The ABCs Of Kazakh Politics: Repercussions From 600-Year-Long Antagonism Are Being Felt Even In Kazakhstan’s Sport – Analysis

In a broadcast by the German radio station Deutsche Welle, Roman Vassilenko, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Kazakhstan, answering a journalist’s question about the situation concerning separatism in the northern regions of his country, said that any calls for violating Kazakhstan’s constitutional order and territoriality were a criminal offense. “If they were, they were stopped [by the Kazakh authorities]”, he added.

What’s true is true. The fact that the authorities in Kazakhstan began actively persecuting those calls for violating the integrity of the State almost immediately after the republic had gained sovereignty is being confirmed by different observers. And that’s still ongoing. Here is just the most recent news story on the subject.

What’s noteworthy here is that the notion of constitutional order, Roman Vassilenko refers to, also includes the principle of prohibition of discrimination on the grounds of origin, race, nationality etc  [referred to in Article 14 of Constitution of the Republic of Kazakhstan].

In both cases specific penalties are provided for the commission of those offenses. Article 174 of the Criminal Code of the Republic of Kazakhstan states that “propaganda of exclusivity, superiority or inferiority of citizens on the basis of their attitude to… tribal… affiliation, if these acts were committed in public or through the use of mass media… are punishable by a fine in the amount of two thousand to seven thousand monthly calculation indices or by restriction of liberty for a period of two to seven years, or imprisonment for the same period”.

Its Article 180 stipulates that “propaganda or public calls for violation of unitarity and integrity of the Republic of Kazakhstan… shall be punished by the fine in the amount of one thousand to five thousand monthly calculation indices or restriction of liberty for the term of up to seven years, or imprisonment for the same term”.

In  Kazakhstan, the relevant requirements of the law has been and is being scrupulously observed in the cases of calls for violation of integrity of the State, which obviously can not be said about the events of “propaganda of exclusivity, superiority or inferiority of citizens on the basis of their attitude to… tribal… affiliation”.

The following are a couple of examples that are real-life. Here’s what Nurbulat Masanov, a professor of history, in his work entitled ‘THE ROLE OF CLANS IN KAZAKHSTAN TODAY’ and published by  the Jamestown Foundation (a DC-based information platform providing of non-partisan global research analysis on Eurasian security and political developments), said in this regard: “The clan [tribe] factor underlies the legitimacy of an individual’s claim to this or that public post… It is the clan [tribe] factor that largely defines the extent of an official’s authority, his power, how high he is likely to move in government service, the bounds of his social space, and the length of time he stays in power… The latter [the Junior Zhuz members] are not, in the eyes of public opinion, legitimate contenders for power and cannot, therefore, play an independent role in political life”. Based on the above, he found that “officials from the Junior Zhuz… are illegitimate in the eyes of society, for appointment to key government posts”.

These scientific-sounding claims, stated at the international level, are decidedly the case with “propaganda of inferiority of citizens on the basis of their attitude to… tribal… affiliation”. They have never been formally denied by Astana officials. Must their silence be taken as tacit approval?

Here is another example, the one from an article entitled ‘Clan war in the Kazakh Steppes’ and published by the French daily newspaper Le Figaro: “For all Kazakhs, political life is nothing more than the internal struggle of hordes [Zhuzes] and clans [tribes]. ‘I can never be the President of the Republic [because] I belong to the Junior Zhuz’, the young minister said confidentially” (François HAUTER ‘Guerre de clan dans les steppes kazakhes’, mardi 21 septembre 2004, page 4). 

This almost official-sounding claim, similarly stated at the international level, should have been at least commented on by the Kazakh President as the guarantor of the Constitution and that young minister’s fellow ministers in the Government of Kazakhstan. But this also failed to happen. 

By having ignored those anti-constitutional and unlawful claims, the Kazakh officials kind of sent the message that there was nothing wrong with those claims.

The reality in Kazakhstan’s socio-political life is that the elites of the Senior and Middle Zhuz are clearly convinced that only they have the right to challenge each other for the right to [supreme] power in the country, and they, based on this understanding, enter into tactical rivalry with each other. But in strategic terms, that is, in terms of promoting the idea of completely rejecting representatives of Western Kazakhstan as possible contenders for any key positions of power or reducing them to the status of citizens lacking full rights in the country, they were and, one must assume, remain completely unanimous.

