Following a raising of gas prices in Kazakhstan, especially the Mangystau region of western Kazakhstan where poor infrastructure and rising cost of food in comparison to cities such as Almaty and the capital Nur-Sultan have been building discontent, protests broke out. These protests were supposedly peaceful at first, however they soon progressed in vehemence and aggression to the point where the Kazakh president, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, requested Russian assistance in quelling the uproar, and issued a “shoot to kill without warning” order to the Kazakh security enforcers. In fact, this has been the deadliest uproar in Kazakhstan since declaring independence from the U.S.S.R. in 1991. According to Tokayev, the violence that occured in Kazakhstan, especially the anti-government attacks in the business capital of Almaty, was used by foreign terrorists and Islamist radicals as a smokescreen for an attempted coup de’etat of Tokayev and the Kazakh government. President Putin of Russia concurred with this statement, calling the situation a Russian triumph over a foreign-backed terrorist movement in Kazakhstan, and has made plans to withdraw from Kazakhstan within the next few days. So far, an estimated total of 10,000 individuals involved with the conflict have been taken into custody, and the reported number of deaths is at 164.
The sharp rift between Tokayev and his predecessor, Nursultan Nazarbayev, has also mirrored the opposing ideologies and viewpoints among the people of Kazakhstan; Tokayev believes that money from the rich should be more dispersed to other economic classes to close the massive gap in unequal income and put more financial responsibility on the wealthy. Nazarbayev, according to Tokayev, favored the businesses of his associates, friends, and family members in the economic system, leaving all other citizens at a disadvantage, and was responsible for the concentration of wealth to an exclusive elite that created the unbalanced economic state of Kazakhstan today. Nazarbayev was elected by the Supreme Soviet in 1990 and became the first president of the Republic of Kazakhstan when it declared independence. There is a large slavic population in Kazakhstan, however, most of them live in cities as the settlement of the traditionally nomadic Kazakhs and rapid industrialization of Kazakhstan were orchestrated by the soviets. As a result, most ethinic Kazakhs live in rural areas and there are more people of slavic ethnicity than Kazakh in urban areas. To me, it seems that potential for a domestic conflict such as this has been piling up for some time as there is a marked difference between the quality of life in Kazakhstan’s countryside and cities, and most money is focused on development and business in the cities. This essentially divides lifestyles as well where traditional Kazakh culture is still practiced in rural areas and modern life prevails in urban areas. Many current disputes in former-Soviet states, such as in Moldova and contested region of Transnistria or the seperatist conflict in Eastern Ukraine, can be attributed to the plan of the Soviet Union to relocate ethnic Russians to the territories it had taken over, and Kazakhstan is seeing the effect of its own split population. Considering one of the greatest factors in the recent history of Central Asia has been the Soviet Union, the riots in Kazakhstan could be an indicator of the state of division within the countries of the rest of the region.
In connection to International Relations, the Soviet Union has demonstrated how long-lasting and widespread the effects inflicted by cultural power can be. Despite decades having passed since the fall of the Soviet Union, the ties between its former members are still making major impacts on their present domestic and international affairs just through the spread of Russians and the culture that they brought along with them. There is also not a very easy way to combat such a power or reverse its effects because of how deeply culture is integrated into a country once it has already begun to percolate.