Kazakhstan's purge

The Economist
18.06.2009

Family ties can make or break a person in Kazakhstan. They help when it comes to advancing a career, be it in business or in politics. Kazakh tradition requires you to support your relatives whenever possible. If your family lacks clout, an alternative is to attach yourself to a well-placed patron. One drawback with this system, however, is that it works both ways: if the patron falls for whatever reason, it almost always leads to the downfall of everyone connected with him.

This helps explain the shocking, unprecedented numbers of Kazakhstani officials and businessmen in trouble in recent months. Ekspert Kazakhstan, a business weekly, this month carried a picture of a faceless man in a dark suit and tie, covered with horizontal white stripes and the headline "Everyone is being put in clink!" Some older people talk of troubling echoes of Stalin's purges in the late 1930s.

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