Kazakhstan
| Author | Joseph Serio |
| Pages | 540-547 |
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Official country name: Republic of Kazakhstan
Capital: Astana
Geographic description: Covers an area the size of western Europe; it borders China, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and the Aral and Caspian Seas
Population: 15,185,844 (est. 2005)
Russian imperial rule ended with the Russian Revolution of 1917, and Bolsheviks seized control of the Russian government. A Kazakh nationalist party, Alash Orda, proclaimed the autonomy of the Kazakh people in December 1917. Initially, Alash Orda leaders sided against the Bolsheviks during the civil war from 1918 to 1921. However, being rebuffed by anti-Bolshevik forces, the Kazakh nationalists sought compromise with the Bolsheviks and received assurances from them that Kazakh autonomy would be maintained. In 1920 Kazakhstan was designated an autonomous socialist republic. In the early 1920s the Kazakh population suffered a devastating famine in which 1 million to 3 million people died from starvation.
In December 1922 the Bolsheviks founded the United Soviet Socialist Republic into which Kazakhstan was incorporated as the Kyrgyz Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (ASSR); it was renamed the Kazakh ASSR in 1925. In 1929 the southeastern city of Almaty was designated the capital of the republic, and in 1936, the Kazakh ASSR was upgraded to the status of a constituent republic, or Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR), of the Soviet Union. In 1937 the Communist Party of Kazakhstan, a branch of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, was established.
In 1928 Soviet authorities removed all Kazakh leaders from the local government. The Soviet leader Joseph Stalin then instituted a rigorous program to collectivize agriculture, in which the state confiscated and combined all arable land into large collective and state farms. Kazakh culture and way of life were virtually destroyed as a result of the Soviet program to forcibly settle Kazakhs on these farms. Kazakh nomads slaughtered their livestock rather than turn it over to the Soviet authorities. More than 1 million Kazakhs died as a result of starvation, and many more fled to China to escape the forced settlement.
In the late 1930s, during Stalin's purges of Soviet society, the Kazakh national elite was brutally and systematically eliminated. During World War II Stalin ordered large-scale deportations of ethnic groups he
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deemed untrustworthy to the more remote regions of Central Asia. Many of those deported were sent to the Kazakh SSR, including Germans from the Volga River area of Russia, Crimean Tatars from the Crimean Peninsula, Chechens, and Koreans from the Soviet Far East.
In the 1950s the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev launched the so-called Virgin Lands program, a scheme to bring extensive tracts of land in southwestern Siberia and the northern part of the Kazakh SSR under cultivation. The program was supervised in the Kazakh republic by Khrushchev's associate, Leonid Brezhnev, who in the 1960s succeeded Khrushchev as the Soviet leader. The program succeeded in rapidly transforming the northern grassy plains of the Kazakh republic into an agricultural area specializing in wheat and other grains.
Also during the 1950s the Soviet authorities established a space center called the Baikonur Cosmodrome in the east central part of Kazakhstan. They also created nuclear testing sites near Semipalatinsk in the east and huge industrial sites in the north and east. A new wave of Slavic immigrants flooded into the Kazakh republic to provide a skilled labor force for the new industries. Russians surpassed Kazakhs as the republic's largest ethnic group, a demographic trend that held until the 1980s.
In 1986 the Soviet authorities in Moscow installed a Russian official as the first secretary of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan. As a result, thousands of Kazakhs rioted in the capital, Almaty, to protest the ouster of the Kazakh official who had held the post since the 1960s. The Soviet leadership had replaced the Kazakh in an attempt to eliminate the corruption associated with his government. Exactly how many people died in the riot is still unclear.
The new Russian party leader in Kazakhstan was a supporter of the extensive political and economic reforms that Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev had begun to implement in the mid-1980s. In 1989 he was transferred to Moscow, and Soviet authorities appointed Nursultan A. Nazarbayev, a prominent Kazakh official, in his place. In March 1990 the Supreme Soviet (legislature of the Soviet Union) elected Nazarbayev to the newly established post of president of the Kazakh republic. Nazarbayev ran unopposed in the republic's first presidential elections, held in December 1991, and won 95 percent of the vote. Kazakhstan declared its independence later that month, shortly before the Soviet Union broke apart.
Kazakhstan's constitution of 1995 and subsequent presidential decrees granted extensive powers to the president, including the right to rule by decree and to dissolve the legislature. As Nazarbayev solidified his hold on power, his style of rule became increasingly authoritarian. At first his decrees focused on stifling the activities of more radical opposition groups, specifically Russian and Kazakh nationalists and fundamentalist Muslims. For example, he outlawed activities that might foment ethnic tensions, such as demonstrations organized by Kazakh nationalists who called for the expulsion of all non-Muslims from Kazakhstan. His supporters credited him with maintaining order in the country during the difficult economic and social transitions following the breakup of the Soviet Union.
However, the government soon began to extend restrictions on free speech and free assembly to other groups. Following a number of strikes in the mid-1990s by employees of public sector firms, which were chronically late in paying wages, the legislature passed a law in 1996 considerably restricting workers' right to strike. In addition, Nazarbayev became increasingly intolerant of criticism of his programs in the popular press. Independent journalists have faced prosecution, including imprisonment, and the government routinely censors the media. Nazarbayev is widely believed to have used intimidation and slander campaigns to silence his political rivals within the government. In addition, a law passed in 2002 severely limits the ability of political opposition parties to participate in legislative elections.
Nazarbayev overwhelmingly won a second term as president of Kazakhstan in January 1999. The election, originally scheduled for 2000, was moved up by more than a year, giving opposition candidates little time to prepare. International observers criticized the election for failing to meet democratic standards. In 2000 the legislature passed a law granting Nazarbayev extraordinary powers and privileges, which are to remain in force even after he ceases to be president.
There is a great paucity of information regarding the police function in Central Asia generally and Kazakhstan specifically. Policing in Kazakhstan is guided by the Ministry of Internal Affairs. In 2003 the president of Kazakhstan appointed a civilian as minister for the first time in the country's history.
The Ministry of Internal Affairs has reportedly been undergoing changes in recent years. District inspectors, who were responsible for local policing at the neighborhood level, are said to have been replaced by what is being called sheriffs. Sheriffs are expected to concentrate on crime prevention, which will require them to gather information on local residents pertaining to, for example, juveniles with drug problems and families affected by domestic violence. The ministry has said that this change was necessary to improve the efficiency of the service and tighten security.
Under the reforms the sheriffs will keep their positions for life, unlike the district inspectors, who are required to retire at forty-five years of age. In addition, the state will
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give each sheriff an apartment, which after ten years will become his own. The sheriffs are chosen by the communities they serve. They are said to be more powerful than the district inspectors and are reportedly permitted to arrest people indiscriminately.
Corruption is a major problem in policing in Kazakhstan. The minister of internal affairs, appointed in September 2003, assigned high-salaried Internal Security officers in the capital and in all regional police stations around the country ostensibly to report on cases of corruption. He also set up widely publicized phone numbers for citizens to call to report complaints about police. In spite of this move, corruption is likely to remain a serious problem while police salaries are low and resources remain scarce.
The Internal Troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs are reportedly being strengthened to assist in guarding sensitive locations including correctional facilities. Since the mid-1990s more mobile units have been added to the Internal Troops. This is said to have come about, in part, in response to the growing threat of terrorism in the region.
The Committee for National Security (Komitet Natsionalnoi Bezopastnosti, KNB) is responsible for national security, intelligence, and counterintelligence. The KNB also plays a law enforcement role in border security, internal security, and antiterrorism efforts and oversees the...
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