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Abstract

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 has been linked to distancing from Russian and a stronger embrace of Ukrainian. This paper asks whether a similar, if less pronounced, reorientation is emerging in Qazaqstan, a society shaped by imperial and Soviet linguistic hierarchies.

The paper draws on forty semi-structured, in-depth interviews with ethnic Qazaqs in Almaty conducted in the summer of 2023. The sample is stratified by age cohort (18 to 30 vs. 50+) and by primary language environment, with half of participants reporting predominantly Russian use in daily life and half reporting predominantly Qazaq use. We analyze answers to parallel prompts asking whether the war affected attitudes toward the Russian language and toward the Qazaq language, and how respondents justified stability or change.

Findings show limited change among Qazaq dominant participants, for whom Qazaq is consistently framed as a stable marker of identity and everyday practice. By contrast, many Russian dominant participants report some shift in their relationship to Qazaq after 2022. For some, the shift is largely symbolic, expressed as a stronger association between Qazaq and sovereignty, belonging, and cultural continuity. Others describe efforts to increase Qazaq use while grappling with practical barriers, including diminished fluency after long immersion in Russian speaking schools and workplaces. Across the sample, Russian often retains instrumental value for work and interethnic communication, and several respondents explicitly distinguish the language from the Russian state. Together, the interviews suggest that geopolitical shock can politicize language and reshape linguistic repertoires even outside the battlefield.