youth

Growing gaps in Kazakh society?

Posted on June 7, 2013 Updated on June 7, 2013

Sorry for the silence from this blog. Firstly, there hasn’t been much happening in Central Asian HE (or not that I have seen) – no high heels scandals this month! Secondly, we’re in the summer term at the University where I work and that means exams, panicking students, organising everything for next year and generally no time whatsoever to relax!

The post today is an interesting observational article about Kazakhstan, exploring whether gaps are emerging in contemporary society. I think it’s worth including here as there may be a spillover effect onto higher education. This could materialise, for example, in students joining in protests (in these cases they usually take up the left-wing anti-government side), or in a discourse around access to higher education for students from lower socio-economic backgrounds.

Article is (c) Eurasianet and can also be found at http://www.eurasianet.org/node/66575.

Kazakhstan: Widening Social Divide Fuels Protest Mood

February 19, 2013 – 2:45pm, by Joanna Lillis

While parts of the former capital boom with wealth from oil money, here, as elsewhere in Kazakhstan, only a small minority can enjoy the luxuries, while many are still unemployed and live in poverty. (Photo: Dean C.K. Cox)

In the official narrative of Kazakhstan’s post-Soviet history, President Nursultan Nazarbayev is lauded for fostering widespread prosperity while maintaining inter-ethnic harmony. Lately, though, the official paeans to Nazarbayev’s virtues haven’t been able to drown out voices of doubt about Kazakhstan’s development path, voices that reflect an ever-widening rich-poor gap and urban-rural divide.

One relatively minor, but illustrative incident occurred in January: authorities jailed a young man who made a rude gesture at an official motorcade in the northern city of Pavlodar. Outside official circles, the incident was seen as an outgrowth of the frustration felt by the considerable segment of society that is being bypassed by the country’s energy boom. This is precisely the type of sentiment that provided the fuel for violent protestslast month in Azerbaijan, another oil-rich country with a gaping social divide.

There is an ample dose of truth in Kazakhstan’s founding myth: the country during Nazarbayev’s more than two decades in power, has made significant economic strides, thanks to an energy-export boom. Kazakhstan registered 5 percent growth in 2012. GDP stands at $11,357 per capita, and average salaries are $670 per month, very respectable by regional standards.

But wealth is far from evenly distributed in Kazakhstan: a few have concentrated vast riches in their hands, while many struggle to get by. Kazakhstan’s richest 50 people are worth acombined $24 billion, according to Forbes Kazakhstan. The rich list features many people close to the president, including his son-in-law and daughter, Timur Kulibayev, and Dinara Kulibayeva (both billionaires), his daughter Dariga Nazarbayeva, and his grandson Nurali Aliyev (both millionaires).

As the rich get richer, a middle class is also taking shape. Altynshash Smail, a 35-year-old mother of four and married to a successful businessman, is typical among those who consider themselves comfortable, rather than wealthy. She is grateful to Nazarbayev for giving those with initiative a chance to realize their dreams. “There’s money in Kazakhstan, and there are prospects,” she told EurasiaNet.org. “The president has provided such good opportunities. … I think Kazakhstan’s in a very good position.”

Smail was out shopping on a recent weekday afternoon at Almaty’s Esentai Mall, whose opening last year was hailed by enthusiasts as a sign of Kazakhstani citizens’ increased spending power.

Prosperity is currently concentrated in Almaty, the financial center, and Astana, the glitzy capital. But wealth is steadily spreading out to the regions – to energy hubs like Atyrau and Aktobe, along with other provincial cities.

On a Saturday morning in bustling Shymkent in southern Kazakhstan, another chic shopping mall, Mega, was doing a roaring trade. And contented mall rats were full of praise for their leader. “I like the president,” said student Margo Stepovaya, who was drinking coffee with friends. “He’s elevated Kazakhstan.”

Yet in Shymkent, and elsewhere, dissenting voices are never far off. The village of Badam is only a jolting half-hour bus ride from the boutiques of Shymkent’s Mega mall, but it feels more like half-a-world away. There, prosperity is something people only hear about on television.

“No one’s dying from hunger, but this is a rural area, salaries are low… and pensions are tiny,” said one pensioner who gave only his first name, Marat. “To be honest, people are dissatisfied with the current [political] leadership, but they’re afraid to say so.”

