Description
The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 has left millions of Russians in the former Soviet republics. Kazakhstan declared its independence after having around 6 million of them. The so-called ‘Russian Question’ has emerged as a sensitive issue to deal in post-independence Kazakhstan. Solving ‘Russian Question’ in cooperation with first Russian President Boris Yeltsin has been uneasy, the first president of Kazakhstan has responded to consider placing the status of the Russian language into a state constitution, but rejected dual citizenship that Russia was pressing. This paper argues that while following a policy of satisfying Russia in the 1990s, Kazakhstan became a Russified country easy to be influenced by Russia. As a consequence, the ‘Russian Question’ that has been managed in the 1990s, brought a stable relationship with Russia and domestic stability, has emerged as a new challenge under a new context. The events since 2014 show that the ‘Russian Question’ has evolved to include Russian speaking Kazakhs. This has been revealed after the Russian annexation of Crimea and the literature that points to Kazakhstan as the next. |My paper, therefore, contributes to the analysis of the current situation that poses for Kazakhstan under a new context.
