“Nazarbaev’s nightingale”, or Minister of Culture and Information Yermukhammet Ertisbaev seems to have caused some stir in the Kazakh media landscape.

During a press conference earlier this month, Eritsbaev demanded that journalists from the independent TV station Era leave the room.

Among those protesting against the minister’s rather rude behaviour were the heads of Kazakhstan’s Union of Journalists and Adil Soz. But, what is the problem?

“Okay, let’s say I prohibited it [from filming],” he said. “So what?”

True, the RFE/RL report does not mention the reason why Ertisbaev dismissed the critical reporters from his audience. Maybe the problem was that he made more comments in the aftermath that he should better not have made:

According to the him, an editor at “Vremya” called him and, in front of the cameras, Ertisbaev said: “I told him not to call me anymore. He asked me ‘why?’ and I said because you are repulsive,” Ertisbaev said.

Now it seems that everyone is going to sue each other. The nightingale should go, according to journalists from Vremya:

“When a nightingale gets bird flu you have to save yourself from it, irregardless of who owns it or what your political positions are,” Boreiko said.

Prime Minister Masimov is looking into the matter right now, so it’ll be interesting to watch that story over the next couple of days.

Incidentally, the only time I saw Ertisbaev behaving in a rather rude manner was when he fell asleep during a conference in London.

Rustam Khalfin – “Intim – In Time”, Soros Center For Contemporary Arts

A string of new exhibits at the Soros Center for Contemporary Art (www.scca.kz) here in Almaty has brought in a breath of fresh air to the art scene. The new curator Dastan Kojakhmetov presents a minimalist conceptual aproach to curating at the Soros Center. This is his second show representing some of the local heavy-weight contemporary artists. Last month’s exhibit featured the works of Erbossyn Meldibekov, and this week is the opening of Rustam Khalfin’s exhibit. It seemed to have attracted a minimal amount of mainstream media and a big turn out of his friends and fans.

If there is an artist to be understood and appreciated in Kazakhstan, it is Mr. Khalfin. His work is, in my mind, a perfect example of the combined use of contemporary painting, sculpture and multi-media that all artists, young and old, should try and understand. He is one of the rare cases of a person who is able to make use of anything he puts his hands on, be it a history of Central Asia, inner workings of consciousness, the loss of his wife, or the tragedy and beauty of being human. Yet, he creates works that are remarkebly easy to understand at the most primal level. His works are the guts, skin, bones, and the warmth of flesh that we all long for and want to satisfy us. He looks deeper into the personal psyche of our human condition. With his works at this current exhibit, he is again showing us that the true value of life is our few moments of experience in this world.

Upon walking into the gallery, the show greets us with some of the literature that has been written about Mr. Khalfin. Most of it is in foreign languages. You find out right away that this artist, like many of the contemporary artists here in Kazakhstan, is often ignored or perhaps misunderstood by his own people. But, to the world outside of Kazakhstan, he is very valuable to the understanding of the very basic deeply personal reality of what it is to be an artist, man, husband, lover, and human being in Central Asia. He opens us up to his reality in a few select but strong examples of his recent paintings and sculptures that continue on his theme of tactility.

The first room as you enter is lined with some of his latest painting and sculptures, which appear to have been done by the hand of a naivist artist doing abstractions. There is minimal color and some of the work appears unfinished. The paintings feel as if they don’t really try to be beautiful, they just are. The confidence of the compositions leaves you room to imagine without trying to tell you a whole story. Grids and strokes by the artist are all there on the canvas left for you to ask yourself questions about the work. There is no argument, this man knows his media. To defy the sense of continuing and – perhaps what most people feel- finishing what he’s started is the very beauty behind these works. What has painting come to? Read the full story »

As most Kazakh families, the President’s family is big; traditionally, more successful members of the family would try to help others; but unlike any other family, the President’s family is rich and influential, and its self-support influences public life and public money.

Thus, Nurbol Nazarbayev, a 23-year old nephew of Nursultan Nazarbayev, has just become a new prosecutor for Kapchagai city, one of the two towns where Nazarbayev plans to move all the casinos by April 2007.

Nazarbayev has said that creating two dedicated gambling centers will help isolate the social cost of gambling from the general population, and also create tourism destinations for foreign gamblers, especially the Chinese.

Is it only me who senses a lot of money on this position?

Media reports about this new appointment (there were two, from usual suspect KUB) argue that the appointment of Nurbol, the recent graduate of Kazakh National University, violates the Law of the Prosecutor’s Office, which requires that a prosecutor has to be at least 25 years old. Nurbol himself graduated from Law faculty.

