazakhstan has undergone several changes in terms of its scope, and these were reflected in changes in name of the ministry. Though technically inaccurate, for the sake of simplicity throughout the text, I refer simply to the “Ministry of Education” and the minister in charge as the “Minister of Education.”) Unless otherwise indicated in the text, for years beginning with 2000-2001, school data have been taken from those published by the Kazakhstan Agency on Statistics (ARK), Seriia 14: Sotsial'naia sfera, Raspredelenie chisla dnevnykh i obshcheobrazovatel'nykh shkol i chislennosti uchashchikhsia po iazykam obucheniia v Respublike Kazakhstan. I have utilized the annual publication for the five years beginning with the 2000/2001 school year. The last part of the titles of these publications for the first four years (in electronic format) are, respectively, na nachalo 2000/2001 uchebnogo goda; na nachalo 2001/2002 uchebnogo goda; na nachalo 2002/2003 uchebnogo goda; and na nachalo 2003/2004 uchebnogo goda. The electronic version for 2003/2004 lacks a title page, but the title presumably ends with “na nachalo 2004/2005 uchebnogo goda.” References to these publications in text and tables will be abbreviated ARK, Raspredelenie shkol i chislennosti uchashchikhsia v RK. Data on the small number of non-Kazakh and nonRussian schools can be gleaned from the 2003/2004 report (pp. 7, 53). 10 Academic years are noted by the year in which they began. Thus, academic year 2004–5 is referred to here as “academic year 2004.”


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of urban KMC pupils outside the classroom takes place not in Kazakh, but Russian. A large proportion of the student body in RMCs of many urban schools is non-Kazakh and/ or has weak Kazakh-language skills. The level of Kazakh skills of many administrators and teachers of the RMCs in these schools is also very low, whereas it is likely that almost all of them are fluent in Russian. The problem, however, is not just the pupils and staff in the RMCs. Even many KMC pupils communicate with each other outside of class time in Russian.11 A number of prominent Kazakhs see elimination of the mixed school as a major part of the solution to the problem of the Russian linguistic environment. Among the most important supporters of this idea have been two recent ministers of education, Shamsha Berkimbaeva and Zhaqsybek Kulekeev.12 They have advocated improving the Kazakh language environment for Kazakh children by separating mixed schools into their respective language-medium components, and establishing separate institutions. This might be accomplished by building new schools, but it also might be achieved by converting two nearby mixed schools with Kazakh- and Russian-medium instruction into pure schools, one with each of these languages of instruction. Not surprisingly, the proponents of the separation of schools also favor encouraging Kazakh families to educate their children in Kazakh.13 Some justification for separating schools in this way in order to increase the use of Kazakh can be found in statements by Kazakhstan’s President Nazarbayev, who has stressed that Kazakhs should not demand that members of other ethnic groups speak Kazakh until they use it themselves. Thus, segregating KMCs from RMCs by eliminating mixed schools can be seen as a way to create greater opportunities for Kazakh children to speak with one another in Kazakh. Isolating KMCs from RMCs may indeed provide a better environment to learn the Kazakh language. However, without a large and effective investment in Kazakh-language education, and without other measures to raise the benefits and prestige of knowing Kazakh in public life, the linguistic segregation could well have serious undesirable consequences, in particular creating greater social tension. We will return to this topic later in this article. For now, though, it is sufficient to recall that many urban Kazakhs are less than enthusiastic about kazakhization. As we will illustrate below, many of them (and probably a large share of the better educated) still prefer Russian-medium education for their children. Given the current factors affecting choice of language of education discussed below, the more segregated pure KMC may appeal to the parents whose children attend RMCs today less than the current mixed school. It seems likely that segregated, pure schools are especially likely to have a more For examples of the argument that mixed schools are a problem and should be replaced by pure Kazakh schools see Daulet Seysenuly, “Qazaq mektebi qashanghy qagys qala beredi?” Egemen Qazaqstan, July 3, 2001; and Qamalkhan Quanuly, “Aralas mektep omir talabyna say emes,” Ana tili, October 2, 2003. 12 Berkimbayeva was minister of education from January 2002 until June 2003; Kulekeev served from June 2003 until December 2004, when he was replaced by Birganim Aytimova. To the best of my knowledge, Minister Aytimova has not yet addressed the question of the mixed school. 13 For Berkimbaev’s comments see Shamsha Berkimbaeva, “Bolashaq — mektepten bastalady,” Qazaqstan mektebi (February 2003): 15. For Kulekeev’s comments see the summary of his speech in Egemen Qazaqstan, October 1, 2003. 11

