KazUnite – We’ve had a chat recently with press secretaries during a break. Then I heard the following story from them. There were false reports in December that banks were granting loans amnesty. People immediately gathered in front of the Agency for Regulation and Development of Financial Market and started protesting. The number of protesters was growing day by day. When they heard that the banks were amnestying the loans, everyone stood there and expressed their will to have their loans repaid. The Agency claimed the information was false to disperse people. But no one listened to them. The help of journalists and bloggers was definitely needed in this case.
Press secretaries disseminated information through the country’s highest-rated Russian-language websites to explain the situation to the population. However, no matter how much money was spent on websites and information disseminated, the effect was not visible. The flow of citizens gathered to protest would not stop. At that time, about 18 thousand people applied to the Agency for repayment of the loan.
Remaining under the pressure of multiple claims and requirements, they after some thought, began to bring Kazakh-language speakers to the protesters and organize Kazakh-language interviews on TV channels. Only then did the line stop. We should learn a big lesson from this little fact. No matter how hard we try to refute the idea that “everyone in Kazakhstan knows and should know the Russian language”, the abovementioned case shows that the significance of Kazakh language for Kazakhstan is growing.
Kazakh language is the language that will bring Kazakhstan out of the crisis, it is a means of overcoming the crisis. This can be seen in the following case. Aren’t 98% of Zhanaozen residents, who have repeatedly found themselves in the center of crises and strikes, Kazakhs? Moreover, most vulnerable groups are Kazakh-speaking citizens.
But significant amount of government and private funds are mainly invested in Russian-language mass-media. It is not a secret that it costs more than a million tenge to have one piece of information “flashed” in the feed of some Russian-language sites. And the Kazakh-language websites probably get a hundred times less for publishing this information. Many websites work for free.
However, the range of Kazakh-speaking audiences is wide and growing every year. For example, the “millionaire” Instagram accounts, which are maintained in Kazakh language, if you consider, in many ways outperform the same Kazakhstani Russian-language accounts. Learning the Kazakh language is becoming a trend. Even some Kazakh millionaires have begun to learn their long-forgotten native language and have been welcomed by public. And representatives of other ethnic groups who write in the Kazakh language are becoming popular in social networks. And bloggers of another ethnic groups who write in Kazakh are also becoming popular on social networks. So far, this is a trend in the informal environment.
It is obvious that the influence of the Kazakh language is not limited to social networks. In order to ensure real political stability in the country, to prevent the crisis, in general, it is necessary to use the Kazakh language for any ideological or enlightenment work. First of all, it’s time to realize that in order to a political crisis in the country and ensure stability, it’s important first and foremost to improve the quality of content in Kazakh language, i.e. to finance and increase the professionalism of content specialists.
