The cennetnauts of the starry steppes
Business and Economics, Kazakhstan3 Comments
Editor’s note: To commemorate the coming new year, neweurasia is looking heavenward to gaze into Central Asia’s past, present, and future. Averroes, having explored Turkmenistan’s space ambitions, now turns to Kazakhstan. “At least Turkmenistan has the right idea about outer space,” he writes, “In seeking to commercialize outer space, will Kazakhstan commercialize the Kazakh soul?”
In my last post I essentially described Turkmenistan as a country not quite with both feet on earth yet making it into outer space. The same cannot be said of Kazakhstan, which of course is not only home to the Baikonur launch facility, but also has many of its own mighty space ambitions. This is a country that has its feet planted firmly on terra firma — perhaps too firmly.
Say hello to Talgat Mussabayev, 
Kazakhstan’s premier cosmonaut. A National Hero of the Republic of Kazakhstan and Hero of the Russian Federation, he is also chairman of the Kazakh space agency. Perhaps most noteworthy of all, as Kazakhstan’s ambassador to the UAE noted, Mussabayev is also the first person to bring a copy of the Koran into Earth’s orbit. He is more than a cosmonaut; he’s a cennetnaut.
A recent episode of “Cosmos.kz”, a television show on Kazakhstan’s CTB channel that covers the space industry, puts it well:
From time immemorial mankind strived to get inside space environment. Besides the eternal hunger for knowledge people have been motivated lately by the need of using possibilities that space research give for the benefit of the society and economy as a whole. Each country has its own way to resolve this task.
A few years ago the fledgling independent Kazakhstan started to take its first steps towards this direction. However, prior to resolving this task it was necessary to consolidate what had already been working at that time and contributed to the development of the country — the space science of Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan has always been highly ranked among other former USSR republics in sphere of outer space research.
Kazakhstan has certainly consolidated upon its position as heir to a the large network of Soviet era institutes and academic towns throughout its territory. But Nazarbayev isn’t slouching around, as this report from the Kazakh space industry elucidates. Kazakhstan has set the following goals for itself by 2020:
- creation and development of target space systems;
- creation and development of ground space infrastructure;
- development of scientific and scientific-technological base of space activities in the Republic of Kazakhstan;
- realization of target projects in the area of application of space systems and technologies;
- training of specialists for space branch;
- creation of legal framework of space industry.
Unlike Turkmenistan, there’s no mention of putting more Kazakhs into space, but that’s because the focus of Kazakhstan is unabashedly commercial. For this reason I need to ask: will increases in the quality of life accompany all these technological and commercial marvels?
I’m really asking about the spiritual quality of life, for you see, whereas Turkmenistan suffers from a stifling amount of ideology, Kazakhstan suffers from a paucity of it. What is the great Kazakh ambition — money?
At least Turkmenistan has the right idea about outer space as a means to transfigure the inner space of human society. In seeking to commercialize outer space, will Kazakhstan commercialize the Kazakh soul?
RSS Feeds
Podcasts
[...] Перевод поста Avveroes (ENG) [...]
“What is the great Kazakh ambition — money?”
In this phase of Kazakhstan’s history it is, for one because its society is mentally in the phase where Northwestern Europe used to be in the late fifties and early sixties. At that time, there were still living memories of the deprivations during the inter-war crisis, World War 2 and the post-war reconstruction years. At the same time, there was economic growth that brought comfort and luxury within the reach of the masses. That resulted in a period of stiffling conservatism and increasing consumerism that first bumped on its limits during the OPEC crisis of 1973.
Today we see pretty much the same pattern in Kazakhstan and other mereging economies of the ex-USSR: the memories and traumas of the Soviet crash and the dire nineties are still strong and now that the money came in the elites and indeed also large swaths of the population are obsessed with conspiciuous consumption and do not want or like to be bothered with politics, environment and sustainability.
To that, one has to add a very uncertain cultural identity resulting from the Soviet years, which makes society more vulnerable for the excesses of globalisation and for complexes leading to often grotesque imitations of what is seen as Western culture and lifestyles.
Yet this will change once a generation that has not consciously known the USSR and the nineties will come to adulthood and become active in society, and also now that the global crisis has show the limits and heralded the unavoidable decline of neo-liberalism and consumerism. Certain people will start to wonder if there is more than the upteenth evroremonted appartment or flashy car.
Reply
Averroes Reply:
March 20th, 2010 at 5:30 pm
@Turgai Sangar, well, don’t you think that key to the development of a new consciousness among the Kazakhs will be a philosophical education? This is something notably lacking from the faculties at Kazakh schools, which remain very technocratic and unreflective in their agendas.
Reply