Protesters in Almaty in December 1986/Wikimedia commons
In December 1986, Mikhail Gorbachev dismissed Dinmukhamed Kunaev, the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan and a prominent ethnic Kazakh leader, and replaced him with Gennady Kolbin, an ethnic Russian from the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR), who had no prior experience in Kazakhstan. While protests, known as Jeltoqsan (December) and which led to bloody suppression, were still unfolding on the streets of Almaty after this decision, the Soviet press stubbornly remained silent, continuing to report on the ‘peaceful life’ and ‘labor achievements’ of the republic. When it became impossible to conceal what was happening, a campaign to discredit the protesters began: they were labeled as ‘hooligans’ and ‘anti-social elements’, allegedly engaging in unlawful actions.
The international press, however, approached these events in different ways: some publications merely echoed official reports from Moscow, while others delved into uncovering the true causes and the true extent of what had transpired. On the anniversary of the Jeltoqsan, Qalam reflects on how the Western media reported on the events in Almaty in December 1986 and how the world eventually discovered the truth about the bloody struggle of young Kazakh men and women against the oppressive and brutal Soviet regime.
Similar to the reaction within the Soviet Union, the international media only addressed the events after an official statement was issued by the Russian News Agency TASS (known only as TASS) on 19 December 1986, almost three days after the protests began. As a result, it was unsurprising that early coverage in the Western press often included references to or direct quotes from official Soviet government statements.
View of the symbolic installation, marking the 1986 protest and those killed. At the Dawn of Freedom sculpture near Independence, Republic square
The Washington Post was quick to respond, releasing a concise analytical piece titled ‘Protesting Students Riot in Soviet Central Asia’ with the subheading ‘TASS Reports Alma-Ata “Hooligans” Burning Cars After the Ouster of a Local Party Leader’. While referencing the familiar ‘facts’ TASS had reported, the author of the article, Gary Lee, shifts attention away from the events themselves to explore the broader context:
The fact that the official news agency not only reported the riots, but detailed the damage and steps taken to counter them, indicates that the protests were extensive, western analysts said. TASS' report indicated the riots were continuing.
As could be expected, he also touches on the direct cause of the local residents' discontent:
The replacement of Kunaev with Gennadi Kolbin, who made his career in Siberia and Soviet Georgia, is regarded by western Kremlinogists here as one of the most difficult and controversial personnel moves since party General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in March 1985.
Kunaev, 74, a member of the ruling Politburo and ally of former leader Leonid Brezhnev, had managed to retain his seat in Kazakhstan despite criticism in Moscow-based newspapers nearly a year ago, associating his name with corruption.
Dinmukhamed Kunaev. 1977/Фотохроника ТАСС
Toward the end of the article, the author focuses on the serious and profound problems of Soviet national policy toward Kazakhstan and other Central Asian republics—problems that the Soviet press callously ignored, instead resorting to labels like ‘parasites’ and ‘misguided fools’:
Western diplomats said the riots are a rare signal of the vulnerability of longstanding Kremlin efforts to control Soviet ethnic groups, or nationalities, particularly in the Asian republics. The efforts have included maintaining locals in key party positions and teaching ethnic languages in local schools.
The naming of a Russian as a senior party official in an Asian republic with an Islamic tradition is considered controversial and unusual. The tradition in the fourteen non-Russian Soviet republics has been to appoint an ethnic local as party boss and a Russian in the second position.
Kazakhstan's population of 16 million is 40.8 per cent Russian and 36 per cent Kazakh. No other republic, other than the Russian, has a Russian predominance.
The New York Times/The New York Times Digital Archive
On the same day, 19 December 1986, The New York Times published an article titled ‘Soviet Reports Rioting in City in Central Asia’, which somehow attempted to rationalize Kolbin's appointment:
Western diplomats said the selection of Mr Kolbin rather than a Kazakh was apparently made because Moscow had been unable to groom a Kazakh successor whom it considered reliable and because Kremlin officials felt an outsider was needed to clean up the widespread corruption in the republic.
Yet even here, the author recognized a simmering issue that could seriously destabilize the Soviet state:
Ethnic Russians dominate the nation's government and control the central Communist Party machinery. Tensions between the Russians and the Soviet Union's other nationalities, including the Kazakhs, have long smoldered beneath the surface, and are considered to be a potential long-term problem for the Soviet Union.
As for information about the protest in Almaty—its size, participants, and consequences—the Western press initially relied on official statements from the Soviet media.
Protesters in Almaty in December 1986/Wikimedia commons
However, as early as 20 December, The New York Times published a brief note on the number of protesters titled ‘Soviet Says Hundreds Were Involved in Riot’, once again citing official Soviet reports but hinting that the actual scale of the protest was much larger:
A Soviet official said today that ‘several hundred’ students had been involved in the anti-Russian rioting that broke out Wednesday night in Alma-Ata, the capital of the Central Asian republic of Kazakhstan.
The official said everything was back to normal after the unrest, which apparently broke out in protest at the appointment of an ethnic Russian to replace the Kazakh who had long led the Communist Party in the republic.
The official press agency TASS reported tonight that Mikhail S. Solomentsev, a member of the ruling Politburo and chairman of the Communist Party committee responsible for party discipline, was visiting Alma-Ata.
