Michael Reinhard Heß: Building the Eternal Country

Kazakhstan has aquired renewed global significance as a consequence of Russia´s war of aggression against Ukraine, which Vladimir Putin started on February 24, 2022. This also gives an increased relevance to the present volume, which appeared some time before the start of the war.

The first of the contributions, entitled "The state of the Steppe“, is dedicated to the mediatic staging of the 550th anniversaryl of Kazakh statehood. The text tries to show how Kazakhstan wanted to use perspectives on history in order to create its own national identity and to defend it against attacks, which came, among other things, from Putin´s Russia.

The topic of Kazakhstan´s multiethnical reality, which is manifest in the first contribution, is taken up and deepened in the second. This is done by analysing the works of "the Kazakhs´ Goethe", Abay Qunanbayev (1845-1904). Abay´s texts contain statements about the relationship between Kazakhs, Russians, and other ethnic groups. They are discussed on the basis of the Kazakh originals.

The last of the three contributions (“On Russian and Kazakh influence on Modern Uyghur in Kazakhstan”) reflects the topic of Kazakhstan´s multiethnic reality from a linguistic perspective, using contemporary synchronic data. In particular, the relationship between a variety of Uyghur spoken in Kazakhstan´s cultural and economic hub Almaty, and the Kazakh and Russian languages, is analysed.