When I read the news, I had a flashback – didn’t I read about Nurbol in relation to Nurbank recently? No, it turns out that was Nurali, a 22-year old son of Dariga Nazarbayeva and Rakhat Aliyev, who became a Board member of the 7th biggest bank in Kazakhstan. It starts reminding me of an old soap opera, along the lines of Dallas, which was so popular in Kazakhstan, or Dynasty. I bet it would prove a thrilling film, if someone investigates the whole plot, writes a script and produces a TV-series about the most influential family in the country. I would watch it for sure.

President Nazarbayev visited Education City yesterday, Qatar Foundation’s ‘landmark’ tertiary education edifice. Reportedly, the president was impressed by the quality of the institution and announced that a delegation would visit Qatar soon to study more carefully the approach the Foundation has taken. It provided the small Gulf state with a centre of excellence that has attracted numerous big international names such as Cornell and Georgetown to open campuses in the outskirts of Doha.

In Nazarbayev’s recent annual address to the people of Kazakhstan, he stressed the importance of educational reform and its central position to all strategies of economic development and diversification away from oil. KZBlog reported about the amusing and Soviet-like character of the speech’s passage:

In charging in the government with improving and modernizing the educational system of Kazakhstan, so that a person with a Kazakhstan diploma can work anywhere in the world, he said in Kazakh, if we don’t do this, our universities will keep selling diplomas and making rectors rich–a shot at the system of corruption which is found in universities where professors and rectors accept bribes for passing grades. In discussing the need for educated and qualified workers, he turned to the Minister of Labor and Social Protection and said, I am addressing you personally. We are paying people and if they can’t do the work, what are we paying them for? Look into this area of unqualified workers.

Eurasianet carried a report recently which mostly let the KIMEP faculty comment on the deplorable state of the system, focusing heavily on corruption and cheating. KIMEP is the “landmark” of Kazakh higher education, run in an American style while relying heavily on Western faculty and modern learning techniques (but in Kazakhstan, not even the best universities do without proper scandals…). Read the full story »

Cross-posted at Global Voices

The International Women’s Day is a public holiday in Kazakhstan, and while happy bloggers-office workers get a break from their offices and blogs, congratulate their mothers, wives and daughters, we are presenting the latest roundup of blog entries by women and about them.

On Beauty

Slavoyara, neweurasia‘s author, blogger and photographer from Pavlodar, has won the title of the most beautiful woman among the owners of Livejournal in a competition organised by blogger megakhuimyak. Congratulations!

She writes (RUS): “I am strict when in comes to assessing a woman’s beauty: yes, there are physically attractive and non-attractive women. But this is not a criterion for assessing personality… Beauty is just a promise of happiness, as someone said”.

On Work
Read the full story »

This is Aizhana’s translation of the post written by Aiman, our contributor from Uralsk, about the myths that surround the foreingers in Aksai, Karachaganak Field in the West Kazakhstan.

Once, in winter, I was riding in a “marshrutka” (a minibus) from Aksay to Uralsk, the spot I got was perfect; it was beside the driver and beside the heater, I could stretch my legs, and the people in a car with me were pretty interesting. You have to admit that when you travel with interesting people, the time runs faster, and since I am a sociable person, I will never refuse a good conversation with people. The driver was a young man, Kazakh, of pleasant appearance, with warm smile. Playfully, with jokes and introductions, he collected payment from the passengers, and we were on our way.

A young girl sat between me and the driver, on the front seat, with light make-up and without a hat. Judging by her huge back-pack, I figured that she is a student. A conversation started because I automatically started to fasten myself with a seatbelt. In international company where I happen to work it’s an essential rule and not obeying it could cost you your job. Now it became a habit, besides, winter road isn’t very safe, especially when you sit in the front. The driver, observing my not very skillful way with the seatbelt laughed and asked: “You probably work at KPO (Karachaganak Petroleum Operating)?”. I nodded my head and he continued: “Well, yeah, everybody who works there uses a seat-belt, even in our mini-buses”.

Then, I had to listen to more of the driver’s stories of how hilarious and weird the foreigners are, and how they “bamboozle” the local personnel. I decided not to argue with him, because that’s not a very grateful doing, you can’t prove to everyone that the safety-belt in a car isn’t just for decoration. For about five more minutes he was telling us stories that he heard from people who work in KPO or SSS-Saipem (the Arab company, built the Gas Processing Complex). The driver, apparently, didn’t even know that in principle, these are two different organizations, in content and contingent. But the story isn’t about him; it’s about a girl, who was sitting next to me. Like thunder in clear sky she began to chatter with slender voice. She was quiet and pretended that she wasn’t interested in the driver’s talking for a long time, then, suddenly she laid down a sacramental phrase: “Foreigners are better than Kazakhs and Russians, they are polite and well mannered, they don’t know how to swear and don’t steal!” To say that I was taken aback isn’t even going to cover it. With astonishment, I was examining her face, and wondering where she came from. I wanted to answer, but she continued: “they even treat women better, than the Soviet men; I wish to marry a foreigner”.

