When national ambition conflicts with reality: Studies on Kazakhstan's ethnic relations

Central Asian Survey

Volumn 15, Issue 1, 1996, Pages 5-21

  Janabel, Jiger ^a  

^a HARVARD UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0343319541     PISSN: 02634937     EISSN: None     Source Type: Trade Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/02634939608400930     Document Type: Article

References (64)

1. Reuters, 11 October 1994, pp 4, 7.
2. Ibid, 13 October, p 4.
3. Nezavi'slmaya gazeta, 10 April 1993, p. 3.
4. Elf Aquitaine will invest 1 billion francs in the development of oil and gas deposits in Aktyubinsk oblast, Kazakhstan, according to Izvestia (21 September 1993, p 2). Total trade between Kazakhstan and France reached $6.2m in 1993 (Summary of World Broadcasts, 17 June 1994, p WC/5).
5. Elf Aquitaine will invest 1 billion francs in the development of oil and gas deposits in Aktyubinsk oblast, Kazakhstan, according to Izvestia (21 September 1993, p 2). Total trade between Kazakhstan and France reached $6.2m in 1993 (Summary of World Broadcasts, 17 June 1994, p WC/5).
6. Nezavisimaya gazeta, 4 December 1993, p 3.
7. Summary of World Broadcasts, 11 April 1994, p G/2.
8. Central Asia Monitor, 1, 1994, p 6.
9. According to the survey of IPA House organization, foreign cars now claim a 38 per cent share of Kazakhstan's auto market (Labyrinth, Central Asia Quarterly, Summer 1994, p 26).
10. In 1993, both the Austrian and Chinese governments signed agreements with the Kazakhstan government to build three-star hotels in Almaty, but later withdrew for unknown reasons.
11. Kazakstan's total sales of export goods in 1993 amounted to $1.318bn, and the group of non-ferrous and ferrous metals occupies first place among the exports in value terms according to Karavan, a weekly newspaper published in Russian in Almaty (15 July 1994, pp 41-42). Summary of World Broadcasts, 3 August 1994, SUW/0344, p WA/5.
12. Kazakstan's total sales of export goods in 1993 amounted to $1.318bn, and the group of non-ferrous and ferrous metals occupies first place among the exports in value terms according to Karavan, a weekly newspaper published in Russian in Almaty (15 July 1994, pp 41-42). Summary of World Broadcasts, 3 August 1994, SUW/0344, p WA/5.
13. The tension over the dual citizenship is, at least for now, resolved. As of June 1994 'there are only 20,000 citizens who have formerly opted not to take Kazakh citizenship' (ITAR-TASS news agency 'world service', Moscow, in English 0658 GMT, 23 June 1994).
14. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's article, 'How we can revitalize Russia' (Komsomolskaya pravda, 19 September 1990; Literaturnaya gazeta, 19 September 1990) ignited a ferocious protest among the Kazakhs who read the writer's lines: 'If the nomads' herds passed through some place once a year, that was Kazakhstan' as an incitement to sever northern Kazakhstan. A government-endorsed conference was held and a rally was organized. The ethnic atmosphere was, according to the observation of the current writer, who was on the scene, explosively tense (Izvestia, 24 September 1990, p 2). As regard the Cossacks in Kazakhstan, they are still very active and have not officially been banned (Panorama, 2 May 1994; Central Asia Monitor, 3, 1994, p 3.)
15. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's article, 'How we can revitalize Russia' (Komsomolskaya pravda, 19 September 1990; Literaturnaya gazeta, 19 September 1990) ignited a ferocious protest among the Kazakhs who read the writer's lines: 'If the nomads' herds passed through some place once a year, that was Kazakhstan' as an incitement to sever northern Kazakhstan. A government-endorsed conference was held and a rally was organized. The ethnic atmosphere was, according to the observation of the current writer, who was on the scene, explosively tense (Izvestia, 24 September 1990, p 2). As regard the Cossacks in Kazakhstan, they are still very active and have not officially been banned (Panorama, 2 May 1994; Central Asia Monitor, 3, 1994, p 3.)
16. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's article, 'How we can revitalize Russia' (Komsomolskaya pravda, 19 September 1990; Literaturnaya gazeta, 19 September 1990) ignited a ferocious protest among the Kazakhs who read the writer's lines: 'If the nomads' herds passed through some place once a year, that was Kazakhstan' as an incitement to sever northern Kazakhstan. A government-endorsed conference was held and a rally was organized. The ethnic atmosphere was, according to the observation of the current writer, who was on the scene, explosively tense (Izvestia, 24 September 1990, p 2). As regard the Cossacks in Kazakhstan, they are still very active and have not officially been banned (Panorama, 2 May 1994; Central Asia Monitor, 3, 1994, p 3.)
17. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's article, 'How we can revitalize Russia' (Komsomolskaya pravda, 19 September 1990; Literaturnaya gazeta, 19 September 1990) ignited a ferocious protest among the Kazakhs who read the writer's lines: 'If the nomads' herds passed through some place once a year, that was Kazakhstan' as an incitement to sever northern Kazakhstan. A government-endorsed conference was held and a rally was organized. The ethnic atmosphere was, according to the observation of the current writer, who was on the scene, explosively tense (Izvestia, 24 September 1990, p 2). As regard the Cossacks in Kazakhstan, they are still very active and have not officially been banned (Panorama, 2 May 1994; Central Asia Monitor, 3, 1994, p 3.)
18. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's article, 'How we can revitalize Russia' (Komsomolskaya pravda, 19 September 1990; Literaturnaya gazeta, 19 September 1990) ignited a ferocious protest among the Kazakhs who read the writer's lines: 'If the nomads' herds passed through some place once a year, that was Kazakhstan' as an incitement to sever northern Kazakhstan. A government-endorsed conference was held and a rally was organized. The ethnic atmosphere was, according to the observation of the current writer, who was on the scene, explosively tense (Izvestia, 24 September 1990, p 2). As regard the Cossacks in Kazakhstan, they are still very active and have not officially been banned (Panorama, 2 May 1994; Central Asia Monitor, 3, 1994, p 3.)
19. For example, French investors expressed their serious concern to Nursultan Nazarbaev while President Mitterrand was signing contracts with the latter (Izvestia, 21 September 1993, p 3).
20. Graham Fuller, a research fellow from RAND, for instance, expressed this view at a conference organized by the Woodrow Wilson Foundation in Washington, DC (8-9 September 1994).
21. For instance, Martha B. Olcott writes: 'Political stability has been preserved in Kazakhstan, in large part because this republic was part of a much larger multi-national state,' in Ian Bremmer and Ray Taras, eds., Nations & Politics in the Soviet Successor States (Cambridge University Press, 1993), p 313.
22. The Current Digest of the Soviet Press, 45, 48, 1993, p 20.
23. The author has personally experienced how attractive these laws are to overseas Kazakhs. A Kazakh who lives in Germany, for instance, now spends just one-fifth as much for a regular round trip airline ticket to Kazakhstan as other German citizens.
24. Izvestia, 11 November 1991, p 4.
25. A conversation with Jibek Amerkhanova, President of Kazakh Friendly Society. She was also responsible for the opening of a regular flight: Almaty-Bayan Olgey, the centre of Western Mongolia. The figure introduced here includes previously settled Kazakhs from Mongolia. A rough estimation put Mongolian Kazakhs at approximately 120,000 men. However, Shirin Akiner estimates that the number of immigrants from Mongolia in 1993 was 40,000 (Central Asia: New Arc of Crisis, Great Britain, 1993, p 45).
26. The Kazakhs from Turkey have mostly aimed at business opportunities; they have not decided to settle permanently there. While the Kazakhs from China are eager to cut a piece of arable land for their future returning to Kazakhstan, they are now less attracted because of the bad economy in Kazakhstan. As a result, I estimate that there are not more than 50 households from Turkey and China combined that migrated to Kazakhstan.
27. The impact of Islam on the Kazakhs is one of the important subjects that has to be dealt with, but due to limitations of space here, I will treat the subject in length in my forthcoming PhD dissertation (Harvard University).
28. A. Gaidarov, Head of the Republican Kazakh Language Association, puts the number of Kazakhs who have lost the ability to communicate in Kazakh while being fluent in Russian as high as 60 per cent of the total native population.
29. The author was among the foreign witnesses of the collapse of the Soviet Empire in 1991. Instead of jubilance, he saw the natives as well as the non-indigenous groups meet this unprecedented historical movement with apathy. This was the case in other Central Asian republics as well (e.g. Shirin Akiner, ibid, p 31).
30. The official figure (60 deaths according to MVD Pravda, 19 December 1991) differed sharply from private estimates (280 deaths given by Samizdat, in Central Asian Survey, Vol 6, No 3, 1987, pp 73-75).
31. About the political nature of this event, foreign reports and studies have conflicted with official Kazakhs opinion. While the former almost exclusively attribute the demonstration to a nationalistic orientation, the latter has harshly denied it. For a synthetic view of this violence, see Catherine Cosman, Conflict in the Soviet Union: The Untold Story of the Clashes in Kazakhstan (USA, 1990); Vitalii A. Ponomarev and S. Dzhukeeva, Dokumenty i materialy o sobytiiakh 1986 goda v Kazakhstane (Moskva, 1993); and Alastair McAuley, Civil Disturbance in Alma-Ata: A Comment, in Discussion Paper Series, No 8. December 1987.