This was illustrated and expressed in a very clear way by the historian Nurbulat Masanov, a representative of the Middle Zhuz, who claimed that the representatives of the Junior Zhuz “are not, in the eyes of public opinion, legitimate contenders for power and cannot, therefore, play an independent role in political life”. By public opinion, which allegedly almost on legal bases, does not perceive the Alshyns or natives of Western Kazakhstan as legitimate contenders for power, he apparently meant the consolidated opinion of the Senior and Middle Zhuz. Of course, it cannot be anything else.

In the post-Soviet era, this kind of attitude towards the Junior Zhuz people permeated the entire Kazakh society outside Western Kazakhstan. Berik Alshynbaev, in an article entitled “We are not Kazakhs, we are Alshyns” and published back in 2007, said: “Now even in schools that teach in Russian, ethnic Kazakh teachers of humanities often reiterate to schoolchildren that it was the Junior Zhuz people who betrayed us at one time”.

Such a wording as a justification for the covert campaign to alienate the Alshyns or the natives of Western Kazakhstan from the main mass of Kazakhs looks, of course, like just a far-fetched pretext.

The main reason that acts as the motive force behind that campaign is, in all likelihood, the Senior and Middle Zhuz elites’ awareness of being the bearers and continuers of the traditions of Chinghisism [the traditions of statehood and law based on Chinghisid norms], and their way of seeing the Alshyns or natives of Western Kazakhstan as the bearers and continuers of the traditions of Edigeism [i.e. the traditions of statehood and law alternative, or even antagonistic to Chinghisism and based on faith to extraordinary charisma of Edige-bi, who lived 600 years ago, and his heirs].

The goals of such an undeclared, but clearly and progressively implemented course seem to be superseding the West Kazakhs’ own historical, political and cultural values from their collective memory through foisting on their analogues from the Middle and Senior Zhuz instead, imposing them the traditional heroes of the Middle Zhuz and the Senior Zhuz instead of their own heroes, and preventing them from developing new heroes of their own.

Let’s try to show how this was done and is being done in Kazakhstan, using facts and examples from a field of activity where everything is in plain sight. So, it’s about the facts and examples from sports of the highest achievements.

In the comments column to the article published on the nur.kz  website entitled “The Kazakhstan national team has finished its performance at the 2024 Olympics and repeated the anti-record for the number of medals”, there are the following opinions from a reader with the nickname Paryz, “This is the result of CORRUPTION, regional loyalties, patronage”, and from a reader with the nickname rene, “Corruption, nepotism, and the regional loyalties are what Kazakhstan needs to get rid of, and not just in sports, but everywhere”. Here is a comment from a reader with the nickname Quarterback to the article published also there under the title “We could have achieved more”: “But we are ahead of the rest of the world regarding corruption. Look what the corrupt officials did, They sent only the boxers from Southern Kazakhstan [to the Olympics]. Was not there anyone [suitable for the national boxing team] from Karaganda, Western Kazakhstan?”. Another group of readers, while commenting on the topic, compares the situation with Kazakhstani sports with the situation in Kazakhstani society and the state, stating that the state of sports in Kazakhstan is a mirror image of what is happening in Kazakh society. 

So, some in Kazakhstan are inclined to see Kazakhstan’s poor performance at the recent Olympic Games in Paris, as well as at the previous Tokyo Olympics in 2021, as the result of not only corruption but also “regional loyalties, patronage and nepotism”. Here, from among the four alleged causes of Kazakhstan’s poor performance at the Olympics, the last three draw attention to themselves as looking to be not quite appropriate.

The question arises: how can “regional loyalties, patronage, and nepotism” influence athletic performance, based on which athletes are selected for the Olympic Games? And what is the point of providing a parochialist, patronizing, or nepotistic protection to this or that athlete so that he or she goes to the Olympics from a country, and not another or others who are stronger than him or her, if at the Games his or her chances of winning or at least getting a good result will objectively be less than those of his or her competitor or competitors left at home?! But, be that as it may, some Kazakhstani observers note “regional loyalties, patronage, and nepotism” as a stone that drags down the country’s achievements in developing the high-performance sport.

This may puzzle many abroad, but not in Kazakhstan itself. After all, no matter what resources those who organize and conduct sports competitions have, they rarely, if ever, succeed in pushing the weaker contestant into the winner status and making the stronger one vanquished. Otherwise,  the very meaning of sports is lost. Indeed, not for nothing that they say: “The strongest wins in sports”.