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nationalized curriculum, with greater emphasis on Kazakh culture, history, and so on. This seems more likely to appeal to new migrants from the village, who are uncomfortable in the more russified cities, than to the second- and third-generation Kazakhs, who are quite accustomed to the “cosmopolitan” atmosphere. Indeed, when forced to make a choice between a pure RMC school and a pure KMC school, even some parents whose children attend KMCs in mixed schools might choose the former. LEGACY OF THE GORBACHEV ERA As we begin to consider the shift in medium of education in Kazakhstan’s schools, it is important to note the two most important political documents that provided political underpinning for these changes. The first document is a 1987 republic party and government decree promising to make it easier for Kazakh pupils in Kazakhstan to learn the Kazakh language in schools. This decree’s adoption was remarkable because it marked the first time in many years that the party had adopted a measure to raise the status of Kazakh language. The decree was also notable because it was promulgated within months after disturbances that broke out when long-serving Kazakhstan Communist party First Secretary D. Kunaev (an ethnic Kazakh) was removed from his post in December 1986; his successor was an ethnic Russian with no ties to the republic. Among other things, the decree “On Improving the Study of the Kazakh Language in the Republic” appears to have been a measure to soothe wounded Kazakh pride. The second document is Kazakhstan’s language law, which was adopted in the 1989 parade of language legislation referred to above. This piece of legislation, largely modeled after laws designed in other republics, went much further than the 1987 decree in promising greater use of Kazakh in education. Although it guaranteed the right to education not only in Kazakh but also in Russian and other languages as well, the real change was the promise of education in Kazakh in educational institutions at all levels. Access to education in Russian, of course, had not been a problem in Kazakhstan in recent decades. The new law also made Kazakh, along with Russian, obligatory subjects at all levels of education. Russian, of course, had been obligatory for decades, so in this area, too, the innovation was the increased attention to Kazakh.14 The adoption of both of these documents should be seen in the context of the rapidly changing political dynamics in the Soviet Union under Gorbachev which opened the door to party approval of non-Russians’ exhibiting greater pride in their own national languages and cultures. Party doctrine became increasingly tolerant of such pride, conceding that respect for non-Russian languages and cultures was compatible with Soviet patriotism. Even though it had the party’s blessing, Kazakhstan’s language law was extremely ambitious. Due to the factors described above, the chasm between what the law mandated and reality on the ground was arguably greater in Kazakhstan than any other republic. As would become clear in the ensuing years, providing a high-quality education in the 14 See William Fierman “Language and Identity in Kazakhstan: Formulations in Policy Documents, 1987–1997,” Communist and Post-Communist Studies 30, no. 2 (1998): 171–86. “Language and Identity” also analyzes another important document, Kazakhstan’s second language law, which was adopted in 1997.


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near future in Kazakh was a much more complex and difficult task than doing so in such languages as Estonian or Georgian. The reasons had much to do with the fact that these latter languages had a much more developed vocabulary in many fields than Kazakh, and that because they were already being used in public urban life and higher education, they also had the requisite textbooks and teaching cadre that Kazakh lacked. If carried out fully, the 1987 decree and the 1989 law would have satisfied many of the ambitions of Kazakh nationalists in the area of language. However, the foundation for implementing these measures was absent. In fact, at the end of the Soviet era there was little to suggest that in the area of education—or any other area of public life in Kazakhstan—Russian would lose its dominant role to Kazakh, which only about one in three inhabitants could write. As a first step in tracing the change in language medium of education in Kazakhstan, let us look at the share of pure KMC and RMC schools as well as mixed schools in the late Soviet era. As Table 2 shows, in 1988, 52.4 percent of Kazakhstan’s schools were pure RMC schools. This was substantially more than the share of pure KMC schools (only 31.9 percent); at the time, only 14.6 percent of all schools were mixed. The proportion of mixed schools was quite similar in urban and rural areas—15.1 percent and 14.5 percent, respectively. However, whereas 72.7 percent of urban schools were pure RMC institutions and only 11.3 were pure KMC institutions, in rural areas pure RMC schools comprised 47.3 percent of the total, with pure KMC schools comprising 37.1 percent. The proportion of pure KMC schools was very uneven in urban areas around the country. In most oblasts, fewer than 10 percent of the urban schools were entirely Kazakh. In Qyzylorda Oblast’s urban areas, however, about half of the schools offered instruction only in the titular language. TABLE 2 Schools in Kazakhstan by language in academic year 1988–89 Type of School

All areas

Urban areas only

Pure Russian Pure Kazakh Mixed

52.4% 31.9% 14.6%

72.7% 11.3% 15.1%

Rural areas only

47.3% 37.1% 14.5%

Unpublished data, provided by the Kazakhstan Ministry of Education. The small number of schools unaccounted for were pure schools in other languages.

