Since Kazakstan gained independence in 1991, the demographic balance has shifted radically. The outward migration of ethnic Russians and the repatriation of formerly deported people are the main reasons for the shift. The chief result is that ethnic Kazaks are projected to become a majority of the country’s inhabitants by the turn of the millennium.
Figures compiled by Kazakstan's State Agency for Statistics and Analysis indicated that emigration is again on the increase, following several years during which the outward flow of the population had remained stable. During the first nine months of 1997, according to the agency, 230,800 persons left Kazakstan. During the same nine-month period in 1996, just over 165,000 individuals left the country.
According to state committee estimates, ethnic Kazaks should comprise 52.8 percent of the population, or about 8 million people, in 2000, while the ethnic Russian population will shrink to 26.7 percent, or around 4 million. The German population will decline even more precipitously, to 2.1 percent, or roughly 300,000.
The underlying causes for the mass population movements, especially the flight of ethnic Slavs, will be examined in subsequent sections of this special report. Slavic settlers, including Belarussians, Russians, and Ukrainians have maintained a presence for centuries in what is now Kazakstan, establishing strong cultural links within the region. Their reaction to the sudden changes and developments in the 1990s, particularly the shift in the balance of political power in favor of ethnic Kazaks, has understandably contained a strong emotional element, both among those leaving the country and those staying behind. Many Russians perceive the Kazaks to be taking revenge on the local Russian-speaking population, holding Russian speakers responsible for decades of Soviet misrule.
Other ethnic groups in Kazakstan, including the formerly deported peoples,
have encountered less difficulty in adapting to the new sociopolitical
conditions than have the ethnic Russians. However, this has not necessarily
diminished their desire to leave. Dire economic conditions are a factor
in pushing all those with sufficient opportunity to leave.
The Germans originally arrived in Russia in the latter half of the 18th century to settle along the lower Volga River. They came at the invitation of Catherine the Great, herself a German, who wanted the newcomers to harness what was at the time still a rough, yet potentially bountiful region. Centered around the city of Saratov, the German community thrived for almost two centuries, to a great extent maintaining their native culture. Germans also settled in significant numbers in the Crimean Peninsula, which Russia conquered during Catherine’s reign, ostensibly for the same reason as for settling in the Volga basin.
Following the outbreak of World War II, Stalin selected Kazakstan to become a major repository of ethnic groups suspected of being disloyal to the Soviet cause. Ethnic Germans from the Volga and the Crimea topped the list of suspect nationalities. Thus, hundreds of thousands of Germans were rounded up and removed at gunpoint in 1940 to the Central Asian steppe. Given only a few minutes notification of their deportation, most Germans carried few possessions with them into internal exile. Most were dumped in desolate, rural regions in northern Kazakstan, where they had to build new infrastructures essentially from scratch. After the war, Germans continued to live with a collaborator stigma and with their ability to move freely and other basic civil rights restricted. The experience greatly eroded their German cultural identity. Postwar generations of Germans grew up unable to speak the language of their ancestors. Andrei Rende, chairman of “Rebirth,” a German cultural organization based in Akmola, recalled that before the war, when he was a young child, his family spoke only German at home. “But after the deportation, the German language was banned and the younger generation lost contact with it,” he said.
Germans over the decades adapted to their new surroundings. They lived mostly in compact agricultural communities, gradually rebuilding their lives, even attaining a level of comparative prosperity. Throughout the postwar era, however, the Germans never succeeded in fully dissipating the prejudicial attitudes towards them, held by the bulk of the Soviet population.
The combination in the early 1990s of German reunification and Soviet disintegration presented ethnic Germans in Kazakstan with an unprecedented opportunity to make the quantum leap from pariah status to western living standards. Under reunified Germany’s Basic Law, which defines citizenship by bloodline (jus sanguinis), not birthplace (jus soli), Kazakstan’s Germans were eligible for German passports and residency. The end of the Soviet system, meanwhile, provided for a full official rehabilitation of their reputation and lifted many bureaucratic obstacles to emigration. Presented with the stark choice of economic dislocation at home, compared with Germany’s comfortable living standards, ethnic Germans began leaving Kazakstan.
