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RUCNDT/USMISSION USUN NEW YORK 1963
RUEHAST/USOFFICE ALMATY 0855

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 
 
ASTANA 00002121  001.2 OF 002 
 
 
¶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 
 
ASTANA 00002121  002.2 OF 002 
 
 
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