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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Kazakstan
Index
The 1980s brought glimmers of political independence, as well as
conflict, as the central government's hold progressively weakened. In this
period, Kazakstan was ruled by a succession of three Communist Party
officials; the third of those men, Nursultan Nazarbayev, continued as
president of the Republic of Kazakstan when independence was proclaimed in
1991.
In December 1986, Soviet premier Mikhail S. Gorbachev (in office
1985-91) forced the resignation of Dinmukhamed Kunayev, an ethnic Kazak
who had led the republic as first secretary of the CPK from 1959 to 1962,
and again starting in 1964. During 1985, Kunayev had been under official
attack for cronyism, mismanagement, and malfeasance; thus, his departure
was not a surprise. However, his replacement, Gennadiy Kolbin, an ethnic
Russian with no previous ties to Kazakstan, was unexpected. Kolbin was a
typical administrator of the early Gorbachev era--enthusiastic about
economic and administrative reforms but hardly mindful of their
consequences or viability.
The announcement of Kolbin's appointment provoked spontaneous street
demonstrations by Kazaks, to which Soviet authorities responded with
force. Demonstrators, many of them students, rioted. Two days of disorder
followed, and at least 200 people died or were summarily executed soon
after. Some accounts estimate casualties at more than 1,000.
Kunayev had been ousted largely because the economy was failing.
Although Kazakstan had the third-largest gross domestic product (GDP--see
Glossary) in the Soviet Union, trailing only Russia and Ukraine, by 1987
labor productivity had decreased 12 percent, and per capita income had
fallen by 24 percent of the national norm. By that time, Kazakstan was
underproducing steel at an annual rate of more than a million tons.
Agricultural output also was dropping precipitously.
While Kolbin was promoting a series of unrealistic, Moscow-directed
campaigns of social reform, expressions of Kazak nationalism were
prompting Gorbachev to address some of the non-Russians' complaints about
cultural self-determination. One consequence was a new tolerance of
bilingualism in the non-Russian regions. Kolbin made a strong commitment
to promoting the local language and in 1987 suggested that Kazak become
the republic's official language. However, none of his initiatives went
beyond empty public-relations ploys. In fact, the campaign in favor of
bilingualism was transformed into a campaign to improve the teaching of
Russian.
While attempting to conciliate the Kazak population with promises,
Kolbin also conducted a wholesale purge of pro-Kunayev members of the CPK,
replacing hundreds of republic-level and local officials. Although
officially "nationality-blind," Kolbin's policies seemed to be
directed mostly against Kazaks. The downfall of Kolbin, however, was the
continued deterioration of the republic's economy during his tenure.
Agricultural output had fallen so low by 1989 that Kolbin proposed to
fulfill meat quotas by slaughtering the millions of wild ducks that
migrate through Kazakstan. The republic's industrial sector had begun to
recover slightly in 1989, but credit for this progress was given largely
to Nursultan Nazarbayev, an ethnic Kazak who had become chairman of
Kazakstan's Council of Ministers in 1984.
As nationalist protests became more violent across the Soviet Union in
1989, Gorbachev began calling for the creation of popularly elected
legislatures and for the loosening of central political controls to make
such elections possible. These measures made it increasingly plain in
Kazakstan that Kolbin and his associates soon would be replaced by a new
generation of Kazak leaders.
Rather than reinvigorate the Soviet people to meet national tasks,
Gorbachev's encouragement of voluntary local organi-zations only
stimulated the formation of informal political groups, many of which had
overtly nationalist agendas. For the Kazaks, such agendas were presented
forcefully on national television at the first Congress of People's
Deputies, which was convened in Moscow in June 1989. By that time, Kolbin
was already scheduled for rotation back to Moscow, but his departure
probably was hastened by riots in June 1989 in Novyy Uzen, an impoverished
western Kazakstan town that produced natural gas. That rioting lasted
nearly a week and claimed at least four lives.
Data as of March 1996
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