32. About the political nature of this event, foreign reports and studies have conflicted with official Kazakhs opinion. While the former almost exclusively attribute the demonstration to a nationalistic orientation, the latter has harshly denied it. For a synthetic view of this violence, see Catherine Cosman, Conflict in the Soviet Union: The Untold Story of the Clashes in Kazakhstan (USA, 1990); Vitalii A. Ponomarev and S. Dzhukeeva, Dokumenty i materialy o sobytiiakh 1986 goda v Kazakhstane (Moskva, 1993); and Alastair McAuley, Civil Disturbance in Alma-Ata: A Comment, in Discussion Paper Series, No 8. December 1987.
33. About the political nature of this event, foreign reports and studies have conflicted with official Kazakhs opinion. While the former almost exclusively attribute the demonstration to a nationalistic orientation, the latter has harshly denied it. For a synthetic view of this violence, see Catherine Cosman, Conflict in the Soviet Union: The Untold Story of the Clashes in Kazakhstan (USA, 1990); Vitalii A. Ponomarev and S. Dzhukeeva, Dokumenty i materialy o sobytiiakh 1986 goda v Kazakhstane (Moskva, 1993); and Alastair McAuley, Civil Disturbance in Alma-Ata: A Comment, in Discussion Paper Series, No 8. December 1987.
34. For example, at the Foreign Language Institute (INIAZ) in Almaty, where all young Kazakh teachers were discussing the probability of an open war against the Russians in northern Kazakhstan. Their government, they believed, would firmly stand behind them if the crisis went out of control.
35. For details on price reforms in Kazakhstan please refer to IMF Economic Reviews, 5, (Washington, DC, June 1993, p 9.
36. The resignation of Prime Minister Sergei Tereshchenko on 11 October 1994 marked the failure of a new strategy implemented from June 1993.
37. The official interpretation for the rise of prices in 1992 and especially in 1993 attributes it to the cost of the energy sector: gas and electricity.
38. The term 'rich' and 'poor' is applied relatively. While a man who holds properties worth above $60,000 is considered rich, a person who has no income other than government wages is ascribed to the category of the poor in Kazakhstan. This new social phenomenon made itself visible from the beginning of 1992.
39. While initially the government had a tight control on the prices shown in its regularity and selection of products, the right to allow prices to change eventually passed into the hands of local authorities, shown by the fact that the same product could bear several different retail prices even though distributed by the same state-owned enterprise.
40. The author often picked up angry words exchanged by local Slavic citizens on buses, in shops, and in other public settings full of resentment of privileged Kazakhs.
41. If the Soviet policy was unable to erase the Kazakhs' memory of their tribal genealogies, the collapse of the totalitarian regime surely revives this tradition in every social, political and economic sphere. Kazakh intellectuals and leaders have voiced their alarm about Kazaks' fervent persuasion of their tribal identity, as we shall see later in this article in more detail.
42. A possible coalition may be led by the newly emerged Kazakhstan Communist Party (registered in March 1994) which already has more than 48,000 members. The recently appeared Party regards the preservation of the former social guarantees for the working class as its primary task (Segodnya, 18 March 1994).
43. In the later 1980s, China had to step back from its ambitious price reform plan to prevent a possible public uprising.
44. Cynthia Ann Werner, 'A preliminary assessment of attitudes toward the privatization of agriculture in contemporary Kazakhstan' in Central Asian Survey, Vol 13, No 2, 1994, p 296.
45. The privatization process in Kazakhstan has three basic components: small-scale (encompassing companies with fewer than 200 workers), mass (companies with 200 to 5,000 employees) and case-by-case (companies with over 5,000 employees or otherwise designated as extraordinary) Central European (EURMCE), 1 October 1994, p 27.
46. A sudden relaxation on passport control has allowed more tourists from Kazakhstan to shop in cities and towns in Western China. Although the opening of air routes to other countries, such as Pakistan, the United Arab Emirate and Western Europe, reduced the number of visitors to China, the latter still remains the largest supplier of manufactured goods to Kazakhstan. And if half the amount of Russia's annual revenue flows in from Russia's tourist troops (MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour, on Public Broadcasting Stations, 2 September 1994), I have every reason to put the estimate of the private contribution by Kazakhstan tourists to the treasury at even a higher level, given that Kazakhstan is in geographical proximity with China.
47. From interior decoration to horticulture, from their speech and their behavioural manner, one can easily detect a strong Uzbeck influence on the southern Kazakhs, in particular on Chimkent Kazakhs. The northern Kazakhs often laugh at their southern brothers' Uzbekization in return to the latter's critique of their being Russianized.
48. For example, in 1988, private owners provided the republic with 25 per cent of its vegetables, 30.9 per cent of its meat, 43 per cent of its milk and 30 per cent of its eggs (Cynthia Ann Werner, ibid, p 296).
