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Paper abstract:

The following paper examines transforming national identity of Kazakhstani citizens after January unrest and war in Ukraine. Prior to this major political events in a country and within the region, there has been a common dichotomy between civic and ethnic national identity models in Kazakhstan. There was a three decade long ambiguous state policies of nation building, where there was no clear consensus between "Kazakhstani" and "Kazakh" identity. On the one hand, it was essential to preserve ethnic-centred ideas of state-forming (less preferably "titular") nation- Kazakhs. Namely, policies on promoting state language, ethnicizing names of cities and regions based on the interests' of ethnic majorities or repatriation were necessary. At the same time, there has been state vector of "Eurasianist" and even globalising trajectories of national identity, which were reflected in having Russian literature or language studied at schools or trilingual language policies where English has become pivotal as well.

Such janus-faced state strategies of nation building has developed vague perception of national identity of citizens of Kazakhstan. However, the resign of Nursultan Nazarbayev became a turning point in transforming political culture and participation, which can be treated as the beginning of changing national identity perceptions. Even more than that, January-2022 unrest has shown that national identity is getting even more uncertain in terms of its future models. Later on, Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 has also affected potential ways national identity would be changing on civic level.

The main argument of this paper is that the war in Ukraine has influenced the growing ethnic nationalism in the country. It can be seen through increasing demand on learning Kazakh language and even via state reforms. President Tokayev has announced the new set of reforms in March 2022, where new administrative-territorial division has been changed, where the names of new regions have significantly been ethnicized. What is important to observe and pay attention to, is how state might react to further growing ethnic sentiments of citizens and what kind of policies it might offer later.