I’ve worked in KPO for a long time, and I came across a lot of different people while working there. There are a lot of people who “assign” almost “godly” assets to the foreigners, but the kind of “miracle” like that girl in a mini-bus, I’ve seen for the first time. I tend to think that that kind of opinion exists because of the prolonged closeness of USSR. Many thought that “there” they live better because they are smarter or better than us. Many thought and assumed that alcoholism is a thing inherent only to us, and that stealing exists only here, because we are poorer. Read the full story »

On 5 March President Nazarbayev addressed the republican agroindustrial complex meeting, and said among other things: “Kazakhstan needs to develop halal-industry. Kazakhstan still lacks of producing experience of halal meat for muslims, and there is no one company, producing halal under license.”

Well, it seems that either the President has decided to get even more in touch with his Muslim-self, or he is trying to reflect and answer to a general trend in the country with 47% of Muslims, according to the 1999 census.

A reminder from the past: By the mid-1990s, Nazarbayev had begun occasionally to refer to Allah in his speeches, but he had not permitted any of the Islamic festivals to become public holidays, as they had elsewhere in Central Asia. Read the full story »

According to official statistics of the Czech Government from 31.12.2005, the biggest group of migrants from Central Asia have been citizens of Kazakhstan. These numbers only include legal residents (with long-term visas or with a permanent residence permit): Kazakhstan – 2.247, Kyrgyzstan – 293, Tajikistan – 52, Turkmenistan – 18, and Uzbekistan – 363 people (1). While many Kazakhstanis are represented by the local student community in English-language universities, some of them come to the country illegally and are not represented in the official statistics. In Prague, you often stumble across Central Asian looking people distributing leaflets or cleaning the streets, each of them have a similar story to tell, no jobs at home, no proper education, and the hope that their children will have a better future here.

In the Centre for the Integration of Foreigners in the Czech Republic I met a young Central Asian girl. I tried to guess whether she was Kyrgyz or Kazakh, and after the language class we spoke about her long trip from Kazakhstan, enjoying a walk in the cold evening air back to the metro station.

Aiman, as I will call her, is from Taraz, a city in the South of Kazakhstan, with the population of a little over 330 thousand. As many smaller cities in the country, Taraz experienced a rough time after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when most industries came to a halt. Massive migration of Germans, Jews, and Russians followed. 72% of people who migrated in 2001 were of working age. Read the full story »

This is a translation of Vitaliy Mantrov’s article, which was posted on February 15, 2007

February 15th was the day of the removal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan. In 1982, 19 year old Sharipjan only finished school and entered into the technical institute, when he was called into army. After only a month of serving on his homeland – Soviet Union – he, along with about a 100 other military trainees from Shymkent, was sent to fight in Afghanistan. On a special day, for those who went to war by the orders of the Soviet government, Sharipjan Utegenov, the chairman of the Republic Union of the war veterans in Afghanistan and local warс in Kazakhstan, told the severe truth about Afghanistan war, and the truth about “Afghans”, the veterans of Afghanistan war, at a time of peace.

Was there a choice at that time – to stay or to go?

I went voluntarily. There was a party, a Komsomol, patriotic spirit, the patriotism of Soviet person, Soviet youth. I, seeing all that, wanted to experience the same feelings that people who went to war in
Afghanistan felt. Before that, I’ve met “Afghans” when they were leaving, in columns. On one side I wanted romance, and on the other side I wanted to experience the feelings under the war conditions.

It was a system, and could you leave the system, just say – no?

It was an ideology back then. To say – “no”, meant to obtain public reproof, the rejection of the society. In the movie “9th division” there was a certain psychological moment, when they asked – if there was anybody who didn’t want to go to Afghanistan. Nobody answered. Then, nobody wanted to go, but there was a concept of friendship and mutual soldier solidarity, therefore nobody dared to step forward at that moment. I knew that our division would be sent to Afghanistan anyway, and I didn’t even think about staying, when all the guys went to war. Maybe we were brought up like that – with a feeling of collectivism, mutual assistance, brotherhood, friendship.

What goal was set before you?

At that time we were under the ideology of the protection of the southern boundaries of our native land. Now they ask whether it was an error or not? There are different ways to look at that period of time. Read the full story »

Cross-posted on Global Voices

Save the Houses

Photo by Adam Kesher

Blogger Adam Kesher is displeased: the “Stalin’s” house next to his own is going to be replaced by a new fancy building. These houses, built before the Second World War (1935-1938) or after (till 1955) are notable for their scale, high ceilings so rare in later Soviet block houses, huge halls and thick walls. They have nice backyards and old-style lifts. Situated mostly in the centre of Almaty, “stalinkas” for a long time represented quality and well-being. Read the full story »