SUMMARY:

This text is an interview with Eleonora Suleimenova, a prominent researcher on multilingualism in Kazakhstan. The interview explores the historical and contemporary status of the Russian language in Kazakhstan, particularly focusing on its shift from being the dominant “second native language” tongue during the Soviet era to potentially evolving into a distinct “Kazakh Russian” variant. Based on the example of her family history, Suleimenova traces the history of Russian-language penetration into Kazakh society. She details the linguistic and demographic impacts of colonization and Soviet policies, including forced collectivization and internal migration, which led to a massive language shift toward Russian among urban Kazakhs. She argues that the Russian language in Kazakhstan is undergoing a process of diversification and detachment from Russianness that exhibits unique lexical and usage features influenced by the Kazakh language, while the contemporary political landscape increasingly prioritizes Kazakh as the state language and promotes trilingualism.