Ethnic Kazakhs are placed in provinces with a Russian-speaking population
The Kazakh government has been concerned about the pro-Moscow sentiment of some ethnic Russians in recent years
Most of the ethnic Kazakhs who have returned to their homeland from abroad in recent months, the government of the country did not accept them Russia says that he instructed to settle in the northern regions near the border.
The government claims it is trying to ease labor shortages in sparsely populated provinces. However, many believe that Astana is carrying out ethnic balancing in predominantly Russian-speaking regions.
The government imposes a quota for the resettlement of returnees. The quota covers 7 provinces from the north-east to the north-west of the country.
Additional financial benefits are given to those who live in the northern regions. These benefits include a one-time payment of $450 per family member, as well as rent and utility bills.
The government’s program to settle more people in the northern regions is not new. The government has encouraged internal migrants to move north, in addition to recent returnees.
However, recently this policy has intensified. Those who have recently returned to the country say that the government is trying to settle them in the provinces of its choice, and that the citizens do not want to consider their choice.
For example, out of 800 ethnic Kazakhs who arrived from Turkmenistan this summer, only 44 were allowed to settle in Mangistau province of their choice.
Others were told by the government to move to areas chosen by the state, otherwise they would be “deported”.
who moved from the Balkan province of Turkmenistan in July Kuralai Esenmuratova He hoped to live with his elderly mother and son in Mangistau. But when he crossed the border with several other Kazakhs and entered Kazakhstan officers they were told that the region where they will settle has already been determined. In the visa of 57-year-old Esenmuratova’s passport, it is written that she should move to Pavlodar region in the north. He has neither relatives nor friends in this region.
“When we got to Mangistau officers they demanded that we immediately go to the provinces indicated on our visas. They threatened us saying, “If you don’t go to Pavlodar, you will be deported.”– Esenmuratova told the Kazakh service of RFE/RL.
Thanks to this special program implemented by the state, up to 1.1 million ethnic Kazakhs have returned to Kazakhstan since 1991. 70% of the returnees are from Uzbekistan, thanks to the program that encourages the migration of ethnic Kazakhs living abroad to Kazakhstan. 10% came from China, and 7% from Turkmenistan to the homeland of their ancestors.
Most of them are mainly located in the Kazakh-speaking provinces of Turkestan, Jambyl and Almaty. These are densely populated southern and southeastern provinces of the country.
Director of the “PaperLab” research center located in Astana Serik Beysembayev says the government should “invest in the economic development of the region to make the north attractive to migrants” rather than resettling people against their wishes.
Many of Astana Russia they associate the return to the policy of ethnic balancing along the border with Moscow’s desire to reduce its influence on the population of those areas. This issue has become especially relevant in the context of Russia’s attack on Ukraine, which has a 7,600-kilometer border with Kazakhstan.
The Kazakh government has been concerned about the pro-Moscow sentiment of some ethnic Russians in recent years.
Russia in 2014 of Ukraine He illegally annexed the Crimean peninsula and of Ukraine Such tendencies were especially noticeable among ethnic Russians during the period when two new conflict centers were created in the east.
That year Putin he angered them by saying that the Kazakhs “never had statehood”. Putin and other ultranationalist Russian leaders have since repeatedly issued statements questioning Kazakhstan’s statehood and territorial integrity.
The number of ethnic Kazakhs in Kazakhstan began to decrease sharply in the 1930s. At that time, the collectivization policy of the Soviet government led to the starvation of 1.3 million Kazakhs and the migration of millions of people abroad.
In parallel, Moscow was transferring Russians to Kazakhstan.
When Kazakhstan regained its independence in 1991, ethnic Kazakhs made up less than 40% of the country’s population. Now this indicator has reached 70%. Ethnic Russians make up 15% of the population of 19.4 million. Before the collapse of the USSR, this indicator was 37%.