KAZAKHSTAN: HOW ITS MULTIPARTY SYSTEM CAME INTO BEING

Dr. Vladimir BABAK

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Vladimir Babak, Senior research associate, Center for Russian and East European Studies at Tel Aviv University (Tel Aviv, Israel)

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The discussion clubs, political circles, etc. which appeared in Kazakhstan (and elsewhere across the country) during Gorbachev’s perestroika laid the foundation of political parties as an indispensable attribute of any democratic society. In Kazakhstan, however, the process acquired its specific features because of the geographic location of the entire Central Asian region, the past of its variegated population, and its ethnic composition.

Along with the general crisis that had enveloped the Soviet Union, the events of December 1986 in Alma Ata, when the youth openly moved against the Soviet practice of appointing the republic’s top Communist and state leaders by the Kremlin, were an important factor which sped up the emergence of these quasi-political organizations in Kazakhstan. The rally and the use of force to suppress it echoed throughout the republic and beyond. The pernicious ecological effects of the tests at the Semipalatinsk nuclear test ground and some other military objects which have been made public also raised political awareness among the Kazakhstanis.

It was on a grass-roots initiative that the first informal political organizations appeared in the republic. Under conditions of a deepening economic and social crisis and weakened control over public sentiments, the so-called dissidents, especially from among the students, became more eloquent about the state of affairs in the country and quite frank about its future. Their discussions led them further away from the………..

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