The pensioner had harsh words for Nazarbayev, castigating him for preferring to posture on the world stage while “inside the country his people live at the lowest level.”

Another villager, 60-year-old plumber Amirkhan Tuleyev, was less keen to blame the president for the problems of rural life. “You can see we’re not prospering,” he said, gesturing at the muddy, potholed lanes and dilapidated housing. Tuleyev tends to blame corrupt, incompetent local officials rather than the man at the top, whose “vision is right, but it doesn’t reach us.”

Amangeldy Kalybek of Shymkent’s PRISMA youth activist group sees such attitudes as symptomatic of “a crisis of confidence in the [local] authorities,” who are failing to tackle problems such as unemployment, poor infrastructure and access to medical care and easy access to water. Only 24 percent of Kazakhstan’s rural population had running water in 2010, according to a WHO/UNICEF sanitation report published last year.

Poor living conditions and prospects have sparked a stampede from villages to towns. “Young people in villages are protesting with their feet,” analyst Dosym Satpayev, director of the Almaty-based Kazakhstan Risks Assessment Group think-tank, told EurasiaNet.org. Yet amid stiff competition for good jobs, they risk joining the ranks of the disaffected urban underclass.

In oil-rich western Kazakhstan, overt signs of disaffection have emerged. The region witnessed independent Kazakhstan’s worst ever bout of social unrest in 2011, when 15 civilians died in clashes with police in the depressed town of Zhanaozen, and the region has seen several terrorist attacks – “also a form of protest,” Satpayev says.

One railway engineer living in a small town a couple of hour’s drive from the oil city of Aktobe – where Kazakhstan’s first ever suicide bombing occurred in 2011 – says the mood locally is “negative.” “People increasingly don’t like Nazarbayev,” he told EurasiaNet.org by telephone on condition of anonymity, citing familiar complaints about corruption, nepotism, unemployment and high prices.

“The expression of protest moods in Kazakhstan is quite high,” Satpayev said, pointing to small, sporadic protests – mainly over socioeconomic grievances – that have occurred around the country of late.

The opposition is weak and fragmented and has failed to capitalize on the protest mood, Satpayev points out, but “if a political force that could mobilize [the disaffected] emerged, it would be a very powerful tool.”

Nazarabayev’s administration is aware of the widening rich-poor gap, and has expressed a desire to close it. In the Kazakhstan-2050 development strategy launched last year, socio-economic development and raising living standards are identified as key strategic priorities.

The affluent, too, are not blind to the widening social and economic divide, and, quietly, some admit that things aren’t as rosy as officials depict. Back at Almaty’s Esentai Mall, one banker, speaking on condition of anonymity, acknowledged that Kazakhstan “could do better” for the poor.

“Everything is not really stable and perfect, you know,” she added with a wry smile.

Editor’s note:

Joanna Lillis is a freelance writer who specializes in Central Asia.

This entry was posted in Kazakhstan, Uncategorized and tagged Kazakhstan, society, socio-economic trends, young people, youth.

Youth and Public Policy in Kyrgyzstan

Posted on October 8, 2012

A report has been published [en] [ru] today which for the first time attempts to undertake an audit of the relationship between young people and public policy in contemporary Kyrgyzstan. Whilst I haven’t been able to read it in full, it looks like a sincere and thorough attempt to map the landscape, highlight weaknesses (many, regrettably) and look at progress that has been made.

You can link to both English and Russian versions of the report at:

http://www.youthpolicy.org/blog/2012/10/youth-public-policy-audit-kyrgyzstan/

I have reproduced the Key Findings section below, and encourage you to peruse the whole report too.

Key Findings

As one of the 15 independent countries to emerge from the rubble of the former Soviet Union, Kyrgyzstan still faces formidable challenges posed by the collapse of Soviet-era economic, political, and social institutions, which affect the entire population, regardless of age. The remote, mountainous country, underdeveloped even before gaining independence in 1991, is poor, relies heavily on foreign aid, and does not generate sufficient jobs for its citizens. Vital public services like schools, hospitals, and power plants are falling apart, plagued by decrepit infrastructure and a catastrophic dearth of competent workers.
Access to reliable information is poor and corruption permeates nearly every sphere of life, particularly those dominated by the state, including education and health care. The justice system barely functions, with laws flouted by those meant to ensure they work. The country serves as a major drug-trafficking route
out of Afghanistan. Between 2005 and 2010, it survived two popular uprisings and a deadly bout of interethnic violence. Understandably, public trust in government is low, and people tend to rely on informal, personal support networks more than on state institutions as such.

