The Christmas TV Special

December 30, 2007

If there is one thing that I believe all countries have in common, regardless their other cultural, religious, or political differences, it is the Christmas Movie Special. In America we spend hours watching classics “It’s a Wonderful Life” or “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer”, and in Kazakstan things are much the same, yet very different in interesting and amusing ways. For example, here in Kazakstan the subject of their holiday special was not Santa Claus or Rudolph, but rather the Romanov family. I thought this to be an odd choice for a Christmas special. Christmas movies are supposed to end happily ever after, and we all know that the story of the Romanov’s hardly fits that description. Furthermore, the Romanov family, particularly Anastasia, was the protagonist of the film, while the Red Army was portrayed as the ignoble force of the evil Rasputin. This struck me as very strange because while Kazakstan may be an independent country now, it still has close ties to Russia, and there are many here who look back on Soviet times with nostalgia. There are soviet monuments everywhere and many schools such as mine are named after heroes of the Red Army. Furthermore, Nazerbaev, like many Central Asian leaders was an important figure in the Kazakstan Communist Part before he became president. Why would they show a film that demonizes a close ally, and celebrates a family that are portrayed in Russian and Central Asian history as incompetent and blind to the needs of the people? I can only guess that Kazakstan is possibly reevaluating its relationship with its former master and trying to create a viewpoint on certain events and ideas that is different from the party line of Moscow. The more likely scenario is that I am reading too much into a cartoon featuring talking birds that come out of Faberge eggs, but you never know, we will just have to see what the New Year brings.