This same kind of heterogeneity was reflected in the proportion of urban children studying in KMCs. Statistics are not available for 1988–89, but in 1990–91 almost 64 percent of pupils studying in urban areas of Qyzylorda Oblast were in KMCs; yet in about half of the remaining oblasts, the figure was under 10 percent. To better understand the context of Kazakh-medium education in the late Soviet era, it is worth noting that even as a subject in the curriculum (rather than medium of instruction), the status of the Kazakh language was very low. Kazakh was generally not a mandatory subject in RMCs, and where it was taught, it was usually not taken seriously. The textbooks and methodology were very poor, and failure to learn Kazakh had little effect in terms of future educational or professional opportunities. In any case, the results of teaching Kazakh in RMCs to Russians, Kazakhs, or anyone else in the late Soviet era

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were at best very modest, and consequently many urban ethnic Kazakh children whose parents preferred to use Russian at home grew up in the 1970s and 1980s with little to no knowledge of “their own” language. Kazakhstan’s sudden independence in 1991 brought change by stimulating high hopes for “kazakhizers”; however, it failed to produce a radical change in a number of important factors affecting language of education. True, independence placed greater power in the hands of the local political leaders, whose legitimacy in the eyes of many Kazakhs derived in part from promises to reverse Soviet russification policies. However, many other Kazakhs opposed rapid linguistic kazakhization. Moreover, as we will see below, many practical issues constrained efforts to implement sweeping change with regard to medium of instruction. KAZAKH-LANGUAGE URBAN EDUCATION: DYNAMICS IN INDEPENDENT KAZAKHSTAN As Table 3 below shows, the share of KMC pupils in the total Kazakhstan school enrollment (all nationalities combined) has been increasing since the late Soviet era. This is true both in urban as well as rural areas. As we see, taking the total student body of all nationalities enrolled in Kazakhstan’s schools in both urban and rural areas together, the share studying in KMCs has jumped from around 30 percent in 1988 to 56 percent in 2004. Taking urban areas alone, we see that in 2004, over 46 percent of pupils enrolled were in KMCs. This is nearly triple the share of urban school enrollments in 1990. TABLE 3 KMC Share of Republic Urban and Total Enrollment Year

KMC as Share of COMBINED (urban + rural) enrollment

1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004

30.2% 30.2% 32.4% 34.1% 37.0% 40.0% 42.7% 44.8% 49.5% N.A. 52.1% 53.2% 54.4% 55.3% 56.0%

KMC as Share of Republic URBAN enrollment

N.A. N.A. 16.9% 18.0% 20.0% 24.2% 27.3% 30.4% 37.3% N.A. 40.5% 42.8% 44.4% 45.6% 46.4%

KMC as Share of Republic RURAL enrollment

N.A. N.A. 46.6% 48.9% 52.1% 54.2% 56.5% 58.0% 62.1% N.A. 64.0% 64.8% 65.8% 66.3% 66.8%

Unpublished data, provided by the Kazakhstan Ministry of Education and ARK, Raspredelenie shkol i chislennosti uchashchikhsia v RK for years 2000/2001, 2001/2002, 2002/2003, 2003/2004, and 2004/2005.

As we will explore in greater detail below, much of the change in KMC share of enrollment is related to the growing share of Kazakhs in Kazakhstan’s population, both in rural and urban areas. However, it is important to note that the change is not merely a


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function of demographic change. As Table 4 illustrates, the share of ethnic Kazakh pupils attending KMCs rather than RMCs has greatly increased in Kazakhstan, from about 66 percent to about 80 percent.15 That rise was especially rapid in the early 1990s. As a result, the proportion of ethnic Kazakh children receiving their education in RMCs declined from about 34 to about 20 percent between 1990 and 1995. Equally important for our study here, however, is that in the eight years following 1995, the level did not change significantly. Thus, in 2003, the proportion of ethnic Kazakh pupils studying in KMCs was still about 80 percent. This means that the remaining 20 percent were still in RMCs.16 TABLE 4 KMC and RMC Shares of Ethnic Kazakh School Enrollment Rural and Urban Combined

Urban Only

Rural Only

Year

KMC

RMC

KMC

RMC

KMC

RMC

1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1998 1999 2003

66.1% 67.2% 71.7% 76.1% 78.0% 80.2% 80.8% 81.3% ca. 80%

33.9% 32.8% 29.3% 23.9% 22.0% 19.8% 19.2% 18.7% ca. 20%

51.4% 53.5% 61.3% 65.4% 68.1% 71.9% 72.6% 72.5%

48.6% 46.5% 38.7% 34.6% 31.9% 28.1% 27.4% 27.5%

73.0% 73.7% 76.5% 81.4% 83.2% 84.9% 87.0% 88.4%

27.0% 26.3% 23.5% 18.6% 16.8% 15.1% 13.0% 11.6%

Calculation for 1990–99 are based on unpublished data provided by the Kazakhstan Ministry of Education. The figure for 2003 was provided in a speech by Minister of Education Kulekeev, Egemen Qazaqstan, October 1, 2003.

