An Ostensibly Discarded Wife

The president of Kazakhstan, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, technically divorced his Khazar (aka Jewish) wife as he took the office. For more than 30 years, she stood by him, helping the advancement of his stellar career as Mr. Tokayev held such important positions, like the Foreign Minister of Kazakhstan, Prime Minister of Kazakhstan, and Deputy Secretary General of the United Nations. But, the majority of Kazakhs don’t like a non-Kazakh woman to be their First Lady. Even before his ascension to the highest office in the country, he practically hid her from the public scrutiny.

Her maiden name was unknown to the general audience, as well as her exact birthday. I managed to uncover some data on her. Nadezhda Poznanskaya was born on January 23, 1957. Her father, David Poznanskiy, was a Russified Polish Khazar (the surname “Poznanskiy” indicates that their ancestors were from a city of Poznań in Poland. That is quite a common practice to form Jewish surnames. For instance, a Kazakhstani Khazar TV-producer Leo Mariupolskiy has ancestors from an Ukrainian city of Mariupol).

So, when Mr. Tokayev married Mrs. Tokayeva in 1983, it was a rather successful choice for him. A son of an obscure Kazakh writer from the outskirts of the Soviet Union took a well-educated Jewish girl from Moscow, as his wife! She gave life to his son Timur. She accompanied his ascension to power. But, he discarded her, though technically, for populist reasons. Their story resembles that of the Belarus’ president, Aleksandr Lukashenko, and his legitimate wife, Galina. When Mr. Lukashenko was elected as the president of Belarus in 1994, he stopped relations with her, although technically they have not divorced. She ever since has lived in a distant village.

By the way, the Russian president Vladimir Putin also leads a questionable private life, resembling that of his Kazakh and Belorussian satellites. After he divorced his wife, Lyudmila, in 2013 very little has been leaked about private life of the Russian president. Even before the divorce, Mr. Putin had been practically never seen in public with his wife or daughters. This circumstance echoes with the lifestyle of Mr. Tokayev, who also is very rarely being seen with his family in public. So, relatively modest Communist leaders of the USSR were superseded mostly by wanton monarchs in this part of the world, who don’t care about public opinion concerning their private life, which should have been an example of family values.

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