ALMATY, Kazakhstan -- There is no better evidence that censorship exists in a country than when a book slated for publication simply cannot get printed there.
Daniyar Moldabekov’s book, Year Of January, is more than 300 pages and packed with on-the-ground reporting both from the days when protests and then deadly clashes engulfed Kazakhstan in January 2022, as well as from the trials and political turning points that followed.
But it might never see the light of day -- in Kazakhstan, at least.
“The publishing house paid for the translation of the text into Kazakh, paid for the design of the cover, and even paid me an advance. Everything was going well,” Moldabekov explained in a column for the Respublika independent media website on February 5. “But then the publisher told me that ‘law enforcement agencies’ approached the printing house that was supposed to start printing it.”
The unrest of January 2022 killed at least 238 people, the vast majority of them civilians, and required a detachment of troops from the Moscow-led Collective Security Treaty Organization to restore order.
It also upended the balance of power between Kazakhstan’s current and former presidents, forcing the retirement from public life of ex-leader Nursultan Nazarbaev, while emboldening his hand-picked successor-turned-rival, President Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev.
Moldabekov had already received notice, prior to the grim news from the printing house, that authorities were anxious about the text.
Amid strong preorders -- the publisher compared the interest to that of Nazarbaev’s recently released autobiography -- authorities had asked for a copy of the work, the publisher told Moldabekov, as well as the author's contact details.
Kazakhstan claims not to practice censorship.
But this is not the first time a private company suddenly backed away from being associated with something about Bloody January.
In the fall of 2022, for instance, the management of an Almaty cinema that had intended to show two films on the topic as part of an independent film festival turned back would-be viewers, citing “technical difficulties.”
And while critical interpretations of the events face a difficult path to being seen, official and pseudo-official accounts are widely available.
One of them -- a book called Tragic January written by the relatively famous Russian publicist and presenter Leonid Mlechin -- is easy to find in Almaty bookstores.
Good Leader, Bad Leader
The first clue that Mlechin’s book has the endorsement of Kazakhstan’s current government is its title.
Tragic January, or The January Tragedy, is Toqaev’s preferred name for the events that began with peaceful protests over a New Year spike in the cost of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) and ended with a security crackdown that reinforced state control at a high human cost.
That phrasing never quite caught on at the grassroots level like the alliterative Qandy Qantar, which is the original Kazakh of Bloody January.
The second clue is that throughout the text Mlechin cites interviews with numerous high-ranking officials, including Toqaev, who declared that he had ordered state forces to shoot-to-kill without warning at the peak of the crisis.
And the final indicator is the fact that large parts of the book are not about the tragedy at all, but about Toqaev, his family background, his diplomatic career, his qualities, and his philosophy on life.
Spoiler: All of it is positive.
From the outset, Mlechin makes no bones about the fact that his primary audience is Russians rather than Kazakhs.
The book begins:
“If you go to neighboring Kazakhstan as a tourist or on a business trip then -- as in the past -- you will not feel like a foreigner. You can speak in Russian, all the signs on the street are in Russian. In Kazakhstan they understand us perfectly. But how well do we understand Kazakhstan and Kazakhs?”
Tragic January is curious insofar as it claims an informed inside-track knowledge of the titanic power struggle that -- depending on whom you believe -- either resulted from or precipitated the chaos on the streets during those early days of 2022.
The book’s clear villain is the former chairman of the Committee for National Security, Karim Masimov, who was sentenced to 18 years in prison on treason charges last April.
Nazarbaev and his broader clan are also under the microscope, with the author openly speculating on their potential roles in fomenting the unrest in order to jettison Toqaev from the presidency.
The sourcing for these assertions is a mixed bag.
Sometimes Mlechin quotes hearsay and chatter on social networks, sometimes from current and former officials, sometimes from Toqaev himself.
Yet what becomes clear throughout the work is that there are many questions that he never bothered putting to either Toqaev or the procession of establishment hawks who offered their takes, sometimes in order to implicate figures now outside of the regime.
There is no mention, for instance, of 4-year-old Aikorkem Meldekhan who, according to preliminary expertise, died from military fire in Almaty the day after forces under Toqaev’s ultimate command regained control over Kazakhstan’s largest city.
Nor was there any mention of the other innocent people who died during the crisis.
Or of the scale of complaints about torture and mistreatment on the part of protesters and passersby detained during the crisis, only a fraction of which resulted in convictions for police and members of the security services.
'Time Flies In Three Seconds'
To find out more about those things you would have to read Moldabekov’s book.
Because what Year Of January lacks in privileged access to top-level officialdom, it makes up for in atmosphere, personal touch, and relentless reporting.
In a draft seen by RFE/RL correspondents, Moldabekov describes in intimate detail his experiences on January 4, 2022, in Almaty -- the day the government lost control of the city during the largest protest in Kazakhstan’s history.
Moldabekov injured his leg falling in an irrigation ditch during that protest, as demonstrators went toe-to-toe with police in a suffocating cloud of tear gas.
After protesters helped him into a taxi to get home, the cab driver refused a fare.
“What money, brother? This is a beautiful night!” the driver said.
Moldabekov’s interviews with Bloody January participants -- many of them recovering from injuries sustained in detention -- are extensive, drawing on life stories and motivations in sketching a portrait of Kazakhstan in the process.
And, of course, Moldabekov reflects regularly and critically on Toqaev’s public pronouncements, as well as on three decades of Nazarbaev domination that brought Kazakhstan to such a nation-defining point.
Observing that many of the answers about what really happened during the crisis remain buried in top-classified investigations and shuttered trials, Moldabekov argues in his book’s conclusion that “New Kazakhstan, claiming distinction from the old version in terms of democratic credentials, has turned out in practice to be more like Closed Kazakhstan.”
But if authoritarian secrecy and censorship persist, their subjects of interest have undergone a noticeable change.
Prior to January 2022, Nazarbaev was Kazakhstan’s constitutionally enshrined “Elbasy” (Leader of the Nation) and insulting him was a crime with a maximum prison sentence of three years.
Those privileges have been taken away from the octogenarian now, as has the name of the capital city, which reverted back to Astana after three years as “Nur-Sultan,” all done with silent approval from Toqaev.
But none of that beats the symbolism of the statue of the former president in the southern town of Taldyqorghan, which demonstrators tore to the ground to cheers during the 2022 protests.
That moment is now being celebrated again in an artistic exhibition starring a series of “falling Nazarbaev” mini-statues in a government-owned cultural building in Almaty.
“To be in power for 30 years and leave it in three seconds!" Erbolsyn Meldebek, the artist behind the exhibition, told RFE/RL’s Kazakh Service. "Here I show how time can fly in those three seconds."