By 1997, estimates showed that about 700,000 of the 1 million Germans in Kazakstan had emigrated. The massive movement had a devastating effect on dozens of predominantly German settlements in Kazakstan. One such town was Novodolinka, about 80 miles southeast of Akmola, where the population was 90 percent German before the great migration got underway. Few Germans lived in Novodolinka in 1997, and many of those still there were waiting to leave. “In 1992, this was a great place to live, everything was orderly and there was plenty to eat,” said Natalia Jung, one of the would-be émigrés. “In only five years, our village has been totally destroyed.”
The flight of Kazakstan’s Germans helped stretch Germany’s social welfare system to the point where Bonn politicians felt the need to curb the number of newcomers. In 1995, the Federal Republic began requiring would-be immigrants to pass a German language test before they could receive a residency permit. Immigration procedures were also tightened to reduce the number of specious citizenship claimants. Complicating the determination mechanism was the high number of interethnic marriages involving ethnic Germans and Russians.
Administrative obstacles to emigration were accompanied by the provision of incentives to encourage Germans to stay. Bonn has provided DM 9.3 million (about $5.6 million) in aid to foster the revival of German culture in Kazakstan, according to Alexander Dederer, chairman of the Council of Germans in Kazakstan. Most of the money has been used to provide German-language schooling for children and language lessons for adults. Ethnic Germans can also obtain medicine free of charge from a clinic at the Deutsche Haus, a formidable edifice, in Almaty.
In addition, Kazakstan’s government, in sharp contrast to its reaction to the departure of Russians, has repeatedly and publicly appealed to the Germans to stay. For example, a resolution adopted on April 27, 1997 aimed at facilitating the revival of German culture in Kazakstan. Among the envisioned measures were the creation of a German cultural center, featuring a national theater and philharmonic orchestra, along with other assorted projects; an increase in cultural exchanges between Kazakstan and Germany; and higher education exchanges.
Despite the comparatively large amounts of attention and resources being lavished on the remaining ethnic Germans in Kazakstan, Alexander Dederer, chairman of the Council of Germans in Kazakstan, doubted that it was enough to stem their desire to leave. He said the tempo of the exodus had slowed, partially because word was filtering back that ethnic Germans are less and less welcome in Germany, but he added that the disastrous state of Kazakstan’s economy ensures a continued outflow. “The government has created a favorable atmosphere for Germans,” Dederer said, “but the situation dictates future action. The government has no money to implement their ideas regarding the German cultural revival, and its declarations will not be able to slow the tide of emigration.”
According to Andrei Rende, a leader of the German community in Akmola, Kazakstan’s authorities waited too long to offer the Germans enticements to stay. “It will be hard to stop the (emigration) process. Measures should have been implemented to stop it a long time ago,” Rende said. “Now there are many instances in which families are divided, with some in Germany and some in Kazakstan. These people want to reunite.”
An arrangement granting Germans cultural autonomy, perhaps including some form of a self-governing territorial zone, would have been a measure that might have induced some to stay, German community leaders said. Yet Kazakstan’s government balks at considering the establishment of any system operating outside its control, wary of setting a precedent that would prompt other national groups to agitate for similar rights. “The government is afraid of the word ‘autonomy,’” Rende said. Dederer, meanwhile, criticized the German government for providing aid primarily on an inter-governmental level, and not directly to German cultural organizations. Hopeful émigrés, interviewed at random, cited economic factors as the primary reason for their decision to leave. “My pension is not much, and sometimes the payment is delayed by several months,” explained Waldemar Liss, a retiree from Almaty.
Leaving has always been a time-consuming and bureaucratic process, taking
months to complete the paperwork required by both the German and Kazakstan’s
governments. Nevertheless, Dederer predicted that about half of the remaining
Germans in Kazakstan would ultimately emigrate, reducing the German community
in Kazakstan from its present 300,000 to 150,000. The ongoing exodus raises
doubts about the continued existence of the German community. Another few
decades, Dederer and others suggested, and Germans in Kazakstan may dwindle
to the point where they will become fully assimilated and lose their distinct
cultural identity.
Though forcibly uprooted, Chechens, Ingush, and Tatars in Kazakstan maintained a strong spiritual bond with their respective homelands and rushed to return once the opportunity presented itself starting in the late 1980s.
The repatriation of Tatars is examined in detail in a previous Forced Migration Projects special report (published in September 1996) and thus will not be discussed in detail here. Suffice it to say that tens of thousands of Tatars hastily departed Kazakstan for their Crimean homeland as soon as perestroika broke the last chains that had kept them tied to their place of internal exile.
