JELTOQSAN

16 December

The first wave of outrage sweeps through student dormitories, where frustrated young people urge others to take to the streets.

‘On the night of 16 December, after the Plenum, students of the Almaty Theater and Art Institute—K. Aitmurzayev, B. Imangozhayev, U. Seitimbetov, A. Kanetov, and M. Kasenbayev—circulated through the dormitories of Almaty, distributing appeals, writing slogans, and drafting a plan of action,,’ would recall Sabyr Kasymov, a lawyer, former judge of the Constitutional Court, and one of those who later participated in investigating the Jeltoqsan events.

The authorities later label the students' actions ‘provocative’ and ‘nationalistic’:

The students of AGTHI [the Almaty Theater and Art Institute]— K. Aitmurzayev, B.Zh. Imangozhayev, U.A. Seitimbetov, A.D. Kanetov, and M.Zh. Kasenbayev sought to stoke ethnic tensions and discord. On the evening of 16 December 1986, they visited the dormitories of the Institutes of Foreign Languages, Medicine, Zooveterinary Science, and Polytechnic Studies, as well as the Chemistry and Physics-Mathematics Departments of KazGU [Kazakh State University], and Workers’ Dormitory No. 2 of the Kirov Factory. They urged residents to abandon their classes and work and join them in the square. In the same manner, they encouraged students and workers to take part in mass unrest and organized the writing of slogans of a nationalist character. [An excerpt from the verdict of the Almaty City Court delivered on 20 July 1987]

‘A group of students engaged in provocative and inciting activities across eight dormitories of six universities and the Kirov Factory. They encouraged politically inexperienced youth to take part in antisocial actions, prepared inflammatory slogans and placards, and brought them into the streets,’’ said Victor Miroshnik, the chairman of the State Security Committee of the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR) in a statement.

That night, from 16 to 17 December 1986, a protest ignites in Almaty, and by the following morning, it has spilled onto the streets.

The Causes of Jeltoqsan

Researchers still disagree about the causes of Jeltoqsan. One theory links it to Kazakhstan’s leadership refusing to support an initiative proposed by Mikhail Gorbachev in the spring of 1986, when he suggested that the Tengiz oil and gas field be merged with the Tyumen region, creating a single industrial zone. The rejection of this project may have served as an unspoken reason for Dinmukhamed Kunaev’s dismissal.

Moscow’s decision seems like a bureaucratic formality. But its consequences prove political. No one expects that a personnel appointment would spark protests.

We should note that during the Soviet years, around twenty people serve as First Secretaries in regional and central committees in Kazakhstan, and only three of them are ethnic Kazakhs. This did not give rise to open protest—until Kolbin’s appointment. The underlying tensions are clearly deeper. Rasulkhan Kudaibergenov, who was convicted for participating in the protest and exiled to the Chita region, would recall later:

Our native language languished like a broken horse, and our religion and faith were suppressed. When Kazakh youth managed to find work at all, we were handed the hardest, most degrading jobs. Urban residence permits? Out of the question. We were pushed to the outskirts, left with whatever scraps we could get. We, the students who had come to Almaty in pursuit of a dream, felt the walls closing in—new barriers appearing every day, layer upon layer. And although this could have continued, everyone knew that sooner or later, the resistance and dissatisfaction building beneath the surface would inevitably explode.

Jeltoqsan became precisely that revelation—not ‘an outburst of nationalism’ as official propaganda claimed, but a response to years of humiliation and enforced silence.

17 December

Later, some researchers would claim that many of those gathered on the square were ‘random passers-by drawn by curiosity’. However, the scale of the armed forces deployed contradicts this: by evening, roughly 20,000 militia members and soldiers had been concentrated in Almaty.

Reinforcements were brought in by special flights from seven cities across the Soviet Union, including 100 troops from Military Unit No. 5450 in Frunze; 300 from Units No. 5452 and No. 3408 in Tashkent; 203 from Unit No. 5426 in Chelyabinsk; 203 from Unit No. 5427 in Novosibirsk; 200 from Unit No. 5424 in Ufa; 225 from Unit No. 5425 in Sverdlovsk; and 480 from Tbilisi.