These burdens weigh heavily on the shoulders of Kyrgyzstan’s young people, whose prospects seem quite dim, while effective tools for achieving change are in short supply. The country lacks several ingredients crucial for meaningful improvements to the quality of life—including rule of law, meritocracy, and a widely accepted value system encouraging honesty and diligence. These circumstances often lead young people to replicate the same pernicious traits and practices that are common among their elders and that have long stymied Kyrgyzstan’s development. In a practical sense, young people’s chances for economic self-sufficiency are impeded by low-quality education, poor opportunities for employment, gender stereotypes, and cultural expectations that the young should be obedient and passive. Furthermore, the end of the Soviet Union left young people without an official ideology. The resulting vacuum has been filling over the past 20 years with a paradoxical, sometimes perplexing mix of greater individualism, greater dependence on patronage networks, heightened emphasis on ethnic identity, greater religiosity, and a resurgence of traditionalist social mores. Young people account for a large proportion of the country’s population, but have a hard time achieving upward mobility.

This ratchets up various social tensions in Kyrgyzstan. Demographically, young people, defined since 2009 as 14-to-28 years old, make up nearly one-third of the population, while children and young adults under 29 total 60 percent. About two-thirds of young people live in rural areas, many of which have little
in the way of infrastructure, services, and opportunities. This leads to widespread internal migration, particularly to the capital, Bishkek, and its environs, where migrants are often isolated, encounter problems accessing social services, and experience frictions with nonmigrant neighbors. At the same time, hundreds of thousands of Kyrgyzstanis—many of them young—travel abroad in search of work. The remittances they send home prop up the local economy, but wide-scale migration also rips apart
families and communities and often relegates migrants to low paid, dangerous work. Migration notwithstanding, data gathered recently by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) indicate that young people make up 50 percent of the country’s unemployed.

Ultimately, the young continue to rely economically on their parents and other relatives for protracted periods. They marry and have children relatively early in life, but building independent, sustainable families is difficult because of inadequate opportunities to make a living, exacerbated at times by gender stereotypes that limit young people’s flexibility on the job market. Meanwhile, the socioeconomic pressures are compounded by a politicized divide between the country’s north and south, as well as festering interethnic tensions, which periodically explode into violence. Over the past decade, Kyrgyzstan has developed a raft of youth policies, but few of these seem to genuinely improve young people’s access to information, rights, and opportunities. Too many of the laws, regulations, and conceptual documents
have been reactive: off-the-cuff responses to political events—particularly, young people’s participation in the popular uprisings that overthrew two presidents—rather than the enactment of a strategic vision. Worse still, many policies exist on paper only, without effective mechanisms to achieve their stated aims. Two
independent assessments, in 2006 and 2009, concluded that the country’s youth policy lacks “a comprehensive, systemic approach to existing problems” and “remains ineffective, poorly targeted and formalistic.”

Worryingly, many youth-related programs rely heavily on international donors and fluctuate together
with their priorities and resources. These weaknesses betray a deep-rooted problem: As part of its Soviet legacy, Kyrgyzstan lacks a strong, realistic policymaking tradition—one that relies on informed analysis and debate, prioritizes the well-being of citizens over the interests of a ruling elite and holds officials accountable for achieving measurable, demonstrably beneficial goals. Frequent changes in leadership and bureaucratic restructuring make the problem worse. In the past eight years, responsibility for youth policy has bounced around among six different agencies, creating a lack of continuity and further diluting officials’ accountability. Even the country’s first dedicated Ministry of Youth Affairs was created hastily, without a needs assessment or strategic planning, in response to young people’s participation in the deadly street protests of April 2010. The minister, a political appointee, had no previous policy experience, and the state budget provided almost no funding for the agency’s operations in its first year. Many of the ministry’s activities seemed to be more show than substance, while coordination with other agencies barely existed.

