Kazakhstan: New troubles bought on by fuel price hike

[hitmouse]

Another interview with a Kazakh socialist here:

A Color Revolution or a Working-Class Uprising?: an Interview with Aynur Kurmanov on the Protests in Kazakhstan - Lefteast

LeftEast gratefully acknowledges Zanovo-media, where this article was originally published in Russian. Today all post-Soviet mass-media and TV channels are riveted to the protests that suddenly engulfed Kazakhstan. To some they arouse hope, to others – horror and rejection. There are...

lefteast.org

 

[Kevbad the Bad]

There are lots of underlying currents going on here and a lot of racial/ethnic tensions. What the government says or thinks will have little to do with what many on the ground think. Way back during the Russian Civil War (1921?) there was famine caused by the Bolshevik policies of War Communism, hundreds of thousands dead. Again, in the early 1930's, state-induced famine caused more than a million deaths, vast numbers of horses were shot to try and stop the nomadic lifestyles of many Kazakhs, and hundreds of thousands moved internally within the USSR or emigrated to China. Kazakhstan then became a dumping ground for the Soviet Union's policies of ethnic deportation. Chechens, Ingush, Germans and others were sent there, disrupting local societies and economies. The state also encouraged immigration of Russians on a grand scale. As a result the ethnic mix changed radically and Kazakhs became a minority in their own state. Krushchev's Virgin Lands policy also led to the immigration of large numbers of Russians, Ukrainians and others in the 1950's.
The ethnic balance began to change under Gorbachev, Russians emigrating back to Russia proper, a phenomenon replicated across much of the Soviet Union. The Kazakhs are now the majority ethnic group once again. Russia's influence has undeniably weakened as a result. How all this specifically effects events right now I have no idea, but the history of Russian-Kazakh ethnic tension, and indeed hatred, must have some bearing.

 

[steeplejack]

There are lots of underlying currents going on here and a lot of racial/ethnic tensions. What the government says or thinks will have little to do with what many on the ground think. Way back during the Russian Civil War (1921?) there was famine caused by the Bolshevik policies of War Communism, hundreds of thousands dead. Again, in the early 1930's, state-induced famine caused more than a million deaths, vast numbers of horses were shot to try and stop the nomadic lifestyles of many Kazakhs, and hundreds of thousands moved internally within the USSR or emigrated to China. Kazakhstan then became a dumping ground for the Soviet Union's policies of ethnic deportation. Chechens, Ingush, Germans and others were sent there, disrupting local societies and economies. The state also encouraged immigration of Russians on a grand scale. As a result the ethnic mix changed radically and Kazakhs became a minority in their own state. Krushchev's Virgin Lands policy also led to the immigration of large numbers of Russians, Ukrainians and others in the 1950's.
The ethnic balance began to change under Gorbachev, Russians emigrating back to Russia proper, a phenomenon replicated across much of the Soviet Union. The Kazakhs are now the majority ethnic group once again. Russia's influence has undeniably weakened as a result. How all this specifically effects events right now I have no idea, but the history of Russian-Kazakh ethnic tension, and indeed hatred, must have some bearing.

 

[gosub]

Another interview with a Kazakh socialist here:

A Color Revolution or a Working-Class Uprising?: an Interview with Aynur Kurmanov on the Protests in Kazakhstan - Lefteast

LeftEast gratefully acknowledges Zanovo-media, where this article was originally published in Russian. Today all post-Soviet mass-media and TV channels are riveted to the protests that suddenly engulfed Kazakhstan. To some they arouse hope, to others – horror and rejection. There are...

lefteast.org

No mention of the blackouts or mining cyrpto or non crypto) + estimated local lpg production cost is estimated higher than 50tenge.


Uranium price surges as unrest grips world’s top supplier Kazakhstan

 

[Kevbad the Bad]

I'm sure things are much more complicated than simply ethnic tension. I'm just pointing out that there are underlying problems which go back to the Soviet Union and the Tsars before that. Russian occupation of Central Asia, the subsequent colonisation and depopulation of the previous inhabitants: these are all important historical factors which will still be having a profound impact on the citizens of Kazakhstan, no matter what their ethnic origin. The ethnic balance has been in a state of colossal flux for the past century. As elsewhere in the former USSR (Crimea, Georgia, Chechnya, Ukraine, Baltic States etc) that will be having an effect on everything, whether we'd like it to or not.

 

[steeplejack]

of very faint relevance, at best.

 

[Kevbad the Bad]

of very faint relevance, at best.

If you imagine the same things happening in our own country you might think differently. You also can't expect any of the current participants in the current conflict to be open, transparent and honest about any of this.

