Social Discontent In Kazakhstan

The events at the end of the 1980s were very significant in the history of Kazakhstan. In 1985 Mikhail Gorbachev became General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. He started to introduce new policy called “glasnost” or “openness” (Spoor 2000, 418). This policy was the first step to democratization of the USSR. As a result of this policy, the local intelligentsia and public started to demonstrate the discontents regarding the local conditions in the republics. Also, such discontents related to environmental and political situations were shown in Kazakhstan during this period. The main sources of social discontent in Kazakh SSR were the Aral Sea problem, the appointment of Gennady Kolbin to the post

In December 1986 Dinmukhamed Kunaev was replaced by Gennady Kolbin, who was previously the First Secretary of Party Committee of Ulyanovsk Region. There were several reasons to discontent among Kazakhstan citizens regarding this appointment. Firstly, Kunaev was the head of the Kazakh Communist party for 24 years and people got used to his policies. Secondly, Kolbin was ethnic Russian, while Kunaev was Kazakh and so citizens of Kazakhstan were afraid he would not understand their concerns. Finally, Kunaev was born in Kazakhstan; whereas, Kolbin had never been in Kazakhstan before, which also shows the fear of people about the appointment of stranger (Kara 2006 paraphrased in Dukenbayev 2007, 451). However, some historians claim that there were other reasons for dissatisfaction if the events would be considered from the other perspectives. For example, from the Crowe`s (1998, 407) article it can be seen that the fact that Kolbin was in some aspects Gorbachev`s man was the reason to frustration because Gorbachev wanted to make cardinal reforms that may affect the Kazakh SSR and whole USSR. Consequently, this appointment was the trigger to the public demonstrations in the cities of Kazakhstan; especially the large-scale protests were in Almaty. After the recognition the fact that Kunaev was replaced by some Russian, students started to gather on 17-18 December on the main square in Almaty. Despite the fact that protests were peaceful, the Soviet Ministry of Internal Affairs and the police started to beat with a truncheon and to arrest all protesters in the evening of December 18 (Kara 2006 quoted in Dukenbayev 2007, 449). According to officials, in total 1700 people were injured and six students were killed (Kara 2006 quoted in Dukenbayev 2007, 450). However, some sources state that the number of killed