We will turn shortly to look more closely at the situation in urban areas. Before doing that, let us take note of the change in the medium of education for ethnic Kazakh in rural areas. As Table 4 shows, already in 1990, 73.0 percent of rural Kazakh pupils were studying in KMCs; by 1995, the analogous figure had almost reached 85 percent, and in 1999 exceeded 88 percent. It is hard to tell why the remaining approximately 12 percent continued to study in RMCs. Presumably some of the reasons are similar to those we will explore in the case of urban schools. In any case, however, it is clear that by the mid1990s the overwhelming majority of rural Kazakh children were in KMCs. The dominance of Kazakh language in rural areas that this supports is especially great, since even among Kazakh RMC pupils, few lack Kazakh language skills. There are, of course, many Slavic and other non-Kazakh pupils living in rural areas where few Kazakhs live, especially in northern and central areas of Kazakhstan. It is very possible that such children will not soon learn the titular nationality’s language; nevertheless, by and large, the dominant position of the Kazakh language in rural education 15 The share of Kazakh pupils in KMCs is calculated by dividing the number of KMC pupils by the total number of ethnic Kazakh pupils. This slightly overstates the proportion of Kazakh pupils in KMCs, since there is a very small (but growing) number of non-Kazakhs attending KMCs. 16 Data for 2003 are from a speech by Minister of Education Zhaqsybek Kulekeev, Egemen Qazaqstan, October 1, 2003. Kulekeev appears to slightly misstate the case about the timing of the growth. He says that the growth in the most recent decade (that is, from 1992–93 to 2002–2003) was from 60 percent to 80 percent. The data I have from the Ministry, however, purport that in 1992–93 the KMC share was already 72 percent, up from 63 percent in 1988–89. It is worth noting that some Kazakh nationalists believe that Kazakh parents in Kazakhstan should be obliged to send their children to KMCs. For an example of this kind of argument see the article by historian Tolemish Absalimuly, “Til tangdau—oktemdikting zangdastyryluy,” Ana tili, September 26, 2002.

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and rural public life more generally is very unlikely to be challenged in the foreseeable future. The data in Table 4 show that the share of urban Kazakh children studying in KMCs expanded rapidly between 1990 and 1995. Moreover, taking into account that the proportion of all Kazakhstan pupils in KMCs (urban and rural combined) increased between 1989 and 1990 (Table 3 above), the trend for urban schools seems to extend at least from 1989 through about 1995. Beyond that, however, the momentum appears to have slowed considerably. Unfortunately, I have been unable to obtain data for Kazakh nationality pupils beyond 1999, but the figure of 80 percent for the share of Kazakh pupils studying in KMCs in 2003 (cited in a speech by Minister of Education Kulekeev) suggests that the share of Kazakh pupils in RMCs has remained fairly steady for the last decade. The lack of data broken down for rural and urban areas complicates our task. However, given Kulekeev’s statement that the share of Kazakh children in KMCs for rural and urban areas combined was still around 80 percent in 2004, it would seem that the urban and rural shares respectively of Kazakh RMC pupils had probably also not changed much from 1999. If this is true, then the share of urban Kazakh pupils in RMCs in 2004 was likely still close to the 1999 figure of 27.5 percent. It is worth recalling here that, outside of school, urban RMC children are likely to hear much less Kazakh than their rural counterparts. Given that the teaching of Kazakh language as a subject in RMCs appears to have made only modest achievements to date, the large share of Kazakhs in urban RMCs poses a serious obstacle to teaching Kazakh to a substantial share of urban Kazakh children, that is, the share who continue to attend RMCs. TABLE 5 Proportion of KMC, Mixed, and RMC Schools Year

Pure KMC Schools

Mixed Schools

Pure RMC Schools

1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004

11.0% 12.0% 16.0% 15.0% 17.0% 18.0% 20.0% 21.0% N.A. N.A. 24.2% 24.9% 24.4% 26.4% 26.9% 26.9% 27.6%

15.0% 20.0% 24.0% 27.0% 31.0% 34.0% 36.0% 36.0% N.A. N.A. 33.0% 34.2% 34.4% 34.7% 35.1% 35.8% 35.4%

73.0% 67.0% 59.0% 58.0% 51.0% 46.0% 43.0% 43.0% N.A. N.A. 41.8% 39.8% 40.4% 38.1% 37.2% 36.4% 36.0%

Unpublished data, provided by the Kazakhstan Ministry of Education and ARK, Raspredelenie shkol i chislennosti uchashchikhsia v RK for years 2000/2001, 2001/2002, 2002/2003, 2003/2004, and 2004/2005. See footnote 9 concerning schools with instruction in a medium other than Russian or Kazakh.

