THE "IMPERIAL MINORITY": AN INTERPRETATIVE FRAMEWORK OF THE RUSSIANS IN KAZAKHSTAN? -SEBASTIEN PEYROUSE- This paper will be devoted to the Russian minorities living in Central Asia (nearly 10 millions people in 1989, about 5 millions today), and more specifically to the Russians living in Kazakhstan, who constitute the main Russian minority in the Near Abroad, apart from Ukraine. Unlike the Russians living in the other Central Asian Republics, Russians in Kazakhstan have created some political movements, and Kazakhstan even went through some important secessionist trends in the 1990’s. This paper argues that the Russian minority experienced difficulties to elaborate identity tools in order to manage the post-soviet context: how to pass from the status of a people representing the Soviet State to a minority symbolizing the former colonizer? What kind of allegiance can they swear to Russia: an ethnic, cultural, or political solidarity? Should they have to reply to the development of an ethnic nationalism in these new independent States by the development of a Russian ethnic nationalism, or should the emergence of a civic nationalism be supported? Through the example of an "imperial minority", this article questions some important topics of the post-soviet nationhood as the contradiction between ethnic and civic identities, between the imperial symbolic and the current nationhood. Sociological surveys are rare in Kazakhstan and none has been specifically devoted to the Russian minority. Our research work is thus based on the systematic perusal of the main newspaper that claims to represent the Russian minority, Lad, as well as on long stays in Kazakhstan between 1999 and 2005 in several cities of this republic. A monthly magazine founded in 1994, Lad is the press instrument of the association of the same name. Throughout the 1990s, Lad was the main association, but also the only political party representing the Russian minority. It allied itself with the electoral platforms of the democratic opposition on several occasions, but it did not manage to endure as an ethnic party. Having disappeared from the political stage in the late 1990s, Lad remains today merely a cultural association of defence of the Russians and is marginalized in the Kazakstanese public arena. This study mainly uses the discourses of the associations defending the rights of the Russians, discourses that are centred on highly ideological arguments and not on the individual memory as it can emerge from sociological surveys1. This article will not go back over the debates concerning the definition and the use of the words "diaspora", "community", or "Russophone", which represent a fully-fledged theme2. After quickly presenting the main features of the political situation of the Russians in Kazakhstan and of their massive departure for Russia, we will question three specific issues: the upholding of an historiography that glorifies the colonial and Soviet past, the age-old struggle for the possession of the steppe 1 For sociological surveys carried out among the Russians in Kyrgyzstan, see the work of Kosmarskaya N., Deti imperii v postsovetskoi Tsentral’noi Azii: adaptivnye praktiki i mental’nye sdvigi, Moscow, Natalis, 2006. 2 On this question, see Kolstoe P., Russians in the Former Soviet Republics, Londres, Hurst, 1995 ; Shlapentokh V. and al., (eds.) The New Russian Diaspora, Armonsk, New York - Londres, M. E. Sharpe, 1994 ; Laitin D., Identity in Formation. The Russian-speaking Populations in the Near Abroad, Ithaca – Londres, Cornell University Press, 1998. and the development of a Soviet nostalgia that goes hand in hand with a much ethnicized definition of the Russian identity. I. AN OVERVIEW OF THE SITUATION OF THE RUSSIANS IN KAZAKHSTAN In 1991, Kazakhstan was the only post-Soviet republic in which the eponymous people was not the majority. At the national level, the new state was undermined by its strong Russian minority and by the deep Russification/Sovietization undergone by the Kazakh society. Indee, in 1989, Kazakhstan took in six millions Russians. This diaspora is the second in gross figures after the one in Ukraine (11 millions in 1989) but the first one in percentage, as the Russians living in Kazakhstan represent 37,8 % of the population of the republic. The relevance of “Russian problem” in Kazakhstan is not only posed due to their number but also due to their fundamentally autochthonous nature: 66% of them were born in this republic and more than 37% of the non-natives had been living there for more than twenty years3. What is at stake is also shown by the geographical distribution of the Russians: in the 1989 census, they represented from 70 to 80 % of the population in the seven Northern regions of the country, almost all on the border with Russia (Akmolinsk, Karaganda, Kokchetau, Kustanay, North-East, Northern-Kazakhstan, Pavlodar). Kazakhstan thus found itself in a certain national situation since it had to unify a massively Russian and European