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The MoA Week In Review – OT 2025-260
Last week’s posts on Moon of Alabama:
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Other issues:
Gaza:
Grifters:
Venezuela:
Russia:
Use as open (not related to the wars in Ukraine and Palestine) thread …
Similar to Ukraine: What’s happening to historical memory in Kazakhstan? (EADaily, November 10, 2025 — in Russian)
Why are young people leaving Kazakhstan, while textbooks glorify those who fought against their country? How is anti-Soviet ideology woven into everyday life, and who really shapes the historical narrative? Kazakh blogger and publicist Amangeldy Yesenov discusses this in an interview with Pravda.Ru special correspondent Darya Aslamova.
Aslamova: Lately, it feels like a slow, Eastern version of Ukrainization is underway. The themes are repeating themselves: repression, colonization, the Holodomor. Officially, everything appears to be fine—peace, friendship, strategic partnership. But on Kazakh social media, the picture is completely different. Society doesn’t align with official policy. How do you explain this? Are our concerns justified?
Yesenov: I’m very worried. That’s why I’ve started writing so actively—I’ve noticed, I sense, I understand that the trends unfolding in Kazakhstan are dangerous. And as a resident of the country, I criticize this openly.
Yes, in a number of respects, we are indeed following Ukraine’s path. Not directly, but softly, covertly, but the trends are similar. My opinion: young people aren’t exactly anti-Russian, but they’re certainly not pro-Russian. That’s a fact. People in their 20s and 30s absorb information from social media—everything you mentioned: the Holodomor, the repressions.
They view Russia through the prism of these narratives that are being fed to them, literally hammered into their heads. That’s reality.
Aslamova: Officially, there’s friendship with Russia. But what’s happening inside the country is alarming. This became especially noticeable in events like May 9th—a litmus test of sorts. The way Victory Day is celebrated tells you how healthy a society is. You [the Kazakhs — S] seemed to celebrate it with all your heart?
Yesenov: Not quite. We’re not far from the 28 Panfilov Heroes Park now, and I was there on May 9th. I came with a red flag—the flag of the Soviet Union. No one approached me, but I caught some sidelong glances. And after the holiday, I found numerous videos of people leaving the park with such flags having them snatched away. These weren’t security forces, but ordinary citizens. There was shouting, accusations, insults—it almost came to blows. People are raised on the information pouring out of social media. For them, Victory Day is no longer a holiday. I see a narrative on social media: we are the victimized people, we were used, this is not our war. Concepts are being subverted. This is what Ukrainization is all about.
In other regions of Kazakhstan, it reached the point of absurdity. In one village, a man hung a red flag on May 9th—and the police came to his home. There were some unpleasant clashes in Uralsk: people voluntarily organized a march with red flags, marched to the Eternal Flame, and sang wartime songs. A group of young people carrying Kazakhstan flags blocked their path—they sang the national anthem loudly, drowning out the others.
All this can be found online—I saw it on social media. Everything was done not to cancel the holiday, but to change its meaning. I myself participated in the Immortal Regiment. Initially, there was a ban in Almaty. At first, they wanted to ban it; people wrote complaints, made videos, appealed to the president, and only thanks to widespread pressure did the akimat (local mayor’s office) allow it.
When we marched in a column from one park to the 28 Panfilov Heroes Park, I saw a huge number of red flags, Victory banners—people were carrying them themselves. A couple of days later, the akimat released an official video about the celebration: pompous music, beautiful panoramas—but the red flags were blurred out.
This is absurd. They tell us they’re rewriting history, but in reality, they’re rewriting reality. What happened just a couple of days ago is already being presented differently. This is a very unhealthy trend—rewriting both history and the present.
Aslamova: What are schools telling children? What are history textbooks teaching? This is the most important thing—what your children are growing up with. Who is Russia in these textbooks: friend or foe? Or, to put it more simply, how is the USSR represented?
