Kazakhstan is known as one of the most stable republics in the former Soviet Union, but the possibility of growth of interethnic tension is by no means negligible in this multinational country. This paper aims to study the factors which determine interethnic (especially Kazakh-Russian) relations in Kazakhstan, by examining concrete events and controversies in recent years.
Soon after
perestroika began, in December, 1986, youths in Alma-Ata held a demonstration to protest against the nomination of Gennadii Kolbin to the post of the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan. The demonstration itself was peaceful and not nationalistic, but soon tension emerged between demonstrators and officials, who refused to have a dialogue with them. The conflict assumed an ethnic character when the Party organised vigilante corps of Russian workers. The authorities severely suppressed the demonstration and described it as nationalist riots, all the more exacerbating the Kazakhs' sense of humiliation and the Russians' distrust of Kazakhs. After four years, the events were revalued by a special commission.
In 1989-1990, when the republics of the Soviet Union were strengthening their self-assertion, Viktor Kozlov, Solzhenitsyn and other Russians argued that parts of Kazakhstan should be transferred to Russia. Immediately after the failed coup in August, 1991, Yeltsin also stated that Russia has a right to pose territoial claims, and caused strong protests in Kazakhstan. At almost the same time, Cossacks in northern and north-western Kazakhstan increased their activity, demanding annexation of their area to Russia, inviting Russian Cossacks to their festival, revitalizing their tradition as fighters.
In 1992, the first year of independence of Kazakhstan, there was a heated controversy about languages. Many Russians, worried about their future as a minority, demanded to make Russian, in addition to Kazakh, a state language, whereas many Kazakhs, indignant at the past colonial oppression and the decline of the Kazakhlanguage, maintained that Kazakh should remain the single state language. The new constitution, which was adopted in January, 1993, declared Kazakh the state language, and Russian the language of interethnic communication, as did the language law in 1989. There are differences of opinion on some themes, including language questions, between urban Kazakhs and rural-rooted Kazakhs, too.
Thus, interethnic relations in Kazakhstan tend to become tense when the state stands at some turning point. With the adoption of the new constitution, the basic state structure was determined, but some important problems, including that of the autonomy of minorities and the characterisation of the country, remain unresolved. Success in keeping interethnic harmony will largely depend on whether the people of Kazakhstan, without distinction of nationality, can obtain “Kazakhstani” identity, based on the Kazakhs' nomadic open mentality and the will to make Kazakhstan a bridge between Asia and Europe.
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