 

[Idris2002]

Statement by the "Socialist Movement of Kazakhstan":

Statement by the Socialist Movement of Kazakhstan on the situation in the country

In a statement about the large-scale mobilizations and protests in the country, the Socialist Movement of Kazakhstan calls for international solidarit

www.idcommunism.com

Anyone know more about this SM of K? Years ago in Dublin I saw a CWI guy from Kazakhstan lecture, he seemed to be giving it a good go. But that's at least a decade ago.

 

[LDC]

Anyone know more about this SM of K? Years ago in Dublin I saw a CWI guy from Kazakhstan lecture, he seemed to be giving it a good go. But that's at least a decade ago.

That they're completely hatstand?

 

[Diamond]

Couple of interesting updates:



These are supposedly ethnic Kazakhs in the security forces going over to the rebels. Prospect of having a bunch of CSTO foreigners against local Kazakhs as being the battlelines.

Quite a good super-short breakdown of events up until late last week:



Meanwhile the Russian media is going big on the idea that Turkey and Erdogan were somehow in league with the West in bringing a number of hardened fundamentalists into the country from Azerbaijan and Syria.





So, I think, on the basis of logical deduction, one can probably start by saying that that is not what has gone on, although it is probably not a million miles wide of the mark.

My hunch is that there are all sorts of perfectly legitimate forces that can stand on their own two feet at play here, along with, most likely, plenty of smoke and mirrors too. So, a popular uprising against a bad govt certainly seems in the mix, as too does the flare up of deep ethnic tensions (with those two probably not mapping neatly onto each other), intra-govt elite conflict between the old bad guys and the new bad guys, intra criminal and inter govt-criminal conflict, genuine Islamic fundamentalist forces at play, and finally the introduction of the CSTO task force.

Alongside that, there's probably all sorts of foreign interference from the usual suspects.

Slight sense of this not really being a state and instead just a collection of better or worse organised gangs, some legitimate, some illegitimate, all vying for power and influence as order collapses.

 

[hitmouse]

Statement by the "Socialist Movement of Kazakhstan":

Statement by the Socialist Movement of Kazakhstan on the situation in the country

In a statement about the large-scale mobilizations and protests in the country, the Socialist Movement of Kazakhstan calls for international solidarit

www.idcommunism.com

Anyone know more about this SM of K? Years ago in Dublin I saw a CWI guy from Kazakhstan lecture, he seemed to be giving it a good go. But that's at least a decade ago.

They got a brief mention in this, which is pretty much as neutral a reference as you can get:

The Uprising in Kazakhstan

A Kazakhstani expatriate explores the roots of the uprising that broke out in response to the rising cost of living and the violence of the state.

crimethinc.com

As for movements from below, there were anarchists, who were more of an underground movement, and there was a unusually loud socialist movement group, whose leader Ainur Kurmanov ended up fleeing Kazakhstan in the end. There were nationalists and radical Islamists as well, but again, they weren’t really that prominent and they too were sort of underground.

I suppose "unusually loud" is probably a relatively positive thing to say about a socialist movement, or certainly more positive than if you're talking about a neighbour?
Fwiw, here's their wiki:

Socialist Movement of Kazakhstan - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

So sounds like they went over from the CWI to more CP-ish in 2016?

 

[not-bono-ever]

so this flurry of activity and death would now seem to have its roots in the old vs new regime scuffling for power. Bringing in the Ruskies (effectively ) to assist does kinda change priorities for what was a very balanced and delicately run - in diplomatic terms - country.

 

[hitmouse]

Is it just me, or does this BBC story on the protests read a bit odd? Although tbf concentrating on the violence of the looters rather than that of the state is how I'd expect them to cover protests in most western countries, so maybe I'm just surprised by them being consistent:

'They looted everything': Counting the cost of Kazakh protests

Violent protests have left Kazakhstan stunned and angry, the BBC's Abdujalil Abdurasulov finds.

www.bbc.co.uk

I especially liked this bit:

Dosym Satpayev, a political analyst from Almaty believes that at the core of the violent mob that attacked security forces and seized buildings are unemployed young people from poor families who hijacked the protests.
"If you look around big cities of Kazakhstan, you will find a lot of unemployed young people and this is potentially an aggressive mass," he says.
"And now these people tried to use the events in Almaty for their own interests."

As scary outside agitators hijacking events for their own purposes go, "unemployed people from poor families" doesn't really sound like the most illegitimate shadowy force?