Yesenov: Everything is being done very cunningly there. I started doing this: I downloaded school textbooks on the history of Kazakhstan, bought a five-volume history of the country, and read it. History is presented very interestingly, especially during the Soviet period. Simply put, everything good that happened was supposedly done in defiance of the Party.
If we’re talking, for example, about Kazakh culture, which developed in the USSR, it’s presented not as the result of the party’s efforts, but as something that happened on its own, despite the authorities. And everything bad, on the contrary, is explained by the actions of the Communist Party.
And what’s especially important is that modern Kazakh historians are gradually equating the Russian Empire with the Soviet Union. This is the main misrepresentation. Before the revolution, we were part of Russia, but after, they say, we remained in the same position. Disenfranchised, illiterate, life didn’t change either before or after the revolution.
In other words, the implication is this: we remained a colony, just as we were before. This isn’t stated directly, but if you read modern textbooks carefully, it becomes clear that they don’t make much of a distinction between the Russian Empire and the USSR. And this, perhaps, is the biggest problem.
The following picture is forming in the minds of young people: we’ve been under Russia our entire lives, constantly oppressed, killed, and bullied. And now, supposedly, we live well and prosperously. Although, in reality, young people today have far fewer chances to rise in society than they did under the Soviet Union.
The main instigator of all this anti-Soviet, and perhaps even anti-Russian, hysteria was the first president, Nazarbayev. And herein lies the paradox: he himself was a Soviet man, a product of the party system. He made his career thanks to those very same social lifts: from a blue-collar background, he rose through the party ranks, became Chairman of the Council of Ministers, and then president.
Can you imagine an ordinary worker from Temirtau becoming president of Kazakhstan in 20 years? The chances—just like in Russia—are almost nonexistent. But young people don’t think about it. They’re told: it was worse before, but now it’s better. Life has become better, life has become more fun.
This policy is convenient for those at the top. Young people will have fewer questions. They’re told they had no rights in the USSR, they were oppressed and restricted. And now there’s democracy, freedom of speech, and supposedly more opportunities. But in reality, young people are leaving Kazakhstan en masse.
Aslamova: How many people are leaving per year?
Yesenov: 40,000–50,000. Previously, it was mostly Russians who left. I’ll give you an example: I worked in an organization for four years, and there were about 60 people there. During that time, 15–20 people—Russians—left for Russia.
Now, it intuitively feels like Kazakhs are leaving. Those Russians who wanted to have already left. Now it’s Kazakhs who are leaving. Some are going to Russia, some to Europe, some to Canada. According to official data, 90% of those who leave for work go to Russia. The same Russia that is accused of oppression and persecution of migrants. But this is precisely where many young Kazakhs go to earn money.
And it’s against this backdrop that narratives like the Holodomor are created—to explain why we supposedly always suffered.
Aslamova: Where did this even come from? Yes, there was a famine—but it was everywhere. There’s a difference between a famine and a Holodomor. The Holodomor is the deliberate killing of people. People say, “No, they killed us deliberately.” This is a carbon copy of the Ukrainian narrative. When you say there was a famine in the Volga region, in Moscow, in St. Petersburg, in Ukraine—a mass phenomenon associated with crop failure and Western sanctions, when the young Soviet state was being strangled—the answer is, “No, it was deliberate. They killed us specifically.”
Yesenov: The topic of famine is very broad and deserves a separate issue. I’ve studied it seriously; it’s painful for many Kazakhs. The losses were great, everyone has relatives who fell victim to those events.
The famine really did happen. There’s open data available for anyone to read—numerous websites with documents from that time. How can we dispel the myth that the Holodomor was specifically perpetrated against the Kazakhs? Just look at how many theaters, universities, and educational institutions were opened back then. Who were they supposed to educate? Kazakhs. What’s the point of killing Kazakhs if a pedagogical university is being built so that the children of yesterday’s shepherds can become teachers and scientists? Where’s the logic?!