The strongest athletes, as a rule, are selected from their countries to participate in the Olympics and other prestigious international competitions – this is the most common thing in the vast majority of other countries. That’s why it may be difficult or even impossible for them to understand why some in Kazakhstan may associate the national team’s poor performance at the Paris Olympics with such phenomena, as regionalism, patronage, and nepotism.

To understand what could be the explanation for the above-described state of affairs, which seems illogical at first glance, it is necessary, apparently, first of all, to try to understand what modern Kazakh society is like. The Kazakhs were historically divided into three Hordes (Zhuzes), the Junior Zhuz, the Middle Zhuz, and the Senior Zhuz and they existed separately from each other. They began to interact more with each other during the Soviet era and especially in the post-Soviet period since their republic – first as a union republic within the USSR, and then as an independent State – was being administered [and continues to be administered] from a single center.

It was only after about 2006 that Alzhan Zharmukhamedov, a basketball player who had won the Munich Olympics as part of the USSR national basketball team in 1972, began to be called the first Olympic champion from among ethnic Kazakhs. And before that – that is, from 1980 to the mid-2000s – Zhaksylyk Ushkempirov, a Greco-Roman wrestler who had won the title of champion at the Moscow Olympics in 1980, was considered to be the first ethnic Kazakh person to win the Olympiads.

During the interview with Realnoye Vremya, a Russian online newspaper, in May 2019, an interviewer told Alzhan Zharmukhamedov: “For a long time, Ushkempirov had been considered the first [ethnic] Kazakh to become an Olympic champion. That was that until sports historians found you”. And to which he replied: “Here’s the story. My father is Kazakh, my mother is Russian, but I always considered myself a representative of the Kazakh people. So it was written down in my Soviet passport, too, where the fifth column indicated my ethnicity”.

In the described case, the Russian journalist was merely repeating a narrative now accepted in Kazakhstan, that is meant to explain why Kazakhstan did not know that it was Alzhan Zharmukhamedov, and not Zhaksylyk Ushkempirov, who was the first [ethnic] Kazakh to win at the Olympics. Like, this fact had remained unknown to the Kazakh public until sports historians made it public.

But in reality, this fact was made widely available to the public by the Soviet central sports outlets back in September 1972. Anyone who has any doubts about the veracity of that claim is free to find the September issue of Physical Culture and Sports, a Soviet magazine, for that same year, and make sure that it was then that the first Olympic champions appeared among such Soviet ethnic groups as the Kazakhs and Yakuts (Roman Dmitriyev, a freestyle wrestler). The fact that Alzhan Zharmukhamedov was an ethnic Kazakh was more than well known to Kazakh sports functionaries and journalists long before the Munich Olympics. Twice back in the 1960s, he, as Wikipedia testifies, “tried to move to Burevestnik Almaty [a Kazakhstani club]”, but each time he was returned to Tashkent, it was “a dispute between the two republics over a talented basketball player”. The Kazakh club was claiming him as he was an ethnic Kazakh, while the Uzbek club, as he was an Uzbek native.

That is, the fact that Alzhan Zharmukhamedov was an ethnic Kazakh had not initially been a secret to all those in Kazakhstan who possessed the capacity publicly pronounce him to be the first Olympic champion in the history of ethnic Kazakhs back in 1972 or at least a little later. It’s all about Kazakh sports journalists, functionaries, and public and political figures who lived and worked in the then-capital of the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic, Alma-Ata, throughout the 1970s and the 1980s. He was born in 1944 in the Bostandyk district of Kazakhstan (which was transferred to Uzbekistan in 1956) into a family where “everyone spoke Kazakh”, and grew up in an environment that was mostly Kazakh, having received, in his own words, a “Kazakh upbringing”.

But the Soviet-era Kazakh media which seemingly had always been very attentive to any significant successes by ethnic Kazakhs in pan-Soviet and international arenas, virtually ignored Zharmukhamedov’s achievements. 

