Squatting in Kazakhstan
Under the 1977 Constitution of the Soviet Union, housing was guaranteed for every citizen, with internal migration controlled by the need for a propiska (permit) to live and work somewhere.[2] By the 1980s, many people had a propiska to live in Almaty (then Alma-Ata), Kazakhstan's largest city and the capital at the time, but had not been allocated an apartment.[1] In 2021, the authorities announced that satellite observation had determined there were 400,000 squats across the country and corrupt officials were blamed for selling off land illegally and producing false documents.[4][5] When Kazakhstan grew wealthy through oil sales, the Almaty administration announced development schemes and planned to demolish shanty towns where people were living without running water in order to build luxury housing.Whilst in prison, he wrote a book criticising President Nursultan Nazarbayev and his administration called The Heart of Eurasia which was smuggled out and published in 2012.
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