In a recent article in Ulitsa, Moscow journalist Denis Dragunsky asked whether Russia was an Asian or a European country. Much the same question could be asked about Kazakstan (the land of the Kazaks), particularly given its long historical ties with Russia. And it is not an easy question to answer. While Kazakstan's history is a blend of Mongol, Turkic, Islamic, and Russian heritages, there are Cossacks and Russians both in and outside of Kazakstan who feel that parts of Kazakstan belong historically to Russia. While such claims have been long and vocal, the Kazak response has been forcibly silent during most of this century. However, with the emergence of Kazakstan as not only an independent country, but a potentially powerful regional player, Kazaks have begun to reclaim their history from the Russians. And with questions about how to construct a nation come queries about ethnicity and history. What is a Kazak? Given that the Russians referred to them as the Kirgiz during most of the period that they dominated the Kazaks, and thus robbed the Kazaks of their most basic linguistic identification term, there is much to be explored and reclaimed before this people and nation can truly define itself in the context of its rich history.

In December 1995, Kazakstan celebrated its fifth anniversary as a sovereign state, although the rich, tumultuous history of the Kazaks themselves encompasses more than five centuries. The complexity of this history is revealed in a statement by Kemal Akishev, a well-known archeologist: “Kazakstan reveals itself through territorial contact, where, beginning in ancient times, infiltration and aggression, immigration and ethnic immigration, the integration and spreading of culture, and racial and linguistic palimpsests took place.” The ethnogenesis of the Kazak people can be divided into three periods: the pre-Turkic, the Turkic, and the Turko-Mongolian periods. The development of modern Kazakstan likewise falls into three periods: the pre-revolutionary, the Soviet, and the modern republic.

In Kazakstan, as the meaning of Soviet citizenship recedes into the past, the question of Kazak identity comes to the fore. The framing of Kazak national identity is generally configured in relation to the Three Zhuzes, in common parlance referred to as “hordes” but more properly translated “hundreds.” Multiple means of defining Kazak ethnicity emerge either to challenge or reinforce legacies of the past. Traditional concepts of the past may alternately reinforce or break away from stereotypes informed by Russia, by the “civilizing” factors of Islam, or by the nineteenth-century imperial West, depending upon external conditions of military or financial power.

In their rapidity and chaotic character, the changes Kazakstan is experiencing create a kind of kaleidoscope. The very act of creating a state was both dramatic and unexpected. In the course of five years, referendums and changes of constitution and parliament have occurred. This calls for an attempt to etch the general line of development: whence, how and whither is the society of Kazakstan going. Such a broad approach proceeds necessarily from the premise that the modern world consists of a dense network of interrelations, into which all societies and peoples on the planet are drawn. This article examines the problem of the modern geopolitical self-determination of Kazakstan from the point of view of the Steppe and of its contribution to political traditions of the world.

Introduction

The fall of the Soviet Union prompted an outpouring of concern over borders, identity, and stability. Many students of the region predicted that the breakup would lead to violence and instability. Scholars of the Soviet region emphasized cultural pluralism—in particular ethnic and religious pluralism or the “national question”—as the ultimate lesson of the Gorbachev era. In other words, ignore ethnicity at your own peril. To this point, that has not been the case. There have been only a few areas where instability, ethnic strife, and violence have been rampant—the Transdniestr region, Tajikistan, and Chechnia in particular. Why has this been the case? The lack of ethnic violence and severe ethnic tensions in this diverse region should lead one to reconsider the role of ethnicity in politics.

In 1929 a young Communist activist named A. Nurkhat traversed Central Asia gathering information about grassroots-level party social work and propaganda among indigenous women. An Uzbek woman who converted to Bolshevism, Nurkhat accepted the social and political reasons for the regime's push to win the support of local women in its struggle against traditional ways of life. Seeking to document these efforts, she traveled to nomadic regions and followed a “red yurt” expedition. Over one hundred red yurts operated across Kazakstan, providing literacy programs, medical treatment, and legal counseling to remote nomadic areas. When Nurkhat visited one red yurt, a Kazak man from a nearby village rushed in seeking help for his wife, who had endured more than a day in labor. The local baqsy (shaman) had been unable to induce birth and the family desperately sought help from the red yurt's nurse, an ethnic Russian, who was able successfully to deliver a healthy baby. Afterward, Nurkhat asked the red yurt's nurse, “What is the Kazak women's attitude to [Western] medical treatment?” The nurse responded,

One of the most important characteristics of the newly independent republic of Kazakstan is the multinational nature of its population. In addition to the members of the titular Kazak nationality, numerous Slavic, Turkic, and other peoples have made, or have been forced to make, Kazakstan their home. Most of these peoples, with the exception of the Kazaks, could be characterized as diasporas. However, the Uighurs, a Turkic Muslim people living in Kazakstan, are not a standard example of a diaspora. Unlike many of Kazakstan's diasporic communities, such as the Russians, Koreans, Uzbeks, Kyrgyz, and Germans, who can rely on outside support from recognized nation states to protect their rights, the Uighurs are a stateless people whose claims to sovereignty are not internationally recognized. Furthermore, unlike other stateless diasporas in Kazakstan, such as the Tatars, the Chechens, and the Mesketian TurksM whose homelands are clearly located outside of Kazakstan, the Uighurs’ “homeland” in China's Xinjiang province borders on the former Soviet republic, which raises the question of whether or not many Uighurs are indigenous to the territory of Kazakstan.

