Central Asia: Cultural War on the Russian Language

From Bishkek to Aktau, a series of incidents against Russian speakers have caused nationalists in Moscow to cry vengence. The fear is that a scenario similar to that of the Donbass could be repeated.

Moscow (AsiaNews) - For several days there has been an ongoing controversy between Russians and their former brothers in Central Asia, especially Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, over linguistic and cultural expression. The ex-Soviet republics of Central Asia are in fact still very dependent on the Russian language, imposed by the Soviets, and are trying in various ways to free themselves from it in order to re-establish their national languages.

With the apprach of the Russian parliamentary elections and other electoral appointments in Asian countries, the controversy is taking on an increasingly heated propagandistic hue, with reciprocal accusations of aggressive nationalism.

In mid-July, during a sporting event in the Ysyk-Köl region of Kyrgyzstan, a group of nine-year-old children beat up a boy their age, who returned home bruised. The parents posted about it on social media charging it was because of "ideological racism": the child would have been beaten "because he was a Christian", as the priest and the parishioners of the only Russian Orthodox church in the village insisted, since he was the only Russian child at the sports camp.

The case caused a wide scandal, so much so that the child's parents were called by the presidential administration to Biškek, to clarify the incident. In the end, the child was even invited to Moscow by Patriarch Kirill (Gundjaev), who called him "defender of the faith" and guaranteed the family the necessary help to move to live and work in Russia.

The story of the beaten boy was intertwined with another scandal, when at the beginning of August in a shopping center in Biškek a client threw a computer at the saleswoman, who was guilty of having answered him in Russian and not in Kyrgyz (a variant of Turkish). The girl did not denounce her aggressor, but the story was taken up by the speaker of the Russian Duma, Vjačeslav Volodin, who passed a parliamentary resolution to clarify the incident through diplomatic channels, and defend the Russian-speaking girl "on the basis of the fact that the Russian language in Kyrgyzstan has the status of official language, as written in the constitution of the country. Russian deputies propose reaction measures, such as a ban on entry to Russia "to those who offend people who speak our language."

The two stories of "offending the Russian language and culture" were taken up by politician Vladimir Žirinovsky, leader of the liberal-nationalists, who proclaimed himself "defender of all Russians in the countries of Asia." The histrionic and elderly leader demanded the recall of the Russian ambassador to Kyrgyzstan and also organized a protest demonstration in front of the Kyrgyz embassy in Moscow. Several Kyrgyz politicians in turn protested, claiming that there is no anti-Russian national issue in their country.

On August 11, a video of a Russian woman in the city of Aktau being forced to apologize for loudly insulting Kazakhs in a shopping mall was circulated on social networks in Kazakhstan. Other videos released concurrently with the first one show people in Kazakh stores demanding that owners and clerks address them exclusively in the Kazakh language, another variant of Turkish. Most of the videos appeared on the YouTube channel Til maydan ("Language Camp") of blogger Kuat Akhmetov, a self-described "language sentinel" who has been active in an anti-Russian campaign for a couple of years. On the evening of August 12 against Akhmetov a decree was issued by Moscow prohibiting him from entering the Russian Federation for the next 50 years.

On Russian social media and television channels a vast campaign in defense of Russians in Central Asia against "Kazakh nationalists who beat up Slavs" began. A belated apology by the first deputy head of the presidential administration of Kazakhstan, Dauren Abaev, who condemned these events as an expression of "nationalist obscurantism", was of no avail.

The Central Asian republics are still very dependent on Russia for economic and trade factors, and despite the mass return of Russian citizens to their original homeland, many ethnic Russians remain in these countries. Their defense by the Moscow authorities, many commentators point out, risks creating a "Donbass scenario" in these countries as well, similar to the problems that have been going on for years in Ukraine.

• Russia
• Kazakhstan
• Kyrgyzstan
• Russian speakers
• languages
• Donbass
• Vladimir Zhirinovsky
• xenophobia