At one time this author, as a person with an interest in sporting topics, long could not understand the reason for such an attitude towards him on the part of those who personified Kazakhstan and Kazakh society at the public level. Then it seemed to him it could be explained by some misunderstanding. Therefore, in the fall of 1988, while on journalistic business in Uzbekistan, I seized this opportunity to visit the Bostanlyk district and talk with people who had known Alzhan Zharmukhamedov and his relatives since childhood. They stunned me by saying: “You are not the first journalist from Kazakhstan who inquires about his origins. There were others before you. They were saying: “The general Kazakh public’s unawareness of the fact that he is an ethnic Kazakh is a really big gap. We should write about this in the papers. It should also be said on television”. And returning to Almaty, they didn’t write and say anything about it in the newspapers and on television”.

When asked, “How can such silence be explained?”, they directly and sincerely replied: “The whole reason for this, of course, is simply that Alzhan Zharmukhamedov was born into a family of a representative of the Zhappas tribe of the Junior Zhuz, and not of some tribe of the Senior or even the Middle Zhuz. If it were otherwise, Kazakh newspapers, television and radio would glorify the name of Alzhan Zharmukhamedov day and night. While in the case in hand, there is no reason for those who make decisions in Almaty to popularize him as a Kazakh hero”. The most amazing thing is that those who said all this were themselves representatives of such tribes of the Senior Zhuz as Kanly and Sirgeli.

This author received confirmation of what they had then said in the fall of 1995 when he briefly worked as the editor-in-chief of the then-newly created Khabar TV channel. Before that, I had managed to write and publish articles in the Kazakh press on numerous occasions, which were something like a journalistic investigation on the topic “Who is the first Kazakh Olympic champion?” and were meant to prove that the legendary basketball player was the one to be considered as such.

While working for the Khabar TV, I suggested to one sports journalist to prepare a TV story on that same topic. He refused, saying that this would not be forgiven “either me or you”. According to him, he once tried to present Alzhan Zharmukhamedov to TV viewers as the first Kazakh Olympic champion, having prepared a relevant video story and called this basketball player – just in case – a representative of the Sirgeli tribe of the Senior Zhuz. That video story was put on a distant shelf and never broadcast on TV. That journalist, according to him, later had had some problems at work, which he was inclined to associate with the said video story.

After leaving the Khabar TV, this author resumed publishing materials in Kazakhstan’s Kazakh-language and Russian-language newspapers, articles meant to prove Alzhan Zharmukhamedov the first to become Olympic champion from the Kazakh people. And I was doing this from time to time for years. Until the mid-2000s, this had no effect on the Kazakh press and, accordingly, Kazakh public opinion. Just as before, it was commonplace to claim in the press, and TV channels, thus, everywhere that Zhaksylyk Ushkempirov, a representative of the Dulat tribe of the Senior Zhuz, became the first Olympic champion as a representative of the Kazakh people.

This practice would have continued indefinitely, if not for the role of the Internet in the transboundary dissemination of information which had grown hugely by the mid-2000s. As Alzhan Zharmukhamedov was since the Soviet era widely known as a member of the Soviet legendary crew that had defeated Team USA at the 1972 Olympic final and captured their first Olympic gold in basketball, publications about him in Kazakhstan showing proof of his being the first Kazakh to become an Olympic champion, could not go unnoticed in Russia and other post-Soviet countries. After all, anyone did not, and could not, refute this view in public. No wonder that from then on, the Russian-language press in Russia, Uzbekistan, and other post-Soviet countries, while talking about the victory of the USSR basketball team at the Olympics in Munich (and this was and remains a fairly popular topic in the Russian-speaking world) and about Alzhan Zharmukhamedov, along with other players of that team, has taken it a habit to cite – as additional information – the fact that he there became the first ethnic Kazakh Olympic champion. It was a fact which was impossible to deny. And then, only then the Kazakh media had nothing else to do but begin to assert the same thing. 

