KAZAKHSTAN: BUILDING DEMOCRACY FROM THE

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 ASTANA 002121

SIPDIS

STATE FOR SCA/CEN, EUR/CARC, EUR/RUS, DRL

E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: PGOV SOCI KDEM GG KZ
SUBJECT: KAZAKHSTAN: BUILDING DEMOCRACY FROM THE
GRASSROOTS UP

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1. (U) SUMMARY: At the 14th annual meeting of the Assembly
of the Peoples of Kazakhstan, a multi-ethnic presidential
advisory commission, President Nazarbayev emphasized his
fundamental goal to build a peaceful, tolerant, multi-ethnic
country that would move slowly and responsibly toward making
Kazakh the national language. It seemed to be no accident
that the many hyphenated Kazakhstani speakers included a
Georgian and an Ossetian. We should recognize that the
Assembly, although an appointed commission, is an example of
grassroots democracy with its 350 members having elicited
ideas and opinions from their communities all over the
country to make recommendations to the government.
Kazakhstan is building the institutions of democracy on its
own terms -- and that is all to the good. END SUMMARY.


2. (U) President Nursultan Nazarbayev invited the Chiefs of
Mission of the diplomatic corps to attend the plenary session
of the 14th annual meeting of the Assembly of the Peoples of
Kazakhstan at the Palace of Peace and Accord ("The Pyramid")
in Astana on October 23. The Assembly, established in 1995
as an advisory council to the president, has 350 appointed
members representing each of Kazakhstan's 130 ethnic groups.
The Assembly Secretariat is part of the Presidential
Administration, and, thus, roughly corresponds to a U.S.
White House advisory commission. The Assembly selects nine
of its members to fill reserved seats in the 107-member lower
house of parliament, and the president introduced the most
recent member of parliament selected by the Assembly -- an
ethnic Bulgarian. President Nazarbayev's chairmanship is not
remote and ceremonial. During the two-hour session with his
40-minute keynote speech and 10 other speakers, he took
careful notes, intervened repeatedly to ask questions and
make comments and even gentle jokes, and himself summed up
all the recommendations proposed by the various speakers.
Nazarbayev spoke predominantly in mellifluous Russian, but
occasionally summed up his points in very slightly stilted
Kazakh.


3. (U) The president's speech emphasized the need to clarify
the current Law on the Languages of the Republic of
Kazakhstan within the framework of the constitution. His
goal, he made clear, was to move the nation slowly and
responsibly toward the goal of using Kazakh as the common
national language while fully respecting the rights of the
national minorities to maintain and teach their own languages
in the multitude of national-ethnic cultural centers
throughout the country. At one point, he recommended that
artistically talented young people consider forming a private
company to create animated cartoons in Kazakh that could be
broadcast on national television to help children all over
the country learn Kazakh from an earliest age. Nazarbayev
said the central government would give highest priority in
education to three languages: Kazakh, Russian, and English.
The president strongly emphasized that all children of
Kazakhstan, regardless of ethnic origin, should be brought up
as tolerant Kazakhstani patriots who love their country and
respect differences in their communities.


4. (U) Besides the president, the ten other speakers
included an ethnic Russian, an Armenian, a Georgian, an
Ossetian, two Ukrainians (one a woman with a charming Odessa
accent),an Uzbek, a Cossack, and others chosen for various
achievements but not necessarily based on ehtnicity.

-- The Armenian said his parents had been exiled to
Kazakhstan in 1937 during the Stalinist purges and had
arrived in the dead of winter with only the clothes on their
backs. A Sarybay-Kazakh family took them in, thus saving
their lives, and treated them like brothers and sisters until
they eventually stood on their own feet. He presented the
president with volumes in Kazakh and Russian of scholarly
studies based on documents in the national archive of

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multiple Soviet nationalities whom Kazakh families had saved
from Stalin's purges and helped, later, once they were
released from the Gulag.

-- The Georgian said he had returned home in September to
visit his parents in a remote mountainous area of Georgia,
where he had been surprised to hear his isolated rural
relatives praise the peace and tranquility of multi-ethnic
Kazakhstan. He said, "They repeatedly commented, 'How happy
you must be to live in a peaceful nation.'" At this point,
President Nazarbayev interved to comment extemporaneously,
"Listen to him carefully, my fellow citizens of Kazakhstan.
You don't know you are happy until you lose your happiness.
Only when you've lost it can you understand what is everyday
happiness."

-- The Ossetian woman told a charming story of coming to a
resort in Kazakhstan on the Caspian for summer vacation in
the 1970s where she fell in love with a Kazakh boy, married
him, became a citizen of Kazakhstan, and has raised her
children to be good citizens of Kazakhstan.

-- A slightly bashful, young medalist from the Beijing
Olympics (Kazakhstan won 13 medals),clearly a crowd favorite
whose presence elicited extended applause, cheers, and
whistles, said he was from a common family without any ties
to power. He said, "We all know the American Dream; I'm here
to tell you we now have the Kazakhstani Dream. If I can do
it, every other child in this country can do it, too. No
matter who your parents are, you can achieve what you want."

-- A young ethnic-Russian journalist from Astana TV, clearly
a celebrity recognized by the audience, told in perfect
Kazakh how he had grown up playing with Kazakh boys in his
apartment-house courtyard. When he asked his parents why
they used different words, they told him he must learn Kazakh
perfectly "because that is the wave of the future."

-- Perhaps the only jarring note, at least to our ears, was
an older, clearly old-guard editor of the newspaper, "South
Kazakhstan," in Shymkent, who urged the government to
establish many more Internet web sites in Kazakh to promote
Kazakhstan's ideology -- and to censor rigorously all other
web sites to "prevent incitements to inter-ethnic violence."


5. (U) COMMENT: To understand Kazakhstan better, we need to
recognize two key points from this event. First, the
leadership of Kazakhstan is seized with the concept of
building a modern, tolerant, multi-ethnic nation from a
multitude of minorities -- and, so far, has been successful.
During his keynote speech, Nazarbayev listed not only the
most well-known post-Soviet frozen conflicts but also other
sites of ethnic violence, some well-known to the West, some
obscure. He emphasized that such conflicts have not occurred
in independent Kazakhstan. Second, we should recognize that
the Assembly, even though an appointed commission, is an
example of grassroots representative democracy with its 350
members having elicited ideas and opinions from their
communities all over Kazakhstan to make recommendations to
the government. Kazakhstan is building the institutions of
democracy on its own terms -- and that is all to the good.
END COMMENT.
HOAGLAND