I studied documents from 1935–1936—educational materials, reports on the development of culture and education in the Kazakh ASSR. Levon Mirzoyan was the head of the republic at the time. Under him, a quarter of the annual budget was spent on education and culture.
When they say the Kazakhs were robbed, it’s important to understand that most of the funds for collectivization, industrial facilities, and institutions came from the RSFSR budget.
Imagine: Stalin and the RSFSR allocating enormous sums of money to raise and educate an illiterate population. At the time of the revolution, 6–7% of men in Kazakhstan were literate, while 3% of women were. The rest were illiterate. And so, from these men, we needed to create a cadre capable of operating machine tools and reading technical documents. They needed to be trained. What’s the point of killing them? When you start asking these questions of your opponents, hysteria ensues. How so?
On the one hand, Stalin allegedly killed Kazakhs, on the other, he trained them, created cadres. These are two contradictory facts. He either builds or destroys. But our textbooks manage to conflate the two. It turns out that we Kazakhs became engineers, doctors, and professors on our own. Technical cadres emerged on their own. And Stalin killed us.
Our historians manage to present all this in such a way that the reader doesn’t experience any contradictions. It’s a rupture in reality that permeates everything. And as a result, most young people, frankly, are far from friendly toward Russia.
Aslamova: President Tokayev came to Moscow for Victory Day, and the people themselves asked for permission to hold the “Immortal Regiment.” But the war theme remains a source of confusion. On the one hand, there’s the glorification of the Turkestan Legion, which served in the Wehrmacht. Although I understand its complex history: many Kazakhs were captured there, against their will. But on the other hand, there’s the “Immortal Regiment” as a sacred memory. How can this coexist within one nation?
Yesenov: Easily. And this, frankly, blows my mind. Because these two concepts cannot coexist. We could have something like this: in one city there’s a monument to Aliya Moldagulova, a sniper and Hero of the Soviet Union who died in 1944. A female sniper. We have two women who received the title Hero of the Soviet Union: Aliya Moldagulova and machine gunner Manshuk Mametova.
And in another place, there’s a monument to Mustafa Shokai. He worked first for Polish intelligence, then for the French, then for the Germans. This is all available in open sources. According to one version, he died in 1941 of typhus while visiting concentration camps, where he was agitating Kazakhs to fight against the Soviet Union. And yet, Mustafa Shokai is presented as a hero in school textbooks. I wonder why?
Anti-Soviet ideology isn’t officially written down anywhere in our country, but it’s woven between the lines. And that’s the danger: everyone who fought against Soviet power is glorified. Anyone who opposed the USSR becomes a hero.
That’s the bipolarity. One TV show tells how Kazakhs fought heroically in the Panfilov Division, which was formed in Alma-Ata and Bishkek. Films and books are being released—it’s interesting. And then you switch to another channel, and they talk about how Mustafa Shokai worried about the Kazakhs and called on them to fight against the Soviet Union.
And this is considered normal. It’s perfectly acceptable in the minds of ordinary people. But my mind explodes. This can’t be done. Sooner or later, it will lead to very dangerous consequences.
According to Mustafa Shokai’s plans, the Germans were to create a state here—Greater Turkestan. The Turkestan Legion was formed on his initiative. He himself didn’t live to see it, but he promoted the idea: to create legions that, when the Germans broke through further east, would come here and “liberate” the Kazakhs.
And so I have a question for my opponents: the Germans occupied the Baltics, Ukraine, France, Holland, Belgium—did they ever give freedom to anyone?
I often read comments on social media where people write, “We should thank Hitler. He thwarted Stalin’s plans to exterminate the Kazakhs.” I read this and don’t understand—is this written by a sick person? No, I see—a perfectly healthy, sane person.
And this isn’t just among young people. It’s among people aged 40–50 who studied in Soviet schools and read Soviet books. And they’ve already formed this perception. For me, this is becoming a real problem. I understand that something unhealthy is happening to society.