Moreover, after less than two years, the ministry was overhauled and partially merged with another agency. Many youth policies are currently being revised or written anew; unfortunately, this has become a perennial activity that seems to bear little fruit—in part because policy goals tend to be very broad and the means
of implementation very vague.Kyrgyzstan’s approach to creating a Youth Ministry, together with the latest wave of national youth policies, suggest that the country’s leadership has not learned from past mistakes
and that, despite vocal official commitments to young people, youth policy remains a low priority for the government. (Young people get only three cursory mentions in the 80-page national development strategy for 2012–2014.) Although youth-sector bureaucrats have justifiably complained of chronic underfunding, many of the deeper weaknesses lie elsewhere: Foundational youth policy documents adopted since 2009 contain contradictions and lack concreteness; responsibility for implementation continues to be diffuse; data collection and procedures for evaluating and monitoring policy are extremely weak; policy coherence, cross-sectoral cooperation, and creative approaches to engaging young people are also missing. Overall, Kyrgyzstan’s youth policy fails to focus on young people’s needs or future roles in society. It also retains several leftovers from Soviet times—including a paternalistic approach to young people, an emphasis on “talented youth,” and a desire to indoctrinate the young ideologically—today with a focus on pseudo-patriotic platitudes instead of communism. Although considerable rights and freedoms are guaranteed by law in Kyrgyzstan, the lack of a functioning legal system and the rigidity of certain social mores confine many of these to theory.

Predictably, the positive impact of past youth policies has been minimal. Many components of the national youth agendas in place from 2000 to 2008 were never implemented, while those that were tended to focus on entertainment and mass gatherings, genres largely inherited from the Soviet past. Specific unmet objectives fall into the categories of health care, economic independence, vocational guidance, and bridging the rural-urban divide in accessing services and opportunities. Meanwhile, the policy goal of boosting patriotism among young people has too often mutated into divisive nationalist rhetoric.
Existing policies seldom support young people in exercising their rights, accessing opportunities, or achieving autonomy. One area in which this is particularly obvious is education, where quality is notoriously below par and students’ rights, from primary school through university, are routinely violated or restricted. In the health field, too, youth policies have neither helped compensate for the generally sorry state of medical care nor done much to encourage healthy lifestyles among the young; youth friendly health services and information on reproductive health are sorely lacking. Labor policy has likewise been anemic and incoherent, doing desperately little to address unemployment among the young. Young people’s ability to avail themselves of those rights and opportunities that do exist has been stymied by a number of factors. One is a lack of knowledge, as information about youth relevant policies does not, for the most part, reach the intended beneficiaries. Two more include government dysfunction—which leads, in turn, to public distrust—and cultural traditions that put little stock in young people’s opinions. Some researchers have also pointed to internal obstacles for young people, such as a poor work ethic, weak communication skills, apathy, and fear.

Certain youth subgroups have a particularly hard time benefiting from existing policies. In various cases, these include: rural youth; physically and mentally disabled youth; homeless, abused, and institutionalized youth; young people who work; ethnic minorities; internal migrants and refugees; low-income youth; young women (especially those who have fallen victim to sexual abuse or bride-kidnapping); and young people in the hands of law enforcement or military agencies. One positive shift in youth policy over the past three years has been the explicit commitment to increase young people’s participation in decision making and public life. However, while the number of youth organizations seems to be growing and some groups of young people have shown ample energy in pursuing common aims, overall youth participation in vital sectors of the country’s life remains limited. This results both from young people’s own lack of knowledge and capacity and from a virtual absence of sustained institutional support for their meaningful participation. The most visibly active young people fall into three, sometimes overlapping categories: nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), politics, and civil service. The NGO sector includes
many impressive projects but remains quite atomized. Meanwhile, young people involved in politics have often become objects of manipulation rather than agents of positive change or the advancement of youth-relevant issues. And, though young people reportedly make up nearly one-fifth of civil servants, a fair
number of them complain that salaries are too low, future prospects are dim, and programs to train and recruit new staff have been deeply flawed, while others fall into the same patterns that have earned Kyrgyzstan’s civil service a bad reputation: corruption, nepotism, lack of professionalism, and the preeminence of personal benefit over the public good.

Finally, it is important to note that youth-related coordination and cooperation across sectors have been virtually absent. Responsibility for coordinating youth-relevant policy used to rest with the Youth Ministry, but the agency did not excel at this task. Prior to its reconfiguration and partial merger with the Ministry of Labor, Employment and Migration, the Youth Ministry was politically and financially weak and was looked at with a fair amount of skepticism by fellow government workers and NGOs alike. Often, the ministry was treated by other national agencies as a junior partner, while NGOs complained that it failed to complement their work or address pressing youth issues. Neither group had a clear understanding of the ministry’s aims and functions. At the end of 2011, the Youth Ministry proposed a number of measures to improve coordination among sectors, but they are marked by many of the same policymaking flaws that have haunted Kyrgyzstan’s youth policy for at least a decade: a lack of evidence-based planning and measurable goals; unclear responsibility for implementation; and no sanctions for non-implementation.