49. Moskovskiye Novosti, 4 October 1994, p 14.
50. Central Asia Quarterly, labyrinth, Summer 1994, p 14.
51. Ibid, p 15.
52. For example, immediately following the commemoration of hero Qara-kerei Qabanbay batter (from the Naiman tribe) by their fellows from the tribe in Taldeqorqan oblast, the descendants of the Naiman (the Middle Horde, Orta Juz) from Semei (formerly Semipalachinsk) oblast held their feast for the same batter, which was even more conspicuous in that the Semeians mobilized more resources to bring the historical scene alive, e.g. by erecting some 300 tents (kigiz ui) and providing some 500 fully equipped warriors. Because the hero was born to the Qara kerei clan of the Naiman tribe, the descendants of the clan who have lived in different districts of Semei oblast felt that they, the direct offspring of the batter, were left aside. A chain of new celebrations therefore resulted from this new contest.
53. An old Kazakh saying goes: 'Please give whips to the hands of the Great Horde so they can herd our flocks, and lances to the Small Horde so they can defend us from our enemies, but let the Middle Horde carry pens so they can be judges for our affairs.'
54. Interestingly, entering the Soviet era, the geographical terms, southerners and northerners (Iujenlektar and siverlektar, respectively) were substituted for the old designations, Ule Juz and Orta Juz, to accommodate the changing social environment.
55. President Nazarbaev and some influential Kazakh writers, such as Kazakh state prize-winner Qabdesh Jumadilev, have appealed to the Kazakh public to avoid the dangerous trap of tribalism. Jumadilev, quoting from one of Nazarbaev's public statements, writes: 'Even the President did not avoid touching on the issue; he voiced a serious concern on the spreading of tribalism in every direction of our society; specifically speaking, kinship and regional affiliation have begun to penetrate government organs and commercial establishments. In general, the present tribal ideology is a dangerous manifestation of national divisions and deviation from the right direction. Therefore, one of the urgent tasks of state's ideology is to deroot this clanship (Jumadilev's highlight of President's speech. Qazaq Adebiete, 17 December 1993, P 3).'
56. The author observed that the Kazakhs are as liberal as the Slavs in terms of sexual behaviour. While female Kazakhs from rural areas who have lost their virginity may worry about finding a future husband, their urban sisters are much more aggressive and indifferent in sexual orientation. This is partially due to the fact that the native female population is in 'surplus', partly because the Kazakhs were traditionally not strict on sexually related issues and this free attitude was later encouraged by the influx of Christian populations into Kazakhstan.
57. Kazakhs' preference for the traditional holidays such as Nowruz Merame, to Islamic occasions such as Ramadan and Qurban Ayt reflects this reality.
58. Among the Kazakh intellectuals, there are two different sorts of opinions on tribalism. One group insists that the recovery of tribal identity does not affect republican political trends because formerly, while the Kazakhs were associated with each other by a common ethnic identity, a common language, and common economic involvement, their political structure was still a divided one. However, their opponents argue that the presence of a huge non-indigenous population prevents the Kazakhs from internal rivalry.
59. Leaders of the Azat Party were praised by the Kazakh public for successfully resolving the confrontation between the local Kazakhs and the Ural Cossacks on the occasion of the latter's revival gathering in the summer of 1991. 'Because of great restraint by the part of the Kazakhs under the peaceful guidance of the Azat Party, the summer event did not degenerate into another "December Event".' A historian, appearing on TV, made this comment on the event.
60. The author was among the witnesses who observed that rally organized by a coalition formed from Azat, Jeltokhsan, and Alash. The organizers seemed disappointed at the apathetic Kazakhs who looked at the scene indifferently as OMON special troops were destroying the tents and dispersing the protesters. One of their chief demands, the ousting of Prime Minister Sergei Tereshchenko, was finally met three years later, when Nazarbaev asked his former Cabinet to resign on 11 October 1994.
61. In late 1991, Nursultan Nazarbaev showed great respect to the leaders of the nationalist parties, inviting them to his office to chart with them Kazakhstan's future and begging them not to disturb his government's current policies. The President sometimes even gave tacit permission to criticize openly.
62. The new parliamentary election, which was held in March of 1994, showed that the People's Congress of Kazakhstan has not lost President Nazarbaev's trust, in that it gained 15 seats in the new parliament.
63. Kuanysh Sultanov, a former head of the ideology department of the Kazakhstan Communist Party Central Committee, and current Deputy Prime Minister, was elected chairman of the Union's Political Council. Marat Tazhin, a member of the President's staff, and Altynbek Sarsenbaev, Minister of the Press and the News Media, are his vice-chairmen.
64. Press Minister Sarsenbayev, Vice-Chairman of the UPUK Political Council, tried to moderate the opponents' political passion, saying: "The tragic events in Russia impels us to discard the confrontation between political parties as an argument and a concept.' (The Current Digest, Vol 45, No 41, 1993, p 30).