Kazakhstan’s emerging middle class

analysis

By SRI ⋅ May 5, 2008 ⋅

Kazakhstan’s development as a rising petro-state from the debris of the collapse of the USSR in 1991 is Central Asia’s leading success story.

Unlike many nations that have recently developed their energy reserves, the rise in revenues from foreign energy sales have had a trickle-down effect in Kazakhstan, producing the embryo of a new middle class, a social development that was anathema in the USSR, whose ideology persistently sought to eradicate class distinctions.

Kazakhstan, ruled since independence by President Nursultan Nazarbayev, has made a cornerstone of its social policy to foster the development of an indigenous middle class, seeing it as a social and political guarantor of stability.

The world’s largest landlocked country, Kazakhstan is an ethnically diverse nation - the 1999 census determined the population to be Kazakh (Qazaq) - 53.4 percent, Russian - 30 percent, Ukrainian - 3.7 percent, Uzbek - 2.5 percent, German - 2.4 percent, Tatar - 1.7 percent, Uygur - 1.4 percent and other 4.9 percent.

This study charts the development of this new phenomenon in Kazakh society from the end of the USSR to the present day. The nurturing and development of this middle class, which is composed of former members of the Soviet apparat, younger professionals and newly minted businessmen, stands in contrast to events in the other post-Soviet “stans” - Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. While in the immediate aftermath of the dissolution of the USSR Kyrgyzstan was initially regarded by many Western analysts as the most reformist post-Soviet republic in moving swiftly towards Western-style political and economic infrastructures, it is in fact Kazakhstan that has emerged as the most progressive regional economic reformer, and it is unclear if its successes could be repeated elsewhere.

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John C.K. Daly