Beyond this, however, given the objections that KMC pupils in mixed institutions are nevertheless also in a largely Russian linguistic and cultural context, it is important to look at trends in the types of schools (pure and mixed) operating in Kazakhstan and the number of KMC pupils in each of them. As we see in Table 5, although there has been a


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dramatic increase in the proportion of the pure KMC schools in Kazakhstan, and a precipitous decline in pure RMC urban schools, the share of mixed schools, which had more than doubled from 1988 to 1994, has not significantly changed in the subsequent decade. The picture becomes even clearer when viewed in combination with data in Table 6, which shows that although the total number of urban KMC pupils between 2000 and 2004 increased from 664,630 to 712,079, the share of KMC urban pupils in mixed schools has remained fairly steady, and their number in 2004 (280,742) was higher than their number in 2000 (271,190). If our assumption above is correct—that 25–30 percent of TABLE 6 Distribution of KMC Urban Pupils among Pure and Mixed Schools Year

2000

2001

2002

2003

2004

Total Number of KMC Pupils in Urban Areas

664,630

688,723

725,722

728,848

712,079

Number of KMC Pupils in Urban Pure Schools

393,440

409,865

431,784

431,786

431,337

59.2%

59.5%

59.5%

59.2%

60.6%

271,190

278,858

293,938

297,062

280,742

40.8%

40.5%

40.5%

40.8%

39.4%

as % of all urban KMC pupils Number of KMC Pupils in Urban Mixed Schools as % of all urban KMC pupils

ARK, Raspredelenie shkol i chislennosti uchashchikhsia v RK for years 2000/2001, 2001/2002, 2002/2003, 2003/2004, and 2004/2005.

Kazakh urban pupils attend RMCs—then it would appear that only a third or less of Kazakh urban pupils are enrolled in pure KMC schools. (This follows from adding the 25–30 percent in RMCs to the 40 percent in KMCs in mixed schools, thus leaving only 30–35 percent for pure KMCs). This means that two-thirds of urban pupils are in linguistic environments that the two ministers of education cited above would like to change. DEMOGRAPHIC CHANGE AND THE DYNAMICS OF URBAN KAZAKH-LANGUAGE EDUCATION Let us now turn to the factors behind the expansion of KMCs described above. Some of the most important reasons are demographic. Kazakhstan, including its cities, is today much more ethnically Kazakh than it was at the end of the late Soviet period. According to officially published data shown in Table 7, the share of Russians in the population declined from 37.4 percent in 1989 to 27.2 percent in 2004. In the same period, the Kazakh population grew from 40.1 percent to 57.2 percent. If we set aside the “other nationalities” (whose share declined from 22.5 percent to 15.6 percent during this period), it means that in the course of fifteen years, the ratio of Kazakhs to Russians shifted from about 1:1 to about 2.1:1. In other words, whereas in 1989 there was slightly more than

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one Kazakh for every Russian, by 2004 Kazakhs outnumbered Russians by more than two to one.17 It seems certain that this trajectory will continue for the foreseeable future. Of the babies born in Kazakhstan in 2003, over 67 percent were born to Kazakh mothers, whereas as under 17 percent were born to Russian mothers. This means that Kazakh mothers gave birth to approximately four times as many babies as Russian mothers.18 TABLE 7 Kazakh and Russian Proportions of Kazakhstan Population URBAN AND RURAL POPULATION COMBINED

1989 1999 2004

URBAN POPULATION

RURAL POPULATION

Kazakh

Russian

Ratio

Kazakh

Russian

Ratio

Kazakh

Russian

Ratio

40.1% 53.4% 57.2%

37.4% 30.0% 27.2%

1.1:1 1.8:1 2.1:1

27.1% 43.2% 48.5%

50.8% 41.1% 37.0%

1:1.9 1:1 1.3:1

57.1% 66.4% 68.6%

19.9 % 15.8 % 14.4%

2.9:1 4.2:1 4.8:1

ARK, Natsional'nyi sostav naseleniia RK 4:1:6–11; ARK, Demograficheskii ezhegodnik Kazakhstana: Statisticheskii sbornik (Almaty, 2005), 18.

In rural areas during this period, Kazakhs consolidated an already superior demographic position, growing from 57.1 percent of the population in 1989 to 68.6 percent fifteen years later. While this change in the ratio of rural Kazakhs to Russians from 2.9:1 to 4.8:1 is significant, it is much less dramatic than the scale of shift in urban areas. As noted above, in 1989 Russians and Kazakhs accounted for 50.8 and 27.1 percent respectively of the urban population. In 2004 the analogous figures were 37.0 and 48.5 percent. This means that whereas in 1989 there were almost two Russians for every Kazakh in urban areas of Kazakhstan, in 2004 the Kazakhs outnumbered Russians in Kazakhstan cities about 1.3:1. Thus, from outnumbering the Kazakhs almost 2:1 in urban areas, in a decade the share of Russians fell below the Kazakh share. What is behind the demographic shift? Part of the explanation is the differential in natural growth among Kazakhstan’s major ethnic groups. In 1996, for example, the natural growth rate among Kazakhstan’s Kazakhs was 13.5 percent, whereas for Russians it was -4.9.19 Moreover, the Russian population is older than the Kazakh population, and so it has a higher death rate. The most important factor for the demographic shift in Kazakhstan’s cities, however, is not natural, but mechanical. There has been a large emigration of population from Kazakhstan, predominantly Slavs and Germans. (Kazakhs have also emigrated, but the balance of Kazakh migration has been positive.) Not surprisingly, much of the emigration has been from the areas of highest Slavic concentration, including the urban areas. And simultaneously with the departure of many of the émigrés, there has been a rural-tourban migration, especially by Kazakhs. 17 ARK, Natsional'nyi sostav naseleniia RK 4:1:6–11; and ARK, Demograficheskii ezhegodnik Kazakhstana: Statisticheskii sbornik (Almaty, 2005), 18. 18 ARK, Demograficheskii ezhegodnik, 104. 19 M. Kh. Asylbekov and V. V. Kozina, Kazakhi (Demograficheskie tendentsii 80–90kh godov) (Almaty, 2000), 52. It is worth noting that since independence there has also been a sharp decline in Kazakh natural growth, and that overall Kazakhstan’s population since 1989 has declined from about 17 million to only about 15 million.