The official account of the crowd’s composition, however, would later paint a very different picture. The Soviet press would describe them as ‘hooligans, vagrants, drunks, and drug addicts’. Komsomolskaya Pravda, in its 18 December issue, would write:

Last night and earlier today in Alma-Ata, a group of young students, allegedly instigated by nationalists, took to the streets to express their dissatisfaction with the decision of the recently held Plenum. They resisted law-enforcement officers, set fire to a grocery store and private vehicles, and insulted and humiliated city residents.

18 December

That same evening, Mikhail Solomentsev, a member of the CPSU Central Committee Politburo and Chairman of the Party Control Committee, arrives in Almaty. His presence signals that the events have been elevated to the level of a union-wide crisis. Any statement or directive from Solomentsev carries the authority of a direct political order.

Five days later, on 23 December 1986, while reporting at a meeting of the Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan, he would note:

‘The number of Kazakhs in Almaty has doubled.’

Erbol Sypataev, a student at the Almaty Energy Institute, suffers a severe head injury from a blow with an entrenching shovel during a clash. He is taken to the hospital, where he soon dies.

‘There was one young man among us whose face was unrecognizable from the beatings; they even gouged out his eye. Later, late at night, they took us and abandoned us in a field where corn was being sown, near Shamalgan. It had been a cold day. We were all badly beaten. We ran along the road toward the city, but not a single car stopped. White foam came from the mouths of the exhausted. At dawn, I somehow made it back to the dormitory and collapsed. I was severely frostbitten and spent a month in the hospital,’’ would recall Jeltoqsan participant Gulnar Baybosynova, a student at the Theater and Art Institute.

17–25 December: Events in Other Regions of Kazakhstan

After the protestors dispersed in Almaty, the protests spread to other regional centers across the republic. According to archival records, demonstrations and arrests occur in Taraz (then Jambyl), Shymkent, Taldykorgan, Jezkazgan, Karaganda, Pavlodar, Kokshetau, Arkalyk, Alga, and the settlements of Shamalgan and Saryozek. Unrest in these regions continue from 17 to 25 December, with estimates later suggesting that up to 2,500 people participated in the protests outside Almaty.

In some cities, students organize marches and gatherings near the buildings of executive and party committees. While large-scale clashes were avoided, local law enforcement and party authorities were still instructed to act ‘firmly and without compromise’ if necessary. Reports of ‘disciplinary violations’ and ‘antisocial activities’ appear in the Kazakh press through the end of December 1986.

Persecution, Convictions, and the Death Penalty

According to official records, 2,401 people were detained during Jeltoqsan. Of these, 326 faced administrative penalties, 99 were convicted in criminal cases, and two were sentenced to death.

A total of 270 students were expelled from universities, and hundreds of workers and employees were dismissed from their jobs.

Among the innocently killed were Kairat Ryskulbekov, Erbol Sypataev, Sabira Mukhametjanova, Lyazzat Asanova, and Kenjegul Moldanazarova, young people who were barely between eighteen and twenty years old. It is hard to fathom what threat they could possibly have posed to a state that prided itself on being ‘great’ and ‘multinational’.

At a meeting of the Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan on 23 December, Mikhail Solomentsev, the well-known Soviet politician and bureaucrat, said:

One thing is clear: what happened on the square was neither accidental nor spontaneous. This was an organized action. Who the organizer is, I do not know; whether we will find them or not is also difficult to say. But one thing is for sure — it can be accurately assessed that this was an organized matter … and a concrete group will be held criminally responsible.

In the aftermath of the Jeltoqsan, the party authorities in the republic launched a campaign to ‘root out nationalist sentiments’ among students and the intelligentsia.

The Legacy of Jeltoqsan

In Soviet reports, the Jeltoqsan was labeled as an expression of ‘Kazakh nationalism’. In reality, though, it was the first open protest in the Soviet Union against centralized authority. In the following years, similar uprisings would erupt in the Baltic republics, Baku, Tbilisi, and Fergana—each place echoing the same calls for freedom.

Five years later, on the same day, 16 December, the Supreme Council of Kazakhstan would adopt a law on state independence. On that very day, the participants of the December 1986 events were officially rehabilitated.

And thus, the Jeltoqsan came to an end. Born as a student protest against injustice, it became a starting point for a new chapter in Kazakhstan’s history.