North (with Polish, Ukrainian and German minorities) with a predominantly Kazakh and Uzbek South and with a middle space particularly sparsely populated. The unexpected disappearance of the Soviet Union raised many questions and concern, considerably speeding up the migratory flows. If the massive departure of the Russians of Central Asia towards Russia is often presented as resulting from the fragmentation of the USSR, the reversal of the migratory flows, which started well before 1991, could be noticed from the 1979 census onwards. In the 1980s, Kazakhstan lost another 784,000 inhabitants (between 60,000 and 85,000 each year)4. These migrations changed in scale with the independence of the republics. As far as emigration is concerned, Kazakhstan remains the Central Asian republic in which the figures are the 5 highest, in comparison with the other republics as well as with the whole CIS . Between 1989 and 1999, Russians went from 6 to 4,5 millions, that is to say from 40 to 30% of the Republic’s population, with an average of departure of 150,000 individuals a year. In 2000, migrations coming from Kazakhstan alone still constituted more than 28% of the internal migrations in the former Soviet territory6. The traditionally Russian regions of the North and the East of the country have been worst hit by the transformations brought by these departures and were losing around a quarter of their population in less than a decade. Entire neighbourhoods in the big cities such as Pavlodar are entirely dilapidated ( 3 Rybakovskii L. L. "Migratsionnyi obmen naseleniem mezhdu Tsentral'noi Aziei i Rossiei", Sociologicheskie issledovaniya, Moscow, RAN, no. 9, 1995, p. 92. 4 Suzhikov M. (ed.) Mezhnatsional'nye otnozheniya v Kazakhstane, Almaty, Gylym, 1993, p. 139. 5 Klimova T. "Tendentsii migratsionnykh protsessov v respublike Kazakhstan (sociologicheskii aspekt)", Tsentral'naya Aziya i Kavkaz, no. 3, 2001, p. 206. 6 Zajonchkovskaya Zh. "Migratsionnye trendy v SNG: itogi desyatiletiya", in Migratsiya SNG i Baltii : cherez razlichiya problem k obshchemu informatsionnomu prostranstvu, Moscow, Adamant, 2001, pp. 181-182. a third of the population has left), while in central Kazakhstan, some satellite mining towns of Karaganda have also been almost totally abandoned. Even if the phrase "Russians in Kazakhstan" is commonly used, it must not presuppose the belief in a unity of destiny of several million individuals and it is obvious that this entity is in no way homogeneous7. Many Russians have lost any interest in politics and the national discourse, they cannot find their way in any collective terminology and they analyze their situation only according to their personal situation. Others would be willing to take part in some kind of collective action and identification but are disappointed by the associations supposed to represent them and by the way the governing bodies handle their problems. Some believe in the possible integration of their children in the new Kazakhstanese society and ignore a Russia that represents nothing to them. Others finally hope, in a more or less long term, for their generation or the next, a return to Russia, or even a departure for the West. One cannot but question the actual representativeness of the associations that pretend to defend the interests of “Russians in Kazakhstan”. The two main associations, Lad and the Russkaya obshchina, were founded in 1992. There are also several Cossack communities as well as many Russian cultural associations in each big city of the country. These associations are very often in competition with one another and are divided into radical and moderate strands. The former have campaigned so that Kazakhstan should recognize its status as a bi-national State, a Russian-Kazakh one, in which Russians would be the “constituting nation” [gosudarstvoobrazuyushchaya natsiya] just like the Kazakhs. The latter quickly accepted to collaborate with the political power of N. Nazarbayev and joined the Assembly of the peoples, which has given them some legitimacy. The separatist or secessionist demands, which were very strong in the early 1990s, have gradually ceased and are now replaced by more specific demands: the upholding of the use of the Russian language in the Kazakhstanese public space, the assertion of cultural rights, the call to strengthen the ties between Kazakhstan and Russia. The democratic shutdown of the country has greatly complicated the political game of the Russians. In the first years after the independence, the Russians willingly took part in the process of democratization and were active in all the elections. In the Supreme Soviet in 1993, the representatives of Lad were a dozen. Their success was very clear in the 1994 local elections, in which they succeeded to get many offices in the cities of the North of the country. The Ladovtsy can thus occupy up to 80% of the local offices in the predominantly Russian cities such as Temirtau, Aksu, Stepgorod, Rudnoy and Ust- Kamenogorsk.