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Unfortunately, no reliable data are available concerning the scale of migration into the cities. Much of the population movement is illegal, semilegal, or unrecorded, and some of it tentative, by individuals or families who have not moved entirely or permanently to the city. Nevertheless, it is clear that many Kazakhs have arrived in Kazakhstan’s cities and replaced members of other ethnic groups who have departed. The cities most affected by the immigration of Kazakhs have probably been the “southern capital” of Almaty, and the “northern capital” of Astana. The latter, a former provincial town which officially became Kazakhstan’s new capital in 1997, has seen dramatic population growth in the last decade.20 What share of children from families who have recently moved from the village to urban areas are attending KMCs? It would seem to be large. However, unfortunately, I lack the data to analyze this important question. Nevertheless, given the rapid increase in KMCs in recent years and the rural-to-urban migration, it seems likely that much of the KMC growth is attributable to children from recently arrived families. This seems especially plausible given the problems that have plagued KMCs and which probably discourage many linguistically russified urban Kazakh parents from sending their children to KMCs. Before turning to these problems, however, we should consider some of the reasons besides demography that may help explain the shift to KMCs. NON-DEMOGRAPHIC FACTORS BEHIND THE SHIFT TO KMCS As Soviet census data on Kazakhs’ mastery of Russian suggest, the Kazakh language receded further during the Soviet era than the titular language in any other non-Slavic union republic of the USSR. In this context, it is not hard to understand that one of the major “draws” of the Kazakh language is sentimental. This factor is very hard to quantify, and because its effect may be largely subconscious, even extensive survey research might fail to measure it. Even from the mass media, however, it is clear that the environment is filled with signals that it is the “right thing to do” for Kazakhs to educate their children in “their own” language. Since the late 1980s, Kazakhstan’s press has been full of exhortations to Kazakhs to honor their ancestors by rediscovering and cultivating their roots. The sorrowful tone of statements about the state of Kazakh is often similar to Temirkhan Medetbekov’s lament that “the Kazakh language space has receded more than the Aral Sea.”21 The appeals to honor the Kazakh linguistic heritage are often combined with condemnation of Soviet policy, which is blamed for Kazakh’s loss of status in most public spheres, including urban workplaces and educational institutions. The calls to raise the 20 The processes are in fact much more complex than described here. For example, many ethnic Kazakhs— numbering in the hundreds of thousands—have arrived from other former Soviet republics and other countries (especially Mongolia). Many have received Kazakhstan government support for their move. Meanwhile, many citizens of Kazakhstan are working temporarily in Russia, whereas in Kazakhstan there are sizeable at least seasonal labor forces from Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. Meanwhile, significant numbers of Slavs have migrated into Kazakhstan from other Central Asian republics. 21 Medetbekov, “Oz tilinen ketkening” (1990).

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status of Kazakh often stress a link between Kazakhstan’s political independence and “linguistic independence.” Members of ethnic minorities, especially Slavs with strong feelings of attachment to Russia and Russian culture, may be alienated by such calls to linguistic and other forms of kazakhization. Indeed, many linguistically russified longtime Kazakh urban residents also perceive these exhortations as silly, contrived, and inspired by their advocates’ political ambition more than their patriotic feeling. Not all reasons for learning Kazakh or enrolling in a KMC are sentimental. Some are more practical. If, in the Soviet era, Russian was the unambiguous choice of language medium for any parents seeking to provide their offspring with educational and employment mobility, today the calculation is somewhat more complex. Unlike in the Soviet era, higher education is available in the Kazakh language in an extensive list of disciplines. Moreover, both in indirect and direct fashion, certain jobs are informally or even formally reserved for those with at least a modicum of Kazakh skills. As government offices are shifting to greater use of the state language, knowledge of Kazakh is in some cases becoming a job requirement. Though not taking place uniformly across the country, it is occurring in response to plans for kazakhization of government office work issued from the very highest levels of government. Some pressure to learn Kazakh for employment is more subtle. In a society where informal relations are often more important than job qualifications, the inability of an employee to speak Kazakh may interfere with job advancement in an informal way. Interestingly, many Kazakh authors who address the subject stress the requirement of Kazakh-language skills for employment in government jobs more in the case of ethnic Kazakhs than in the case of Slavs and other non-Kazakhs. As David Laitin has noted, individuals’ linguistic behavior is often shaped by their expectations of what others will do. 22 Thus, to the extent that demographic and nondemographic factors combine to alter citizen’s expectations of what language(s) they will need to communicate with others whom they anticipate encountering, the current momentum in Kazakhstan toward greater “nationalization” may also encourage movement toward Kazakh schools. REASONS FOR RELUCTANCE TO SHIFT TO KMCS As we noted above, despite the growth of KMCs, in the last eight years RMCs have continued to enroll approximately 20 percent of all Kazakh school children, and probably close to 30 percent in urban areas. What factors might explain this phenomenon? One underlying reason is that for all the rhetoric and exhortations (especially for Kazakh audiences) to learn the Kazakh language and to send their children to KMCs, language policy in Kazakhstan has been quite moderate in that there have been few sanctions for failure to comply with language legislation. Some of this may be attributable to the rather cautious policy by President Nazarbayev, who has been careful not to “tilt” too far in 22 David D. Laitin, Identity in Formation: The Russian-Speaking Populations in the Near Abroad (Ithaca, 1998), 21–24.


