For many years, Russians have called two countries the friendliest: Belarus and Kazakhstan. After the break with the West over Crimea, Russia defiantly decided to consider China as a friend, but everything is complicated with it. And with Belarus and Kazakhstan, everything seemed very simple. Respondents explain this: «They are more like us than anyone else (the rest of the former parts of the Union).» Whether Belarusians and Kazakhs think so is not important in this case. It is important that for many in Russia these were copies of it, perhaps even improved in some way. According to some, there, more than in our country, «Soviet life has been preserved.» According to others, there was “more stability” there, because those who rule there sit in their chairs longer than we do. Shouldn't we respect that! And in January, 74% of all Russians expressed a good attitude towards Kazakhstan, and even 80% of those who approve of the activities of our president.
But, as a sin, right now, when we have such tension around the question of whether the current rule will last forever or not, events have occurred in these countries — our twins — that have shaken these chairs in the strongest way. Well, they helped Lukashenka, and he sat down. And in Kazakhstan you will not understand what happened. Something obviously happened, but what?
The first version, which was put forward either there or here, sounded very familiar: it was a “provocation of foreign forces”.
It was accepted in Russia by 35%, it is the second most popular, however, among those who believe the most information from TV, it is the first.
Of course, at first the version was a little embarrassing: no one dared to take China under suspicion, neighbors in Central Asia did not count. And judging by the map, we, Russia, are the main foreign force for Kazakhstan. Are we being blamed? Or maybe it’s true, that’s what we need – to quietly remove the old one, put our own, but we want a security belt… When it was finally announced that this was all planned in Ukraine, supporters of the version of foreign interventions agreed: it’s clear that now everything is evil from Ukraine.
Police and protesters on the streets of Almaty, January 5, 2022. Photo: EastNews
The boring explanation of the events as a “struggle for power of various political groups in Kazakhstan” suited about a quarter of the respondents, but was especially warmly received in the capital, where rumors about the same struggle are most circulating among us.
The most popular explanation for the protests was this: «People have accumulated dissatisfaction with rising prices, deteriorating quality of life.» We do not know whether this was in fact the main reason for the events that took place in Kazakhstan (it is quite possible that there were several reasons). Our research tells us not about Kazakhstan, but about Russia. To put it in a foreign language, our research created for the Russian mass consciousness the possibility of projecting their own problems onto the imaginary reality of a neighboring country. And here is the result. The study unambiguously shows that it is the rise in prices and the deterioration in the quality of life that our people see as a reason to take to the streets and a reason to change the leadership of the country.