Yet obviously, the recognition of Zhaksylyk Ushkempirov, and not Alzhan Zharmukhamedov, as the first ethnic Kazakh Olympic champion by the State of the Republic of Kazakhstan remains intact. In 2020, the Jekpe-Jek sports complex in Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan, was renamed the Zhaksylyk Ushkempirov Martial Arts Palace. The country also has some large sports facilities named after the legendary Kazakh wrestlers of the Senior Zhuz and the Middle Zhuz, who became famous during the Tsarist period and those Kazakhstani sportsmen and sportswomen, who got Olympic gold medals in the post-Soviet period. These are, for example, Baluan Sholak Sports Palace in Almaty, Kazhymukan Munaitpasov Stadium in Shymkent, and Olga Rypakova Athletics Center in Oskemen. And there is, as far as this author knows, absolutely nothing in Kazakhstan that bears the name of Alzhan Zharmukhamedov. During the famous basketball player’s lifetime, he was awarded the title of honorary professor of the Kazakh Academy of Sports and Tourism in Almaty.  That’s all the whole range of official honors he received from the country of Kazakhs, who had eventually acknowledged him as their first Olympic champion. The question only is if they really admit him as such. The answer seems to be negative here. It’s not that surprising when you consider the fact that he was not acknowledged in Kazakhstan as the first ethnic Kazakh to win the Olympics for a very long time. 

On 23 August 2011, Maxut Zhumayev, a member of the Baibakty tribe of the Junior Zhuz, in tandem with Vasily Pivtsov, climbed the K2 peak, and thus completed his mission of climbing the world’s 14 highest mountains with no use of canned oxygen. 13 out of his fourteen 8,000’ers, he summited at the first attempt. The fourteenth turned out to be the most difficult one to conquer. During their 14×8,000’ers quest, carried out between 2001 and 2011, Zhumayev and Pivtsov were only defeated (five and six times respectively) by K2. Finally, they summited it from the difficult north ridge on 23 August 2011. Thus, Maxut Zhumayev became the 26th 14×8,000’er summiteer and the 12th to have climbed all 14 of the world’s highest peaks without supplemental oxygen.

It would have seemed that Maxut Zhumayev thus deserved the right to be called the Kazakh people’s national hero number one and to be dubbed “the Kazakh Reinhold Messner”. Recently he gave this account: “There was at one time a talk about me, ‘Zhumayev is in the mountaineering team [of Kazakhstan] only just due to the fact that he is [an ethnic] Kazakh, they say, there should be at least one [representative of the Kazakh ethnicity] in the team, that is why he was taken to the team’. But through hard work, I have proved that I got this place for a reason”. That is, at that time, there were no ethnic Kazakhs in the mountaineering team of Kazakhstan, except him. In his quest to prove his ability as a Kazakh through action, Maxut Zhumayev summited all 14 of the world’s highest peaks. But his achievement did not attract much attention at the official level in Kazakhstan. The Kazakh media also reacted rather sluggishly to this achievement by an ethnic Kazakh. There were mostly news reports concerning it in there, and no excitement about the fact that he had become the first ethnic Kazakh to climb all 14 eight-thousander peaks.

The President of Kazakhstan, who was usually granting audiences, as tokens of appreciation, to winners and laureates of major international sports competitions, musical contests and film festivals, and the Kazakh executive authorities, which were usually awarding such individuals with orders and medals on the spot, seemed to remain deaf to what Maxut Zhumayev had achieved. As if it was not about an ethnic Kazakh or a Kazakhstani citizen, but about some foreigner. 

It was expected that Maxut Zhumayev and Vasily Pivtsov should be awarded the Orders of Kurmet, the highest state award in Kazakhstan. But Vasily Pivtsov had already been awarded that Order in 2007. So, there seemed to be no hurry to do Maxut Zhumayev the same honor. Almost two months later, on October 13, 2011, Kazakh MP Nurlan Abdirov addressed the Prime Minister directly with a request to nominate Maksut Zhumayev for a high state award. Two months later, the latter was awarded the Order of Kurmet.

And the President of Kazakhstan – then this was Nursultan Nazarbayev – who had previously granted audiences to many of Kazakhstan’s celebrities and personally thanked them for their work for the glory of Kazakhstan, didn’t cease ignoring Maksut Zhumayev until they were introduced to each other by the President of Austria Heinz Fischer in Vienna. This happened during the official ceremony of receiving N.Nazarbayev by the head of the Republic of Austria in the Hofburg Palace, already 14 months after Zhumayev’s ascent to the KA-2, namely in October 2012. Fischer said to the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan, pointing to the Kazakh mountaineer who was also there: “There stands your climber, who raised the flags of our countries on the highest point of Austria”. Maxut Zhumayev approached them and met N.Nazarbayev. “That was my first close encounter with our President”, the mountaineer said lately. Just think: the most outstanding Kazakh hero in the 21st century was first introduced to the Kazakh President by the President of Austria. For many people outside of Kazakhstan, this story probably seems to be incredible, but not for the Kazakhs themselves. The blatant disdain shown by those in power towards even the most prominent representatives of that group of the country’s population whose members, as history professor Nurbolat Masanov asserted in his work “The Role of Clans in Modern Kazakhstan”, “are not, in the eyes of public opinion, legitimate contenders for power and cannot, therefore, play an independent role in political life” is the most common thing in the Kazakh socio-political life. 

