Western propaganda

           I often hear about the so-called Western propaganda. Say, the West undermines our traditional foundations, and wants to destroy our way of life.

           And sometimes I myself feel like such a “bomber”.

          I have one friend from a neighboring republic. It is a beautiful country where a hardworking and patient people live. However, in my opinion, they were unlucky with a ruler who established an authoritarian regime, I would even say, a police regime. I sympathize with my acquaintance and often tell him: you can live better than you are now living; you can get a fair payment for your hard work; you can live in a free market, freely sell and buy goods, freely exchange currency; you can freely leave the country, travel the world; you can live in democracy, not in the patriarchal past and so on.

         We, Kazakhstanis have almost all of this and we take it for granted. But when I say it to him, he looks around, frightened. Such conversations are perceived by them as sedition and anti-state propaganda. And in the eyes of the special services of his country, I am exactly – a foreign spy, leading subversive activities, who does not understand anything in the “special way of development” of this eastern country with its specificity of democracy and happiness.