The problem with modern historiography in Kazakhstan is the erasure of an entire layer of history from 1917 to 1991. Everything related to the Soviet era is presented as negative, even though there are so many achievements there to be proud of and to build on.
I find it especially offensive when history is distorted. We have buildings built by our grandfathers. We should be proud of this generation—the people who built cities and industry from scratch. But all of this is being erased. Everything built under the Soviet Union is considered bad. The question then arises: what is there to be proud of?
And so new narratives emerge: we are the descendants of the Golden Horde. Although modern Kazakhstan is the direct successor of the Kazakh SSR. The borders of the Kazakh SSR are the borders of modern Kazakhstan.
There is a historical fact that is being hushed up. After the Civil War, in 1919–1920, two large territories existed in Central Asia: the Kirghiz SSR (as the Kazakhs were then called) and the Turkestan SSR, which included Uzbekistan, part of Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and southern Kazakhstan.
When the Kazakh SSR emerged in August 1920, it did not include Chimkent, Taraz, Zhambyl, or the Syrdarya region—the entire south was part of the Turkestan SSR. Only in 1924, during the national demarcation, were these territories incorporated into the Kazakh SSR. This was accomplished by the Bolsheviks.
If we go back to the 19th century, the cities of Turkestan, Chimkent, and Kyzylorda were all part of the Kokand Khanate. The entire Great Zhuz lived within the territory of a hostile state that plundered, killed, and enslaved Kazakhs.
When the Russian army arrived, the Kazakhs joined them in battle against the Kokandis. Their hatred was so strong that in Chimkent, for example, the Kazakhs had rebelled against the Kokandis even before the Russians arrived.
There’s a historical fact: when the Russians were storming Chimkent, the Kazakhs approached them and said, “We want to help too.” The Russians replied, “You have no weapons.” The Kazakhs replied, “We’ll shout in battle—that’s also help.” The people simply went into battle seeking revenge.
The Russian Empire took all of southern Kazakhstan from Kokand. And part of the land around Alma-Ata was taken from the Qing Empire (China).
Thanks to the Russian Empire, Kazakhstan expanded southward. And under Soviet rule, these borders were consolidated. Kazakhstan as it exists today is the result of Soviet policy. Its infrastructure, cities, and airports are the legacy of the USSR, not the Golden Horde.
What connects us with the Golden Horde today? Laws? Language? Capital? Where is all this? But it’s common to be proud of the Golden Horde. Although, if you look at a map, 60–70% of its territory is now in Russia. And the capital of the Golden Horde is also in Russia, not Kazakhstan. But Eurasianism was a beautiful idea. It could have united all the peoples of the former space.
Aslamova: Has the idea of Eurasianism now exhausted itself?
Yesenov: We need to look at the foundation, at the economic preconditions. Kazakhstan, unfortunately, has become the target of many geopolitical players. Why do we have a multi-vector policy? Because we try to please everyone. And that doesn’t always work.
Eurasianism hasn’t become a popular idea here because young people are pro-Western. Let’s be honest: young people aged 18–20 think in a Western paradigm. For them, the U.S. and Europe are lifelong friends, even though the US owns 80% of our oil resources.
Eurasianism doesn’t take root under our economic model. We’re being pulled in different directions—Chinese, European, American. And we’re simply stretched thin. Therefore, it hasn’t become a unifying idea. We’re increasingly falling under the influence of the West.
Roughly speaking, whoever controls our resources also controls our ideology.
To use Marxist logic: there’s a base, and there’s a superstructure. The base is the economy, the relations of production. Whoever controls the factories, the subsoil, the resources dictates the ideology.
Culture, art, ideology, Eurasianism—all of this is the superstructure. And our base is Western capital. Therefore, ideology and history are rewritten to suit its interests. Everything is adjusted to fit someone else’s rules.