 

[elbows]

Is it just me, or does this BBC story on the protests read a bit odd? Although tbf concentrating on the violence of the looters rather than that of the state is how I'd expect them to cover protests in most western countries, so maybe I'm just surprised by them being consistent:

'They looted everything': Counting the cost of Kazakh protests

Violent protests have left Kazakhstan stunned and angry, the BBC's Abdujalil Abdurasulov finds.

www.bbc.co.uk

I especially liked this bit:

As scary outside agitators hijacking events for their own purposes go, "unemployed people from poor families" doesn't really sound like the most illegitimate shadowy force?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kazakhstan–United_Kingdom_relations

For example:

The UK is one of the six largest investors in the Kazakh economy. Foreign direct investment inflow from the UK in 2005-2018 totalled $13 billion (£10.8 billion).[4] British investors and companies have invested US$25 billion into Kazakhstan since 1991.[5] In 2018, the gross inflow of FDI from the UK in Kazakhstan reached $593.1 million, an increase of 11.1% compared to 2017 ($533.8 million). Over 10 years, the influx of direct investment from the UK to Kazakhstan amounted to $8.8 billion. The most attractive industry in Kazakhstan for UK investors is professional, scientific and technical activities; the share of which is 34.3 percent of the total, or $7.8 billion. Investors from the UK also significantly financed financial and insurance activities ($2.4 billion) and mining and quarrying ($1.8 billion).[6]

Nazarbayev gave a speech at a business seminar entitled "Kazakhstan– Way Forward," to 300 British businessmen, in which he discussed Kazakhstan's GDP, which is expected to soon pass USD $6,000, that Britain is the third largest investor in Kazakhstan, and that there are 128 British companies currently investing in Kazakhstan. Nazarbayev told his audience, "Kazakhstan is no longer part of the Soviet Union, not part of Russia, and there is no need to look at it as if it were. As you see, Kazakhstan is a scene of liberal politics, liberal economics, and we wish that all the countries of the region would follow our example, walk in our footsteps in that we have created better conditions for our people than our neighbors." Other representatives who spoke at the seminar worked for Kazyna Fund, Samruk State Holdings, RFCA, and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.

 

[hitmouse]

So, full convergence of interests between Putin, the UK, and the bitcoin freaks on this one then?

 

[dessiato]

I have friends there. One is visiting her family in the capital. This, along with the troubles in Sudan affecting friends there, is really worrying.

The world is an increasingly horrible place.

 

[hitmouse]

Big update here:

Kazakhstan after the Uprising

We interviewed two anarcha-feminists who witnessed the peak of the uprising in Almaty and translated an array of perspectives from Russian anarchists.

crimethinc.com

 

[AmateurAgitator]

I should have posted this days ago but I totally forgot. My memory is really not good these days. This is a statement of solidarity by Russian anarcho-syndicalists and other anarchists :

Statement on the situation in Kazakhstan | Международная ассоциация трудящихся

aitrus.info

 

[teqniq]

Interesting article. Seems to be very well-informed:

Kazakhstan. A Hijacked Protest - Waidelotte

On 1 January, Kazakhstan doubled the price of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), the main fuel for cars in some parts of the country, from 60 to 120 tenge ($0.14 to $0.28) per litre. It didn’t take long for the public to react. The next morning, the residents of Zhanaozen, the capital of the...

waidelotte.org

 

[steeplejack]

Tadeusz is normally spot on

 

[planetgeli]

Kazakhstan reporting 225 bodies were delivered to the morgue during the unrest. That's a massacre in anyone's book.

 

[gosub]

Intresting speech from Putin, clearly in a fuck it we are doing this say what you feel mode. (Putting this here coz ain't going to help with regards Ukraine) though context of this might provide a fissure, however small..


Putin thinker of a multi polar world..... Must be a bitch having a bit of a player as a neighbour when it comes to dealing with some of these ex Soviet states....

NATO and anti missle, must be a bit of bitch too 2008 when US was pushing for UKraine and Georgia to become NATO, Bush was talking to Putin about countering missles launched from Middle East...might still happen but its not like the Chinese don't have a 'corcerning' first strike ICBM capability that is growing...

 

[hitmouse]

New text on Kazakhstan:

The Kazakh insurrection

The theory of the state is the reef on which the revolutions of our century have been shipwrecked.1 During the revolutions of the Arab Spring, the people brought about the fall of the regime, but the institutions of the state remained intact. Elsewhere the revolutions were drained in protracted...

avtonom.org

 

[JimW]

Forty two dead in a coal mine fire: Kazakhstan mine fire death roll rises to 42
Company involved has been a safety nightmare for some time and is going to be nationalised by looks of things.