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favor of Kazakh in any field, including education. True, in the past few years, Nazarbayev’s policies seem to be leaning toward greater kazakhization, but the president still seems keenly aware that many non-Kazakhs and Kazakhs alike oppose any extreme nationalism. Another obvious reason that kazakhization of education has not moved faster is that it would require enormous financial resources. Although Kazakhstan has great natural wealth (especially energy deposits), the country has still not fully recovered from the economic shocks of the collapse of the USSR. This has had a severe impact on social services, including education. Moreover, to the extent that the financial situation of the country has improved, it has disproportionately benefited a small stratum of elites who have siphoned off profits from the public treasury. Funding for education has been meager, including investment in its kazakhization. Aside from the relatively moderate government policy and the funding problems, another important reason for Kazakh parents continuing to choose RMCs for their children is that job advancement in urban areas generally continues to require excellent Russianlanguage skills; meanwhile, especially outside of the state sector, Kazakh language is often not required. Not unrelated, the quality of Russian-medium higher education in Kazakhstan is generally higher than of Kazakh; moreover, the variety of subjects available in Russian is broader than in Kazakh. The difference is especially marked in areas of the country where the majority of the population is Slavic. Beyond this, there is a serious lack of textbooks for Kazakh higher education. Consequently, even “Kazakh” groups must use Russian books, especially in technical subjects. Only 15 percent of the textbooks for higher technical educational institutions were in Kazakh in 2003.23 Thus, even when lectures are in Kazakh, the textbooks may not be.24 Such problems in Kazakh-medium higher education are certainly part of the reason that in 2003 only 32 percent of students in Kazakhstan’s higher education institutions were studying in Kazakh.25 The shortage of Kazakh textbooks in technical subjects may be an important reason that only 21.9 percent of higher education students studying technical subjects were in Kazakh groups.26 The school quality issue, however, is not confined only to higher education. Education officials openly criticize the quality of Kazakh-language textbooks used in elementary and secondary schools as well. There is also a serious teacher shortage. This affects not only KMCs, but to the extent it affects them, it may be an especially serious problem in urban areas. In rural areas, where employment opportunities are few, teachers may be content with their low-paying teaching jobs. In urban areas, however, there are likely to be other employment opportunities, especially for the more talented. In any case, the shortage of teachers for both urban and rural KMCs has been worsening in recent years, reaching 2,100 in 2002. Not surprisingly, the shortage was greatest in some subjects of greatest interest to young people—English and computer science—along with physics, chemistry, and history.27 Kulekeev speech in “Ortaq til…,” Egemen Qazaqstan, October 1, 2003. The problem of Kazakh-language groups in higher education being obliged to use Russian-language textbooks was criticized by State Secretary Imanghali Tasmaghambetov in his speech at a meeting reported in ibid. 25 Ibid. 26 Shamsha Berkimbaeva, “Bolashaq — mektepten bastalady,” Qazaqstan mektebi (February 2003): 10. 27 Ibid., 8. 23 24

