From: Justin Burke (JBurke@sorosny.org)
Date: Mon May 15 2000 - 11:55:37 EDT
RFE-RL ANALYSIS: TRIAL OF 'SEPARATISTS' HIGHLIGHTS PLIGHT OF KAZAKHSTAN'S
RUSSIANS
By Liz Fuller
Kazakhstan is generally perceived as enjoying a cordial
relationship with Russia, not least because of its
unequivocal support for the continued existence of, and
greater economic integration within, the CIS. (That
commitment is itself a reflection of President Nursultan
Nazarbaev's espousal of the concept of Eurasian integration--
although there are grounds for suspecting that Nazarbaev's
ultimate aim is the emergence of a Eurasian Union in which
Russia will be merely one of a number of equal members rather
than seeking to impose its will on the other member states.)
Kazakhstan is a member of the CIS Customs Union, and, unlike
Uzbekistan, has not allowed its membership in the CIS
Collective Security Treaty to lapse. And the treaty of
"eternal friendship" signed in July 1998 by the presidents of
Russia and Kazakhstan is the only such pact between Russia
and another CIS member state.
But the trial that began last month of a group of
alleged Russian "separatists" in eastern Kazakhstan has
served to highlight latent tensions between the Kazakhs and
Kazakhstan's demoralized and rapidly dwindling Russian/Slav
population. Those tensions could lead to a deterioration in
bilateral relations. Until the late 1980s, Russians were the
largest ethnic group in the Kazakh SSR, and Russian
nationalists, including novelist Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and
Liberal Democratic Party leader Vladimir Zhirinovskii, have
repeatedly called for the northern oblasts of Kazakhstan,
where Slavs constitute the majority of the population, to be
incorporated into the Russian Federation. Some spokesmen for
the Slavs have even gone so far as to claim that although
Nazarbaev regularly assures Moscow of his desire for
harmonious relations, his ultimate objective is to rid
Kazakhstan of its remaining Slav minorities and turn the
country into a Turkic state.
In November 1999 the Kazakh authorities announced the
arrest in Ust-Kamennogorsk, the administrative capital of
East Kazakhstan Oblast, of 22 men, 12 of whom were citizens
of Russia. They were charged with planning to overthrow the
oblast's leadership and proclaim the region a "Russian Altai
Republic." East Kazakhstan Oblast, which borders on Russia to
the north, China to the east, and Kyrgyzstan to the south, is
one of Kazakhstan's regions whose population historically was
predominantly Russian. The region's capital, Ust-
Kamennogorsk, was founded as a Cossack fortress in 1720 on
orders from Tsar Peter the Great; the area was incorporated
in 1921 into the Kirghiz Autonomous SSR and became part of
the Kazakh SSR only in 1937. Even today, despite steady Slav
outmigration since Kazakhstan became independent, only 12
percent of the population of Ust-Kamennogorsk are Kazakh.
The Slav population of northern and northeastern
Kazakhstan has lobbied in the past for a separate territorial
autonomous formation as a means of curtailing overt
discrimination by the ethnic Kazakh leadership. The Kazakh
authorities, however, rejected that proposal out of hand.
They have also refused to condone the opening of a Russian
consulate in East Kazakhstan Oblast. More recently, several
organizations representing Kazakhstan's Slav population have
advocated the country's accession to the planned Union State
of Russia and Belarus. That move, they argue, is wholly
commensurate with Nazarbaev's espousal of Eurasian
integration. But the Kazakh leadership announced that
accession to that union is not on the cards.
Although the Russian population of Ust-Kamennogorsk may
well have welcomed the creation of a "Russian Altai
Republic," there are grounds for querying the official
version of the alleged plot to establish one. Viktor
Kazimirchuk, the Russian citizen identified as the mastermind
behind that scheme, had spent several months in Ust-
Kamennogorsk before his arrest. During that time, he had
reportedly announced his plans for overthrowing the local
leadership. But the town's security officials, who are said
to be exclusively ethnic Kazakhs, had inexplicably delayed
taking any measures to prevent him. And the arsenal finally
confiscated from Kazimirchuk and his putative co-plotters was
totally inadequate for mounting an armed insurrection,
comprising only two rifles, a small amount of ammunition,
wooden clubs, and some Molotov cocktails.
During the four-month pre-trial investigation, the
Kazakh authorities refused to allow Kazimirchuk and his co-
defendants to meet with Russian consular officials or Russian
lawyers. They also refused to extradite the 12 Russian
citizens to Russia to stand trial there. That refusal, in
conjunction with discrepancies in the charges against the
arrested Russians, engendered concern in Moscow at the
highest level. Heading a Russian delegation that visited
Astana in late April, for example, Russian State Duma speaker
Gennadii Seleznev said "We are deeply concerned about
everything surrounding the trial in Ust-Kamennogorsk." And in
a clear indication that at some of Kazakhstan's ethnic
Russians are sympathetic to Kazimirchuk's imputed aim,
Seleznev warned against "making political heroes of
hooligans." Another member of that delegation, Duma Committee
for CIS Affairs Chairman Boris Pastukhov, expressed concern
at the plight of Kazakhstan's ethnic Russian population in an
address to Kazakhstan's parliament.
It is, nonetheless, very probable that the leaderships
of both countries will continue to play down the plight of
that population rather than allow it to jeopardize mutually
beneficial economic cooperation. Over the past month, since
the trial in Ust-Kamennogorsk got under way, Moscow has
raised by 1 million tons the quota for exports of Kazakh
crude via the Atyrau-Samara pipeline and persuaded the Kazakh
leadership to export another 3 million tons of crude through
the new pipeline from Makhachkala to Novorossiisk, which
bypasses Chechnya. In return, Kazakhstan's government has
signaled its willingness to revise the 1998 agreement
demarcating the two countries' respective sectors of the
Caspian Sea. That agreement left within Kazakhstan's sector a
hydrocarbon deposit to which Russia's LUKoil lays claim.
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