Nursultan and Kazakhstan

At the beginning of his professional career - and at the beginning of the stay of Nursultan Nazarbayev in power in Kazakhstan - I wrote about the new leader of one of the most important Soviet republics an article entitled "Nursultan of Kazakhstan." Nursultan Abishevich, by the way, did not really like this title, and in one of the interviews he assured that he was not a sultan, but a democratically elected leader and reformer.

The Kazakhstani ruler remains a large reformer to this day. The last reform is a willingness to share powers with the parliament and government of the country. Astana claims that Nazarbayev thought about these changes after the death of his bosom friend and rival Islam Karimov. Several languid days, when it was decided whether the Uzbek elite would find a strong heir to the lifestyle of the president or the country will slide into the Nightmare of clan string, in the Kazakhstani case may be fatal. At the same time, Nazarbayev does not have the same obvious successor in the same way as Karimov did not have him. Immortal successors do not have, and why they still leave us is a political misunderstanding.

After the death of the Uzbek ruler, it becomes obvious that he was not so much built by a new modern state as he mocked the old Soviet Republic, renaming the position of first secretary into the post of lifelong president and getting rid of the Kremlin curators - and even then not to the end. In such a country, it is very easy to be a reformer. The new President Shavkat Mirziyoyev offers compatriots to cancel the visiting visas preserved since Soviet times - and already looks almost liberal.

Nazarbayev is still more difficult. He dismantled the former Soviet Republic, but did not build a new state. In this sense, Kazakhstan is Nazarbayev to a greater extent than Uzbekistan - these are Karimov. Uzbekistan is the Soviet National Republic, which has changed the ruler. Kazakhstan is a community of people united around the ruler. That is why the most unpleasant question that can be asked by a resident of Kazakhstan is what will happen after Nazarbayev?

And after the death of Karimov, apparently, this question was asked by the Kazakhstan Nursultan himself. And I found a simple answer - to be a lifelong president is no longer enough. You need to become a god. Let the courtiers are engaged in current affairs, and God will only sometimes condescend to compatriots from the tops of the AK-Horde. And there will be no panic in the case of the death of God. Firstly, because the gods do not die. And secondly, because it will be clear who is governing the country.

I don’t know how it will turn out with Nazarbayev, who never trusted anyone - neither fellow citizens, nor associates, nor relatives, nor himself. But the willingness to share power does not cancel the most important problem of Kazakhstan. He still cannot cease to be a community of people united around the ruler with this generosity.

It is important that the ruler has changed or stops carrying out total control over the country. It is important that the inhabitants of Kazakhstan feel like citizens on whom something in this country depends. Otherwise, it is not very important what the territory assigned to the feudal lord is called - Kazakhstan, Russia or Belarus - and who believes in this territory in his own immortality.