Regime-building, identity-making and foreign policy: neo-Eurasianist rhetoric in post-Soviet Kazakhstan

Abstract

This article illustrates the evolution experienced by the identity-making strategies pursued through the propagandistic exploitation of Kazakhstani foreign policy. Periodical readjustments in the focus of foreign policy rhetoric led the Kazakhstani regime to reshape the identity of the population, in order to promote forms of self-perception almost exclusively associable with the leadership that ruled the country in the post-Soviet era. Identity-making, in this context, became a crucial link in (and a key driver for) the progressive subjugation of foreign policy rhetoric to the logic of regime-building, intended here as the ensemble of concerted efforts aimed to increase the population's compliance with the leaderships' authoritarian outlooks.