The fate of democracy in Kazakstan may well depend less upon decisions taken in Kazakstan's capital, Almaty (the capital is now Aqmola), than upon what takes place in Kazakstan's far-flung and disparate regions. This should come as no surprise to anyone who appreciates the history and complexities of democratic development. The history of democracy is a history of bottom-up initiative. The democratic institutions that are the most successful and enduring are those that originate from the common and everyday interests and concerns of citizens. Even in historical cases where the political institutions of democracy were adopted consciously and deliberately to break with authoritarian tradition, democracy has been closely associated with local control, self-governance, public participation, and citizen empowerment. The fate of Kazakstan's constitutional order, on the other hand, depends almost exclusively upon decisions taken at the “center” of the new Kazakstan government. The establishment of a constitutional order is a highly conscious and deliberate process. It is also a highly political undertaking. To what extent has the democratic process in Kazakstan corresponded to the process of the establishment of a constitutional order in Kazakstan? To what extent has constitutional development supported limited, accountable government based on popular sovereignty? To what extent can democratic process and constitutional development be expected to mutually reinforce one another in Kazakstan's future? The answers to these questions have great importance for the development of democracy in Kazakstan. They have great importance for the efforts of the international community to encourage democratic development in Kazakstan. These are the key questions of this article.

According to the 1993 Constitution, the Republic of Kazakstan was proclaimed as a democratic, secular, and unitary state. Human beings, their life, freedom, and inherent rights were granted the status of supreme value. A presidential republic as a form of government arose from the functions of the head of state and executive. The supreme legislative body, a one-chamber parliament (Supreme Soviet), preserved remnants of the old Soviet state system in name and function, denying the principle of the division of power. The Supreme Soviet was the only legislative and higher representative body that did not correspond to its legislative function, since that implied a hierarchical power structure. As the only legislative body, parliament could not have subordinate structures. According to the Constitution, the Supreme Soviet issued laws, controlled the observance of laws, and made formal interpretations of laws. This contradicted the power-division principle, according to which it should be the legislative body only. Judicial power in the republic in accordance with the 1993 Constitution belonged to the Constitutional Court, the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court of Arbitration, which was to be elected by the Supreme Soviet. But this also contradicted the power-division principle.

In Kazakstan, there are currently over sixty known oil and natural gas fields, including five sedimentary basins with a potentially large amount of proven and expected gas and oil bearing seams. The largest and best known are the Caspian (Prikaspiiski), South Mangishlak (Uzhno-Mangishlakski), Ustiurt-Buzachi (Ustiurtsko-Buzachinski), Torgai (Torgaiski), and Chu-Sarisu (Chu-Sarisuiski). Kazakstan is ranked twenty-fourth among the world's 55 oil-producing countries by many analysts. It has about 60 billion barrels of oil reserves. Indeed, it has been estimated by many of the same analysts that the offshore fields in the Caspian Sea, which borders Kazakstan's western territory, contain at least 26.6 billion barrels of extractable oil reserves. Yet in 1994, according to an article in Oil and Gas Journal, the government of the United States stated that it “does not consider Kazakstan as the most important source of oil supplies for the United States; however, Kazakstan might play [an] important role in reduction of the [sic] oil price.” Oil is a vital resource for Kazakstan and its extraction will play a major role in fostering the country's future development and relations with major oil consumers. Accurately estimating Kazakstan's reserves, and its ability to sell it on the world market, remains a major concern for Almaty.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the large international companies of the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region (XUAR) began to emphasize collaboration with the former Soviet republics because of opportunities for new markets and raw materials. There are several basic problems, however, demanding serious research into such trade prospects:

(1) The definition of economic and technological variants in the division of labor among Russia, Central Asia, and the People's Republic of China (P.R.C.), including the roles of Kazakstan and Xinjiang.

(2) Defining needs and prioritizing units of production, labor, transportation, etc.

(3) Macropolitical and macroeconomical forecasts of the situations in Russia, Central Asia, and China.

(4) Research on the optimum forms of cooperation.

Kazakstan is both part of former Soviet Central Asia and yet stands apart in many respects. Its geographic position, past history and present development are unique for the area. It is significant that Soviet-era writings treated Kazakstan distinctly from the other four Central Asian republics. This essay is devoted to these differences.

On 10 December 1997, accompanied by much pomp and fanfare, President Nursultan Nazarbaev triumphantly declared Aqmola to be the new capital of Kazakstan in accordance with a 1995 decree he had signed in Almaty. Henceforth, he ordered, all official state business would be transferred from Almaty to Aqmola as expeditiously as possible. Even more dramatic was the context in which President Nazarbaev chose to make the announcement, namely, in the company of the then Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomydrin. Clearly, the intention was, once again, to impress on Moscow Nazarbaev's determination to demonstrate specifically to Russia his personal commitment to transform Kazakstan into a genuine, independent post-Soviet state, or so one could interpret the timing of the event. But, before subjecting the long move from Almaty to Aqmola to further analysis, it might help to bring some perspective to the phenomenon of capital shifting, a practice that dates back at least to classical times.