The presence of such a ranking figure indicated continuing high-level concern about the situation.
The article also reported, citing a phone conversation with a French journalist, numerous injuries and deaths as well as the concerns of the Soviet dissident and historian Roy Medvedev that an open report in the press about the unrest could be used as a pretext for launching a larger campaign to dismantle political networks among ethnic Kazakhs.
The New York Times/The New York Times Digital Archive
The British magazine The Guardian Weekly published an article on 28 December titled ‘Moscow Rushes Troops to Riot City’, providing more specific details about the events:
According to unofficial reports reaching here from the provincial capital, Alma-Ata, at least seven policemen and thirteen demonstrators were killed in the riots. The demonstrators, said to number more than 10,000, marched on the Communist Party headquarters on Wednesday night, broke into the building at three points, and ransacked some offices.
The article also provided data on both the number of troops sent and the scale of political intervention by the central party apparatus:
According to reports reaching Western correspondents, 70,000 troops have been rushed to the area, none of them from local Kazakh regiments. Troops with armored cars occupied the university where the trouble began on Friday night.
Sources here claim that fifteen planes left the Soviet capital for Alma-Ata last week, carrying a host of party investigators, and administrative staff who will take over the running of the local Kazakh party.
The article attributed the events to the inability, or rather the unwillingness, of local party leaders to cool the situation, which, due to their inaction, escalated into anti-Russia protests. Besides, citing some ‘usually reliable Muscovites with relatives in Alma-Ata’, the article claimed that the rioters had allegedly seized two prisons, released the inmates, and were stabbing and clubbing Russians in the streets.
The Guardian Weekly /British newspaper archive
Among the British publications about Jeltoqsan, some simply repeated the official Soviet rhetoric word for word, describing ‘hooligan, parasitic, and other anti-social elements’, such as the article ‘Rioters Go on Soviet Rampage’, published on 19 December in the Newcastle Journal.
Protesters in Almaty in December 1986/Wikimedia commons
Others might be suspected today of being ‘paid for’, though, oddly enough, they praised not Gorbachev but Kolbin, whose competence and charisma were highly questionable at that time even within the central party apparatus. For instance, an article in the British newspaper the Sunday Tribune, with the somewhat theatrical headline ‘Gorbachev Axe Strikes Old Guard’, spoke of Kazakhstan's new party leader in overly flattering terms:
Mr Kunaev's replacement, Gennady Kolbin, fits neatly into the mould of mould-breakers Mr Gorbachev has been promoting. He is fifty-nine, and has the right connections. A graduate of the same polytechnic institute in Sverdlovsk as the new prime minister, Nikolai Ryzhkov, and the new no-nonsense party boss in Moscow, Boris Yeltsin, he also has close links with the foreign minister, Edward Shevardnadze, under whom he worked as number two in the Georgian Communist Party in the mid-1970s.
Like all these men, Mr Kolbin is a tough disciplinarian: he introduced an anti-alcohol drive in Ulyanovsk, where he was party chief, even before Mr Gorbachev's national campaign got under way. He will be expected to clean up the corruption which flourished in Kazakhstan.
The Article in Newcastle Journal /British newspaper archive
Nevertheless, accounts of the bloody clash between young Kazakhs—both men and women—and the ruthless Soviet ideological machine quickly permeated Western analytical reports on the Soviet Union. While Soviet propaganda sought to attribute this ‘temporary madness of Kazakh youth’ to the obstinate and corrupt Kunayev and his nationalist agitators, the world began to discern, for the first time, the fragility of the Soviet system. Nearly all these reports, in some form, pointed to the December 1986 events in Kazakhstan.
In 1990, the CIA's Directorate of Intelligence issued a secret report titled ‘The Potential of Mass Unrest in Soviet Central Asia’, which asserted that the protests in Almaty in December 1986 marked the beginning of a new wave of demonstrations, unrest, and even conflicts across Central Asia:
Paradoxically, however, as Soviet troops have been repeatedly called upon to put down outbreaks of violence, Moscow has lowered its level of dominance over regional politics. In the late 1980s, the leadership of the republics stabilized around a new group of republic party secretaries that had Moscow’s confidence and a degree of popular support. Moreover, nationally mandated reforms and elections opened the political process somewhat, and grassroots movements rose to challenge the party monopoly of power.
Ironically, the failure of Soviet ideology to provide a meaningful sense of inclusion and belonging for the indigenous population of Central Asian republics was often linked to the ongoing Afghan War.
Saule Suleimenova. Zheltoksan. The rise of Kazakh youth. December 1986". Plastic bags on a polyethylene base, 118x149 cm, 2018
More specifically, it stemmed from the pervasive sense of crisis and the perceived impotence of the Soviet army in Afghanistan, sentiments that quickly spread among the nearly 700,000 participants in that disastrous conflict, a disproportionately large number of whom were Muslims from Central Asia. This connection was highlighted immediately after the December events in the article ‘From Kabul to Alma-Ata’ (De Kaboul à Alma-Ata), published in Le Monde by the prominent scholar of Soviet Muslims Alexandre Bennigsen. At the same time, strategic analyst Marin Strmecki viewed the Almaty protests as the apex of dissatisfaction among the 55 million Muslims of Soviet Central Asia and the Caucasus, fueled by the protracted war in Afghanistan.