The above is now a story from when N.Nazarbayev was in power, but it is still relevant today. And it can in no way be called instructive, as the above-described pattern of attitude has been replaced by the deliberate ignoring of the achievements of even the most outstanding athletes from the Junior Zhuz and the coverage of their sports path in an openly unfriendly manner. Here’s probably nothing you can do about it. As the Russians say, you can’t force someone to like you. But it’s certainly worth talking about.

In the quarterfinals of the boxing tournament at the 2012 Olympics, a representative of the Tabyn tribe of the Junior Zhuz, Adilbek Niyazymbetov, who had been earlier entrusted to carry the flag of the Republic of Kazakhstan at the opening of these Games, had a difficult fight with the Iranian Ehsan Ruzbahani and won on points. In the comments by Kazakh fans to the reports about this fight on Kazakhstani websites, there were many claims that the judges had treated the Iranian unfairly and that the victory should have been given to him, not to Adilbek Niyazymbetov. When reading them, one would get the impression that the majority of Kazakhs wanted Ehsan Ruzbahani to win over his Kazakh opponent. Many extremely negative, even offensive things was said about the latter by his compatriots. For example, a commentator under the nickname ‘team kazakhstan’ wrote the following: “SERIK SAPIEV SHOULD HAVE BEEN ENTRUSTED TO CARRY THE FLAG [OF THE REPUBLIC OF KAZAKHSTAN AT THE OPENING CEREMONY OF THESE GAMES]!!! [INSTEAD] THEY FOUND SOME UNKNOWN CHUKCHA!!!”. What should be noted here is that, first, this commentator was rooting for another Kazakh boxer at this Olympics, Serik Sapiyev, a representative of the Argyn tribe of the Middle Zhuz, and at the same time, he was passionately rooting against Adilbek Niyazymbetov. He spoke with admiration about the first one and with contempt about the latter, calling him “some Chukcha”. Did there occur a fact of insult? Here, I won’t be telling my side – instead, I am just going to refer to a similar incident that happened in Kazakhstan as recently as February 2024, when a Russian coach addressed a Kazakh referee using the same word that ‘team kazakhstan’, a passionate fan of Serik Sapiyev, called Adilbek Niyazymbetov in 2012, and how was this heard in Kazakhstan. Here are some headlines which themselves already say a lot: “A Chukcha!” – the Russian Embassy reacted to the insult to a Kazakh referee”, “[Russian coach] stigmatized Kazakh referee as a ‘Chukcha’: The Kazakh Foreign Ministry commented on the scandal”, “Russian coach insulted a referee from Kazakhstan: the reaction of the Russian Federation Embassy”, “Coach called Kazakh referee a ‘Chukcha’. Russian embassy reacted to insults”. It is implied that this is not just a banal insult, but one with racist overtones. “In one episode, [a Russian] specialist insulted [a Kazakh] referee, allegedly hinting at his racial characteristics”, one report said.

It turns out that in the above-described case, the Middle Zhuz boxer Serik Sapiyev’s fan, who contemptuously stigmatized the Junior Zhuz boxer Adilbek Niyazymbetov as ‘some Chukcha’, spoke from a position of racial superiority, imagining himself to be a ‘white man’ unlike this boxer, who represented the Mangistau region of Western Kazakhstan. Another fan in the same comment column, nicknamed Ereke797 from Karaganda, said: “Only Serik [Sapiyev] deserves gold”. Apparently, some of those Kazakhs who wanted the Middle Zhuz boxer from Karaganda, Serik Sapiyev, to win at the London Olympics were disgusted by the very idea that the Junior Zhuz boxer from the Mangystau region, Adilbek Niyazymbetov, could also claim gold at the 2012 Games. But these two athletes from Kazakhstan were not even potential rivals, since they competed in different weight categories. Is it possible to have such a situation in any other country, when its sports fans, passionately rooting for one of their athletes, would just as passionately root against another athlete, who is competing for the same country?! It is very difficult, even impossible to picture such an example existing outside of Kazakhstan. So it is no surprise to see the wonder of a reader under the nickname ‘aktau27’, representing, as one can assume, the Mangystau region, who left the following comment in the same comments column: “It’s embarrassing to read the comments here. Instead of rejoicing at Adilbek’s win, they sit at the computers and type comments, stooping him low as much as they can. Yes, he may not have won by a huge margin, but he did win and earned another medal for Kazakhstan”. But his words were falling on deaf ears.