The Chechen and Ingush peoples were dispatched into internal exile towards the end of the Second World War, after German forces had begun their retreat back to Berlin. Although the Nazis never occupied either of their homelands in the mountainous Transcaucasus region of southern Russia, Chechens and Ingush, along with other Caucasian ethnic groups, were subjected to Stalinist retribution to the fullest extent. After the death of the Soviet dictator, conditions eased for Chechens and Ingush, and in 1957 they received official permission to return home.
When Kazakstan gained independence, up to 75,000 Chechens and 20,000
Ingush resided in the Central Asian state. The Chechen and Ingush return
process continued in the early 1990s, driven not so much by economic consideration
as by an indelible cultural identification with their homeland. The savage
war in Chechnya halted repatriation, but only temporarily. During the height
of the fighting, several thousand people (between 6,000 and 18,000, according
to various estimates) from the war-torn region sought temporary refuge
with friends and relatives still in Kazakstan. But by 1997, most of the
displaced had returned, and repatriation of Chechens and Ingushis in Kazakstan
had resumed, said Sultan Ozdoyev, a leader of the Republican Chechen-Ingush
Center in Almaty. Only a lack of financial means was preventing the complete
disappearance of the Chechen and Ingush diasporas in Kazakstan. Few could
afford the substantial costs of moving in 1997, Ozdoyev said, adding that
“prices are set according to capitalist norms, while salaries are paid
according to socialist norms.”
In 1997, about 103,000 Koreans lived in Kazakstan, comprising about
six-tenths of a percent of the overall population, according to official
estimates. As opposed to other formerly deported peoples, Koreans have
not returned in significant numbers to their homeland, nor have they demonstrated
a strong desire to emigrate to their titular motherland, Korea. Georgy
Kan, head of the group Koreans of Kazakstan, estimated the number of Koreans
who had departed to be in the low hundreds.
The Koreans’ reluctance to relocate is due to a variety of reasons.
A return to Russia’s Far Eastern region held little attraction in the early
post-Soviet era, as conditions were perhaps even worse there than in Kazakstan.
The Far East’s frayed economy, featuring a chronic energy shortage, ensured
a less than friendly welcome for Koreans should they return. Emigration,
meanwhile, was never a realistic possibility because neither North nor
South Korea was willing to accept the Koreans of Kazakstan.
Like the Germans, Koreans live relatively comfortably in Kazakstan,
but have lost cultural contact with their ancestors, according to Herman
Kim, a scholar at the Institute of Oriental Studies in Almaty and leader
of the Association of Korean Studies in Kazakstan. “Of those under 60 years
old, practically no one can read or write in Korean,” Kim said. While unwilling
to accept ethnic Koreans, the two Korean states are providing aid to promote
a cultural revival among their ethnic kin. Most of the money is devoted
to language lessons. South Korea also provided resources for the publication
of a Korean-language newspaper. Their situation is such that Koreans are
essentially satisfied. “There is no real desire among Koreans to leave,”
Kan said. “Of all the former Soviet republics, the situation is most livable
for the Korean Diaspora in Kazakstan.”
Overall, more than 200,000 compatriots have returned since independence, and President Nursultan Nazarbayev has pressed the government to accommodate more arrivals. Kazakstan has held top-level talks with China, Mongolia, and Uzbekistan on easing repatriation procedures. The immigration pattern, combined with the outflow of Russian speakers, Germans, and others, has been a major factor in altering the demographic profile of the country. About sixty percent of the returnees so far have come from CIS states, Kulmanova said. Tens of thousands have also returned from Mongolia.
Though anxious to have them return, the government was not fully equipped
to welcome ethnic Kazak repatriates, officials claimed. More than three
thousand families lacked adequate housing, Kulmanova said, adding that
unemployment among returnees fostered discontent. Additionally, language
was a significant issue. Those coming from CIS states tended to know Russian,
but at best had only a poor knowledge of Kazak. Meanwhile, those arriving
from China and Mongolia spoke Kazak and virtually no Russian, something
that severely limited their job opportunities. The hardships proved so
difficult that some Kazak arrivals decided to leave Kazakstan and go back
to their countries of origin, asserted Yevgeny Zhovtis of the Kazakstan-American
Bureau on Human Rights and Rule of Law. Zhovtis and others said it was
difficult to estimate the number of those coming and going. “There is a
great need for accurate information. At the moment, we lack accurate information,”
said Valentina Sivryukova, the director of the Social Development Department
of the Ministry of Labor and Social Welfare.