it’s hard to talk about kazakhstan without emphasizing the importance of nursultan nazarbayev, the republic’s first (and in its twenty years of independence, only) president. at the same time, it’s also easy to
over-state the role of nazarbayev. for while this country is not exactly a democracy, nazarbayev doesn’t fit the role of a strongman dictator either. he has a lot more power than a president in a western country, but largely due to his own self-restraint, he at least tried to give the appearance that some semblance of democracy exists in this country.
also, unlike the leaders in other autocratic countries that i have visited in the past, president nazarbayev is genuinely popular in kazakhstan. in 2003, i spent two weeks traveling around uzbekistan trying to find a single person who did not hate their president, but was unsuccessful. in kazakhstan, just about everyone supports the president and most seem to have genuine admiration for him. while people i speak to will acknowledge that their president has made some mistakes, they will also point out that he has been far better than the other central asian leaders (which is setting a pretty low bar). nazarbayev seems to have even earned the admiration, or maybe jealousy, of citizens of the surrounding former soviet republics. when i first told a friend of mine from uzbekistan that i would be returning to central asia, to kazakhstan, the first thing she said was: “they have a very good president.”
with that in mind and his face or quotes from him on roughly 30% of the billboards i see, it’s hard not to be intrigued by nursultan nazarbayev. on her last trip back to the u.s., mrs. noz brought jonathan atken’s
Nazarbayev and the Making of Kazakhstan back to taraz with her. by the time i arrived, she was done with the book, so i got my chance to read it.
the book is an authorized biography, which probably is the source of its major weakness. the book’s tone can only be described as “fawning” as it recounts how time and again nazarbayev is faced with a problem and then he shrewdly makes the perfect judgment call. after a while, it really gets to be too much.
the book does not claim that nazarbayev is always right; it does acknowledge that he has made mistakes. but atken always paints these mistakes in a pretty positive light. when nazarbayev mistakenly believed that russia would protect kazakhstan’s economic interests when the two countries still shared a common currency in the years after the collapse of the USSR, the book labels nazarbayev’s miscalculation as being “the triumph of hope over experience.” as atken recounts the story, it wasn’t a lack of judgment for nazarbayev to not know that if russia’s and kazakhstan’s economic interests diverged, russia would favor its own interests, the mistake was due to the kazakh president inclination to trust people too much and to deal more open and honestly with other world leaders than the nasty world of international diplomacy required. atken spins a serious miscalculation into a lesson that nazarbayev is too good for the dirty world of international diplomacy.
plus, it looks like the few mistakes that are mentioned in the book are only the mistakes that president nazarbayev himself has acknowledged. atkens primary source appears to be president nazarbayev himself. the book was based on 23 hours of interview with the president. each time the book discusses a mistake, there is a quote from nazarbayev acknowledging the mistake. a book that attempted a little more rigor might have looked at nazarbayev’s life with more of an independent critical eye, maybe trying to see the mistakes that nazarbayev himself
didn’t point out to the author. but maybe that would require more independent thought than nazarbayev would tolerate in an authorized biographer.
of course, atken didn’t just interview nazarbayev. he also was given access to an impressive number of other kazakhstani figures, as well as international figures like mikhail gorbachev and margaret thatcher. but at least with regard to the kazakhstanis, it’s worth keeping in mind that directly criticizing the president, especially on the record, would invite legal jeopardy.
atken also really downplays kazakhstan’s human rights problems. he claims that nazarbayev has allowed bloggers critical of the government to flourish when, in fact, kazakhstan recently passed a new online media law that
did just the opposite. in fact, this blog is blocked in kazakhstan (as are all blogspot blogs and all blogs that use the livejournal platform, the most popular blog platform in the russian blogosphere). near the end of the book, atken writes “there are no political… prisoners in Kazakhstan” which is objectively untrue. i would put up a link to prove my point, but i can’t because the sites showing otherwise are currently blocked to me.
another flaw with the book is the almost total absence of the other central asian former soviet republics. for a book that talks so much about foreign policy, you could easily believe that kazakhstan’s only neighbors are russia, china and (oddly enough) the US. on a single page, the book makes only a small nod to the existence of the other stans, claiming that “Nazarbayev is given credit for being a moderating influence in solving the endless disputes over borders, transport routes, trade tariffs, terrorist threats, drug trafficking, religious extremism and wider security issues [in the other central asian former soviet republics].” but then it just says “[i]t would take another book to chronicle Nazarbayev’s dealings with his fellow regional leaders and their often erratic regimes.” oh well.
the book ends by stating: “it has been said that the difference between a politician and a statesman is that the former is focused on the next election, while the latter plans for the next generation.” atken then writes that “Nazarbayev does both[.]” and yet he does not raise the very real concern i have heard from people in kazakhstan about what will happen with the next generation. nazarbayev turned 70 this year, in a region where male life expectancy is around the early 60s. obviously, the president is getting first world medical care that a lot of kazakhstanis do not have access to, but people are definitely concerned about who will succeed nazarbayev. that concern is related to nazarbayev’s genuine popularity. people think he is an exceptionally good president, but that means it can only go downhill from here. they look at their neighbors, most recently to the chaos and ethnic violence in kyrgyzstan, and fear that they are looking at their post-nazarbayev future. more than one kazakh has predicted that the country may fall apart after this president. as far as i can tell, nazarbayev has done nothing to reassure the population about succession. there is no heir apparent. up and coming politicians are potential threats to the current president and (needless to say) do not get any support from the top.
despite its flaws, it was interesting to read nazarbayev’s life story, even a version of the story that is so uncritical. he really is an intriguing figure who has done a remarkable job with this country. i was amused to read in the early part of the book, about when nazarbayev was a young technocrat, just starting to claw his way up the soviet hierarchy, and he defeated his first political opponent, lazar katkov, secretary of the communist party in temirtau (the city where nazarbayev was living). after messing with nazarbayev, katkov ended up in political exile, reassigned to “an obscure administrative position in the Dzhambul region.” the capital of that backwater dzhambul region is now called taraz, the city where mrs. noz and i have mostly called home for the past 10.5 months. i was also semi-surprised to learn that “nursultan” is nazarbayev’s original first name, as it means “light/splendor of the leader/sultan” in kazakh (and arabic too). i had wondered if he adopted the name when he became president, or maybe when he went into politics. but no, i guess his parents were a bit prescient.
while reading “Nazarbayev and the Making of Kazakhstan” its fawning tone reminding me of another book i read a little over one year ago: christopher robbin’s
Apples are from Kazakhstan. that book was not supposed to be about nazarbayev, but turned out to be after the author met the president and was invited to travel the country with his official entourage. “Apples” has exactly the same over-the-top praise for nazarbayev that i see in atken’s book. because both authors spent a bit of time with the president, i wonder if the similar tone reflects nazarbayev’s real charisma. by all accounts he has a remarkable ability to win over people. maybe the more critical biography i am hoping for cannot happen until after the nazarbayev era, when someone can tell his compelling story without being taken under his spell.