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Although there are exceptions, and the situation appears to be changing, there has been a generally lower level of achievement for pupils of KMCs. One indication of this is that in 2002, only 37 (19 percent) of the 186 winners of academic olympiads in Kazakhstan were pupils of the 1172 “elite” Kazakh schools (litsei, gimnaziia, and those with enriched academic programs); even pupils of the handful of Kazakh-Turkish litsei (only 24 schools total) had more winners among their pupils—45.28 Assuming that much of the growth in Kazakh-medium schools is attributable to the arrival of pupils from the countryside, it is quite possible that urban Kazakh parents are also reluctant to send their children to KMCs because they view the new arrivals as poorly prepared, disadvantaged, or unsophisticated, if not a combination of all three. Moreover, anecdotal evidence suggests that some urban parents see KMC teachers as providing too conservative an upbringing for their children, forcing children to be too passive and submissive.29 My research on the issues discussed here is continuing, and some factors affecting schools that are discussed above are difficult to predict. Moreover, although I have dealt with trends in Kazakh cities as a whole, each city is unique, and the situation in Qyzylorda in the south, for example, is vastly different from that of Petropavl in the north. Despite this, it may be worth taking a moment to consider some of the possible actions that the Kazakhstan government might undertake that would have a positive impact on the use of Kazakh in the schools. The most direct way in which the Kazakhstan government might affect “nationalization” of schools would be through regulation of curriculum and school organization, including the possible segregation of RMCs from KMCs in what are now mixed schools. It is also conceivable that, for example, regulations could make a shift to an RMC more difficult for rural KMC pupils whose families moved from the village to the city. Many measures could be undertaken to improve the quality of Kazakh education, including development of better textbooks for KMCs, and premiums for salaries of KMC teachers. The government could also make a higher level of Kazakh skills necessary for entrance into higher education, or make entrance into Kazakh-medium higher education easier than into the Russian-medium equivalent. Each of these policies has its own costs and benefits. For example, easier access to Kazakh-language higher education could deprive some talented RMC graduates of the opportunity to continue with advanced studies. Other government policies might be even more important in affecting the level of linguistic kazakhization of schools, albeit indirectly. Among these is implementation of laws mandating the increasing use of Kazakh instead of Russian in government offices, or even in the private sector. This would in turn affect calculations about the relative desirability of Kazakh- and Russian-medium education. Such policies are admittedly extremely problematic in a country where corruption is so widespread: it would be extraordinarily difficult to establish a “clean” system that tested language competence Ibid., 7. On the other hand, this very “passivity” is sometimes portrayed in a positive way by parents who feel that Russian schools allow pupils too much freedom, and do not teach children to respect authority. 28 29


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throughout the country, both in state and private employment. Nevertheless, government policy of this sort is relevant; indeed, regardless of how twisted in implementation, language requirements for employment are already affecting the choice of language of education. Many of the factors that will affect language in the schools are related to economic and political decisions of an even broader sort. One area is mass media. Kazakhstan has passed laws that mandate an increasing share of television and radio broadcasts be in Kazakh. Although this law is subverted in practice, there are other ways to “kazakhize” the media, including providing funds to encourage the production of more and higherquality Kazakh television, radio, and print media, not to mention such newer channels as CDs and the internet. Government decisions will also affect the costs and benefits to the individual of moving from rural to urban areas or between different parts of the country, thus influencing the demographic composition of cities. Besides affecting school enrollments directly, this will shape the urban linguistic environment and therefore influence the utility of various language repertoires of city inhabitants. Major decisions about Kazakhstan’s political structure—in particular the degree of centralization of authority—will also affect language in the schools. As noted above, there is great variation in the demographic and linguistic composition among Kazakhstan’s oblasts. A more decentralized political system would likely yield different policies both directly and indirectly affecting language. The insistence of Kazakhstan’s leadership on a unitary system of government promotes uniformity and (at least on paper) probably more kazakhization; however, this could change in the future. Other factors affecting language in the schools are still further remote, but may be critical. A very nationalist regime in Russia that sought to “protect” ethnic Russians in the “Near Abroad” from “nationalizing” policies of other newly independent states would produce profound, though unpredictable, reverberations in Kazakhstan. Likewise, a flourishing economy in labor-poor Russia, combined with preferential policies for immigration by ethnic Russians, would probably reinforce demographic and linguistic kazakhization in Kazakhstan. On the other hand, the same flourishing economy in Russia combined with possible stagnation in Kazakhstan and better employment opportunities in a Russia more open to non-Russians could place a higher premium on Russian skills for Kazakhs. To conclude with a brief reconsideration of the issue of government policy to “nationalize” (“kazakhize”) the schools of Kazakhstan, and particularly to do this through language, it would seem that the best chance of success lies in gradually raising the value of knowing Kazakh and investing resources that will be required to improve the quality of Kazakh education. Without this, measures such as the segregation of KMCs and RMCs into separate schools might make the choice of the Kazakh-medium for their children less likely for urban parents who see disincentives in forgoing the Russian-language education. As described above, the proportion of Kazakh ethnic pupils in RMCs appears to have remained relatively stable for over a decade. Although the difference in quality of RMC and KMC education may be decreasing, anecdotal evidence suggests that there is still a widespread opinion that, by and large, RMCs provide a better education than KMCs. By privileging the graduates of KMCs without raising the standard of education they provide, and simultaneously dismantling the mixed schools, the Kazakhstan government

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may risk greater alienation of those segments of society who value education the most. This could be a very costly and ultimately counterproductive policy for a government seeking to pursue economic growth at the same time as it creates a sense of state identity rooted in Kazakh language and culture.