This excerpt (c) the authors and publishers of Youth and Public Policy in Kyrgyzstan

This entry was posted in Kyrgyzstan, Uncategorized and tagged Higher education, Kyrgyzstan, public policy, young people, youth.

Tajik higher education: dress smart and pay up

Posted on September 20, 2012

Hello! Long time, no see… It’s been an eventful summer with the events in Khorog, Tajikistan causing us great concern and anxiety. Life appears to be normalising again and I do hope the current calm prevails. On the home front I have been elected Chair of the Governing Body at our local primary school and that has been keeping me very busy as I get up to speed on everything from school finances to strategic planning to recruitment and retention of pupils. All this on top of my full-time job (getting even fuller as we approach the start of the Oxford term and the descent of 200 new students!) and the to-ings and fro-ings of family life.

Whilst I’ve been watching out for stories on Central Asian higher education over the last couple of months, there hasn’t been much of interest. Last week, however, a first-hand account by Temur Mengliev of the current situation in one Tajik university appeared and that’s what this posting is based on. Thanks to Alexander Sodiqov via Global Voices Online for bringing my attention to this.

Mengliev’s blog post on the brilliantly named site blogiston.tj (Russian) is called:

Высшее образование: корочки, коррупция и галстуки

which roughly translates from Russian as:

Higher education: cards*, corruption and [neck]ties

*Cards here meaning the ID-card style diploma booklet awarded to graduates. The same word is also used to describe (in vernacular) the ID cards that the police carry. It’s a shame the word doesn’t work as well in English as the title has nice alliteration and rhythm in Russian: korochki, korruptsiya i galstuki.

On to the content of the post. The original version is at http://blogiston.tj/index.php/ru/blogi/vysshee-obrazovanie-korochki-korruptsiya-i-galstuki and I encourage Russian readers to see the original. (The comments thread underneath was less interesting than some I’ve seen so don’t dwell there). Here’s a rough translation in English:

So, now everything’s changed. I’ve finished my five years at university. I got through several pairs of trousers [there is a lovely Russian verb here which makes a literal translation ‘I have sat through several pairs of trousers!’] and got through tons of science. And now it is my younger brother’s turn to become a student.

What is it exactly that’s changed? It’s that my little brother looks on university only as a place where he needs to go regularly and at the end he’ll get a much-desired degree certificate. I do mean literally ‘to go’ – studying, in principle, isn’t compulsory. He says that there are some girls and *even* one guy who genuinely study! They read books! But everyone laughs at them – it just isn’t cool to study. Especially at the Pedagogical University [which trains teachers!!]. No one wants to become a teacher once they’ve graduated. So it makes no sense to study.

What’s also changed is that bribing to pay your way in to university is no longer a last resort that you call on only when you couldn’t get in the usual way, but pretty much the only way to become a student (and get out of conscription to the army). If five years ago, students hid the fact that they’d bribed their way in to uni, well, now they actively discuss amongst themselves who paid, how much and to whom. My little brother told me that one of his coursemates was an idiot because he’d paid $1,000 [USD] more than the others.

Another changes is that many students quite happily wear (neck)ties, and this “forced labour” doesn’t drive them crazy. Their teachers honestly believe that the wearing of a tie is an obligation, and that the student in a tie studies better.

And there is a genuinely sad change: the older generation of university teachers has pretty much gone. Their places has been taken by plenty of young and inexperienced teachers, whose level of knowledge isn’t that much greater than that of their students.

So that’s what’s happened: students now bribe their way into university, study just to get the degree certificate… but wear a tie with pleasure.

Yes, this is a slighly light hearted look at the higher education scene at one particular university in Tajikistan’s capital Dushanbe, and the author’s obsession with ties is slightly bizarre. Yes, there’s an element of nostalgia from someone who now needs to make the next step in life. But beyond the humour there are some very serious undercurrents and that’s why I felt it was important to share the post with an English-language audience.

