Russia and Eurasia Programme paper: 2012/02
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- Figure 1. Kyrgyzstan - here today, gone tomorrow 47 Figure 2. Pocket politics 48
- Implications of insecurity
REP Programme Paper: Averting Violence in Kyrgyzstan: Understanding and Responding to Nationalism www.chathamhouse.org 15
The third most significant source of insecurity is that of language. Language is often a pivotal factor in nation-building, and this is particularly the case in Kyrgyzstan. Most Kyrgyz were not literate at the time of the Soviet formation of the Kara-Kyrgyz Autonomous Region, the forerunner of present- day Kyrgyzstan. Soviet rule resulted in the first systematic written codification, development and promotion of the Kyrgyz language, establishing universal literacy and the emergence of a nationwide stream of Kyrgyz schooling. However, even after many decades the Kyrgyz language played second-fiddle to Russian in education, politics and the professions. Kyrgyz cultural forms of music and oral poetry were denigrated. Kyrgyz elites were generally more fluent in Russian, and simply speaking Kyrgyz in public in the capital city (then called Frunze) could earn a verbal rebuke from passers-by.
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34/02/1999-02/03/1999.
48 ‘Chontok sayasat’ [Pocket politics], Aalam Vol. 11, 31 February 1999.
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‘Chakira-chokor… chek ara’ [Ho hum, the border], Asaba Vol. 15, 29 March 2000.
REP Programme Paper: Averting Violence in Kyrgyzstan: Understanding and Responding to Nationalism www.chathamhouse.org 16 Therefore the drive to right this historical wrong was at the forefront of the late Soviet sovereignty movement within the republic. In 1989 this succeeded in having Kyrgyz declared the formal language of the Kyrgyz Soviet Socialist Republic, a great achievement. With independence, measures were taken to widen the terminology, reform spelling and punctuation, set a timescale for the switch over from Russian to Kyrgyz, and enhance the status of Kyrgyz through awards, prizes and campaigns. 50 Periodic appraisals of the laws by commentators and academics led to lots of hand-wringing about their apparent failure: in spite of all the laws, commissions, and other work, ‘everything continues as it was’ with Kyrgyz barely used at all in the workplace’, bemoaned the newspaper Kyrgyz Tuusu in 2004. 51 Kyrgyz nationalists sardonically draw a distinction between people who are Kyrgyz (pronounced with a Kyrgyz hard ‘y’) and Kirgiz (pronounced with a Russian soft ‘i’) – the latter being elites who spoke better Russian than Kyrgyz and are thus linguistically and culturally alienated from authentic Kyrgyzness. In October 2004, the southern Kyrgyz newspaper Ferghana published an article asking ‘Why is Kyrgyz still failing to become the state language?’ 52 Various reasons were adduced, including the poor teaching of Kyrgyz in Russian and Uzbek schools, the influence of Russian and Uzbek television, the absence of laws obliging people to know Kyrgyz to take citizenship or enter state employment, and the preference of the public sector to conduct its written business primarily in Russian. All these, the paper concluded, amount to saying that there is no real need to learn Kyrgyz. The article also argued that the decision in 2000 to make Russian an ‘official’ language 53
has exacerbated the situation by ensuring that there are even fewer inducements to switch. Bhavna Dave argues that because the state in Kyrgyzstan lacks the resources of its neighbours in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, ‘the symbol of language’ became a focal point of nationalist angst. 54
For Kyrgyz nationalists, it is the quintessential indication of the insecurity of the Kyrgyz nation, which is unable even to learn its own language or get its powerful ethnic minorities to do the same. Implications of insecurity Nationalism, as a political ideology holding that the territorial and national units should be congruent, is an inescapable context for political life in contemporary Kyrgyzstan. Kyrgyz national imaginations are framed by concepts of ‘unity’ and ‘concordance’, which refer to particular political concepts derived from an understanding of Inner Asian tribal organization and leadership models. As a framework for understanding the multiple social crises and challenges that the country faces, this has produced a Kyrgyz nationalism that is profoundly insecure about issues of internal unity, geopolitics and language. It is absolutely crucial to grasp this for, as will be seen in the following sections, it explains to a significant degree the difficulties that the sizeable Uzbek minority presents to the Kyrgyz nationalist project; and it also points to ways to avert further violence.
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Identity and the Soviet Legacy. (London: I.B. Tauris), Chapter 5. 51
’Mamlekettik tilge – mamlekettik mamile’ [A state approach for a state language], Kyrgyz Tuusu, 23-26 July 2004, p.5
52 “Kyrgyz tili emne uchun mamlekettik til bol albay jatat?’ [Why is the Kyrgyz language failing to become the state language?] Ferghana, 11-17 October 2004.
53 Kyrgyzstan is the only state in Central Asia that grants any official status to Russian. Landau, & Kellner-Heinkele, Language Politics in Contemporary Central Asia, p.150.
54 Dave, Bhavna. (2002), ‘A shrinking reach of the state? Language policy and implementation in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan’, in Pauline Jones Luong, (ed.), Institutional Change and Political Continuity in Post-Soviet Central Asia, p. 147.
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