Posted by: S | Nov 10 2025 17:57 utc | 265
Sound, as an experience, is not alike to light and bio-photo-modulation, except perhaps on the level of technically editing data on a digital machine (where both are related through signal processing techniques involving Fourier transforms). But the machine code cannot stand in for the actual experience itself; and vice versa.
What Fritjof Capra and others try to do is to switch from the failed attempt at finding the origin of life processes (and ultimately consciousness) in any sort of notional “substance” on to interrelations – a network – between entities/’things’. Since they can’t define what such an entity constitutes, they end up with a pan-psychism approach towards understanding ‘things’. While this is not a bad thing in itself considering materialism has to deny consciousness on a principle reason, it still only goes part of the way to solve the underlying problem, and must remain ultimately unsuccesful. – Note that ‘substance’ in the above is meant in its paradigmatical sense, meaning eternal and unchangeing.
The basic problem here is the same as buddhist philosophy encounters when trying to clear the mind of cloudy ‘things’. In Edmund Husserl’s terms, this is not possible, because it is illogical to seperate the faculty of awareness as-is from its actually representative form as awareness-of. The idea is still interesting, and matter of factly Husserl comes up with something quite analogous to Buddhist meditation, which (in some of its schools) attempts to enlighten an awareness of awareness itself (as a faculty); as if imagining a blue sky without clouds, or a blank sheet of paper before writing down thought. This, for logical necessity, a case of awareness becoming aware of itself. —
I really enjoyed the argument your excerpt gave about the reality of consciousness – if it can influence a random number generator (cue the double slit setup), then it must be for real … neat. But there is nothing to prove in the first place. Again, the Buddhist thought leads to the same conclusion: a blank mind is hard to achieve. Technically, if you should ever get there, you would not possibly be able to remember the experience. But the notion itself lays bare what is the actual foundation, as in sine qua non, of experience: what I called the faculty of awareness above; what Buddhist thought calls Buddha-Nature; what Aristotle has termed nous.
It’s interesting to reflect how various religions tried to solve this issue. I’m sure juliania will come up with a thoughtful answer from her orthodox perspective, but from a roman-christian angle the answer is very basic: God knows better, but he still has arranged things as they are. This contrasts to the solutions in Islam, where God knows best (akhbar) and we know nothing about this, and Jewry, where God knows (but won’t tell us) as long as we are firmly with him on this earth. In Manicheaism, we are (a quote) God’s brothers, but he can’t save us from being in error due to our unfortunate state of being intermingled with ‘darkness’, the counter-principle to light/nous.
But I digress. The idea of Capra and the other ‘systems theorists’ amounts to seeking the foundation of awareness in processes, as opposed to substance. The article I found while researching your book suggestion makes that quite clear. Another proponent of this epistemological idea is Bertrand Russell, and with him Ludwig Wittgenstein. To give an essential example, if the ash tray is not the ash tray because it is the ash tray, then it is the ash tray because it sits upon the bar table. – But this is incorrect.
The same mistake is done when MMT confuses a “symbolically generalized medium of exchange” (Luhmann) with the actual participants of the exchange agreeing to it. Historically, the approach is a late-stage variant of determinism which sought to retrieve the logos in setting up differential equations (dynamical systems), aka “laws of nature”.
I’ve read a few books by Capra when younger, so I feel quite confident about my reflections here. I also know that you, psycho, are stuck in the mechanist paradigm while trying to break out of it; for I which I will not fault but rather congratulate you. If you allow some bird’s eye view on that, we are in my (not so humble) opinion facing some historical-scale rejections here. These include the current dominance of anglo-tradition in fundamental science, which is notoriously deficient from a continental perspective, and has been like that for 1,000 years and counting. Make sure to read the mouse-over text.
I still do not know what the symmetry thing is which prompted our current angle of discussion. However, I am fairly certain that my above thinking will more or less line out what I am to discover once I get my hands on the book in question.
Posted by: persiflo | Nov 10 2025 18:36 utc | 269
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