We are told very directly about outright shameless corruption, and amongst young people too. The Tajik government has confessed that the Ministry of Education is the most corrupt department in the national government (which, as I have pointed out before, is quite some achievement) and it is well known that university teachers are paid very poorly indeed. This helps explain why teachers are taking bribes: if their own salaries don’t suffice, then you’ve got to live somehow.

Nonetheless, I’m not excusing this behaviour, and I find it desperately sad that paying your way has become commonplace. Many young people’s aspirations are raised as they go through school education to consider staying on for higher education but at what price is this for their sense of moral direction? (Whilst the lure of avoiding conscription is a strong draw for many young men, this isn’t unique to Tajikistan and that has been the same for some years so isn’t a strong argument for the growth in corruption).

What value is ascribed to higher education when you neither need to be smart to get in or work hard to do well? What example is being set for the future of these young people once they graduate? And does anyone in the national government care enough to do something about this before another generation waste their time wearing ties and visiting their campuses just so they can be seen there?

This entry was posted in Tajikistan, Uncategorized and tagged Bureaucratic madness, corruption, Higher education, Tajikistan, youth.

Modern day Kazakhs: young, uncertain and ‘lazy’?

Posted on July 23, 2012 Updated on July 23, 2012

Tengri News today reports on a study in which a group of experts have tried to come up with an illustration of the modern day Kazakh.

The group make some interesting assertions, focussing on young people in their depictions. Here’s the article reposted in full:

Psychologists, economists and financial experts have attempted to create a collective image of a modern Kazakhstan citizen, Tengrinews.kz reports.
According to Director of the Association of Practicing Psychologists Aleksey Kulikov, contemporary Kazakhstan citizen is able to set goals and achieve them consistently. His/her goals are not global, like saving the world or attaining the global peace; they are very local and concrete.

However, according to Kulikov, an average Kazakhstan citizen is rather lazy. This is especially true for young people. “Parents give them a lot and this kills a person’s motivation to do everything himself. This causes laziness and some kind of passivity. When such person grows up and the time comes to work, it is very difficult for him. We hold trainings in major company and see a lot of people with good positions and wages, but without any drive. They are not the leaders they should be.”

According to the psychologist, the fact that Kazakhstan is a big country and its population is small compared to its territory makes modern Kazakhstan citizens are more sensitive about competition than the citizens of other countries. “Yes, there are forty candidates for one position in Europe, their population is much larger. But we have less people and, thus, fewer companies and fewer positions. One has to fight for his job, prove himself and be a careerist,” he said suggesting that modern Kazakhstan citizen would have been more successful if he was not lazy.

Making the image of modern Kazakhstan citizen, the experts focused on young people stressing that a modern Kazakhstan citizen is young. Director of the Center for Analysis of Public Issues Meruert Makhmutova said: “Who is the modern Kazakhstan citizen? It is difficult to characterize categorically, as there are two poles. Speaking about youth, those who pull the carts at the markets and have no clear plans for the future are on one pole. Those getting good education in the best Western universities are on the other pole. But I can confidently say that a modern Kazakhstan citizen does not know what will happen to him in five years. Before (during soviet time) it was all predictable: school, university, work. There is no predictability these days,” the speaker said.

“A modern Kazakhstan citizen has a low level of economic literacy,” Serik Akhanov, Doctor of Economics said. According to him, this is confirmed by how Kazakhstan citizen is not rational is spending his salary, is not practical in household use. He does not save money for education of his children. “The most terrible is that he does not save money for a “rainy” day either. Modern Kazakhstan citizen is a Homo Faber, Man the Creator. But I dream that he becomes a Homo Sapiens, a Thinking Man,” the expert said.

According to him, Kazakhstan citizens are quite talented people who live in the nomad culture. “We are still wandering, but in a metaphorical sense: we are in a constant change of impressions, constant change of lifestyle. We, Kazakhstan citizens, are able to build the “people’s” capitalism. The most important thing is that everyone should work,” he said.

For more information see:http://en.tengrinews.kz/people/Modern-Kazakhstan-citizen-is-a-careerist-and-lazybones-11608/

Article (c) Arman Baimukhanov, Tengri News

This entry was posted in Kazakhstan, Uncategorized and tagged Central Asia, Kazakhstan, post-Soviet, social change, youth.

Emma Sabzalieva

Education, society and politics in Central Asia