This article was taken from the databank of one organization, which known for his grants to students. Applicants to the scholarship, according to apply conditions must contribute his opinions on the future of his native country and nation. So, read Kazakh student’s thoughts on the future of Kazakhstan. Is it so superficial? Your opinions please…

Future - the scene where the dream of humankind inhabits. We can compare it with the trunk, where our dreams are collected and where there are waiting their time to become materialized.Future is the platform, where the past meets with the present and prodding the “system” to refresh its memories with instigating new history. New history - the history of the future, is the product of the past “plus” the present and they are recognized as the main engineers of it.

The past of my country, Kazakhstan, was full up with oppressive actions executed to Kazakh people and mainly to its intelligentsia. Nation’s present was constrained by the authoritarianism, the regime which was declared as liberalistic and equalitarian by it’s architects. But in real, it was the regime of slavery and poverty for non-dominant cultures of the system. The past of my nation is the big concern on future and the main question of it was: Will it (the future) repeat the present whether will it become the sign of happiness? So, the last question was our motto to form the present we faced now as the sovereign country in Central Asia.

Our sovereign country was born from the ashes of Communism, and the anxieties disturbing our minds were still unsolved. This consequence underlined the hopeless condition of present, but in other way emphasized that the happy future must be form “right now” with taking into account the nation’s past. This effort to guarantee and to consolidate the future affected to all vital fields of our lives and state. This dialectics reflects the logic of newly formed state and emerging market too. This rationale played as catalyst to become more developed, more democratic, more liberal and more capitalistic. Our efforts initiated under the aegis of modernization were derived or are the product of nation’s dream, which was suppressed by the realities of authoritarian reality. And after the collapse of Berlin Wall and the collapse of ancient -communistic- regime, nation’s new past became the legacy for present days.

16 years had passed and day by day we’re trying to strengthen our sovereignty and our dependence to world’s main issues with revising the past and reshaping today the present. Kazakhstan’s reshaping processes are synonymous to processes like democratization and liberalization, to such processes which are aiming to improve law, human rights, civil society, multicultural community and market of course. We radically changed our course by facing the truth of the new present, recognized as “the end of history” by Western colleagues. Let me add, that there were no any worthy alternative rather than integrating with world-system or “the new world order”.

So, Kazakhstan’s future depends on the definitions we brought and will bring to the processes we launched. By wishing more idealistic (and maybe utopic) future, we must fulfill all the modernization-centered reforms we started in more realistic way. Our effort to become more “civilized” in modern meaning, must be realized by applying to “civilized” instruments and tendencies. The tendencies, which will bring us to our happy future, and which will instigate us to face the present’s realities (which are still whishing the best).