From here it is clear how far the attitude of above-described kind towards the representatives of the Junior Zhuz had already gone on the part of the representatives of not only the Senior Zhuz, but also the Middle Zhuz. That situation, as far as can be judged, continues to develop in the same destructive spirit to this day. I will illustrate this point with another example.

In early 2022 Nuraly Alip, a 22-year-old defender of Kairat Almaty, was transferred to Zenit Sankt Petersburg, Russia’s highest-ranked football club and the 2008 UEFA Super Cup winner, on a loan deal including an option for Zenit to buy at the end of that year. While this rental period was in progress, the Kazakh media, referring to some Russian sources, covered the young Kazakh’s stay at the St. Petersburg club so critically that it was hard to believe he would remain there. It should be recalled that one well-known football expert when asked what he could tell about Nurali Alip’s performance at Zenit began his answer by saying that he had seen a lot of information on that football player in the press, but mainly with negative connotations. Yet as the loan expired, it was revealed that the Russian club was quite taken with the young Kazakh’s performance, as may be seen from the following statement by its Director General Alexander Medvedev: “During two loan periods, Alip has proven himself to be a professional. We have a few left-footed center-backs. A young, talented player of the Kazakhstan national team. When he comes on the field, he does everything and more”. And at the end of 2022, the Russian club signed a full contract with him until 2025. It would seem that this was wonderful news for Kazakh football. Shortly after that, there was a flashy headline in some Kazakh media outlets, “Zenit fans are outraged by the signing of a contract with Nurali Alip”. In fact, as it turned out, it was only about one particular Zenit fan who posted a comment on his Telegram channel entitled “Using of the option to buy out the contract of Alip. My opinion”. He said that he himself had a negative personal attitude towards signing a contract with the Kazakh footballer, while “some colleagues on other Telegram channels assessed this transfer positively”. His comment represents an attempt to dispute the arguments by those Zenit fans who “assessed this transfer positively”. No outrage,  especially a general one, is seen at all. 

Almost two years on, in early May 2024, there were the headlines as follows: “It is needed to put for a transfer. It is time to say goodbye to him [to Alip]” (April 4, 2024), “Zenit fans demand that Nuraly Alip be sent home” (May 6, 2024). At that time, it seemed: “It is time for him to get packing”.

But a few months had gone by, and on August 7, 2024, the Zenit football club announced a contract extension with the Kazakh center-back Nuraly Alip to the end of the 2027/28 season. The official statement reads as follows: “As part of the blue-white-blues [the colors of the Zenit club] Alip played 64 matches, scoring one goal – in the final of the National Cup against Baltika. Along with Zenit, the center-back became the champion of Russia three times and won the Cup and three Super Cups of the country. The Zenit football club congratulates Nuraly Alip on the extension of his contract and wishes him new successes and victories while being together with the club!”.

This 24-year-old guy has already achieved results that no other ethnic Kazakh football player has achieved before him. Neither in Soviet nor post-Soviet times has any Kazakh played for such a long time for an elite club of any major European football powerhouse. During the Soviet era, a small number of ethnic Kazakhs were permanently playing for Kairat Almaty, which participated in the top league of the USSR championship and never went there upper than 7th place. By the way,  for quite a long period starting from 1982, in this club, which represented Kazakhstan in the elite division of Soviet football, there was not a single Kazakh who would have been regularly coming in the first team. In the post-Soviet era, just a few ethnic Kazakhs played for ordinary clubs in the Russian Premier League, but without much success.

So Nuraly Alip has already made history, no matter whether someone likes it or not. If he had been a representative of the Senior or Middle Zhuz, the Kazakh media would have found plenty of reasons to praise and glorify him almost every day and present him to the public as an unsurpassed hero of the entire Kazakh people. But, alas, this is not the case. So there is nothing to add.