NATIONAL IDENTITY BUILDING AND ROLE OF CULTURE: A CASE OF KAZAKHSTAN

Abstract

Since independence, the main goal of Nazarbayev was to shape a new national identity for Kazakhstan, different from the prevalent one. He stressed the requirement of a national identity based on an ethnic community, traditions, history, common values and culture of the society. Renewal policies were drafted to restore Kazakhstan’s culture. These renewal policies were the policies that accommodated the age-old Kazakh values along with the few essential Soviet policies. The Kazakhs strongly supported these policies. Among many changes in the newly independent nation, the government focused on strengthening the Kazakh national identity by modifying the cultural and artistic landscape. These actions included deconstruction of the legacies, symbols and policy approaches of the Soviet era and promoting age-old Kazakhstan’s legacies in many aspects of cultural life. Kazakhstan is conventionally a nomadic society. The lengthy Tsarist and successive Soviet rule degraded the pastoral lifestyle and replaced it with a sedentary lifestyle. Kazakhstan retained its nomadic heritage even after the long Soviet cultural change activities. The country’s leading nation building ambition is to build a Kazakh dominated multicultural nation with Kazkah culture as shared culture, making culture an essential aspect of Kazakhstan nation-building. The paper explores, Why culture plays a vital role in Kazakhstan’s nation-building? The article systematically investigates the research problem through analytical and systematic historical methods. KEY WORDS: culture, nation-building, cultural nationalism, Kazakhstan, Kazakh culture