The reading of the violent political crisis in Kazakhstan, a former Soviet republic in Central Asia, offers a relevant chapter to understand the post-USSR universe, with the transformation of a moderate reformist into a despotic ruler.
Nursultan Nazarbaiev, leader of Kazakh independence, cultivated, in the 1990s, an image of moderation, for, over almost 30 years in power, he implemented a primer with nuances of North Korean style.
He ruled the homeland from 1990 to 2019, when he resigned. However, he appointed his successor and retained the title of “leader of the nation” and control of the Security Council – from which he was removed amid the current turmoil. There are doubts as to whether the initiative corresponds to political theater or the effective loss of power.
Either way, Nazarbaiev’s fingerprints proliferate across the vast Central Asian country. The capital, formerly known as Astana, was renamed Nursultan in 2019, in honor of the “leader of the nation”.
Before embarking on the cult of personality, the former president sailed as an icon of moderation in the USSR in the early 1990s. He worked, for example, as a kind of mediator between the main rivals at the time, the vacillating Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, committed to to save rotten communist structures, and the mercurial Boris Yeltsin, in favor of accelerating reforms and ruler of Russia, the largest of the 15 units that formed the empire created after the 1917 Revolution.
Nazarbaiev, in his favor, exhibited a solid career in the intricacies of the Soviet system, responsible for transforming him into a typical apparatchik (a member of the party apparatus). He knew deeply the mechanisms of power struggles in the CP of the USSR.
The Gorbachev-Yeltsin duel intensified in 1991, and Kazakh, as a moderate voice, preached prudence in the terminal crisis of a nuclear superpower. He managed to communicate with Gorbachevism and Yeltsinism. Yeltsin consolidated his victory by announcing, on December 8, 1991, the end of the USSR, alongside the separatist leaders of Ukraine and Belarus. Subsequently, he sought support from Nazarbaiev, in order to prevent his alignment with possible resistance to the Kremlin.
In the first chapters of the Bolshevik disintegration, Nazarbayev had joined forces with Gorbachev. He also wanted to avoid the end of the empire, although he advocated more autonomy for the Soviet republics, draining power from Moscow. In the end, Yeltsin’s offensive prevailed, driven by the tragic economic crisis. The Kazakh understood the correlation of forces, abandoned the ally and joined the separatist caravan. He argued to seek stability and avoid conflicts.
On December 21, in Alma Ata, then the Kazakh capital, the Commonwealth of Independent States was created, designed to replace the Soviet structures, but without gaining relevance to this day. The classic photo of the founding event ranks leaders Yeltsin, Ukrainian Leonid Kravchuk and Belarusian Stanislav Shushkevich. At the front, the host Nazarbaiev.
The Kazakh politician then consolidated the label of moderate reformist. That option was soon abandoned, and Kazakhstan, like many of its neighbors, embarked on an era of authoritarianism and personality cults.
“Economy first, democracy later”, maintained the regime of the “leader of the nation”. Heir to tsarist and communist despotisms, the post-Soviet space has become, although there are exceptions, fertile ground for the proliferation of 21st century autocracies.
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