Bhavna Dave. Kazakhstan: Ethnicity, Language and Power

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me that Turcology and ethnographic studies in the early Soviet years were the

domains of ‘Europeans’. Fields such as historiography and cultural–literary

specialization were closely monitored during the Stalin era to deter their

‘nationalization’. It was only in the post-War period that the Kazakhs were

allowed to choose Turcology and linguistics as a profession.

However, it was

vital for them to be fluent in Russian in order to not be seen as ‘nationalists’.

As noted by Zhovtis earlier, an informal rift between a small urban, Russian-

educated ‘internationalist’ Kazakh intelligentsia and the majority of aul-based

strata educated in Kazakh was becoming visible in the post-Second World War

climate. A Kazakh university professor corroborated this view:

the intelligentsia always sent its children to Russian schools. The brighter

pupils from the provinces were sent to Almaty or to other cities by their

parents, where they often lived with relatives or in an internat (boarding

school). It was the children of the shepherds (chabany), the kolkhozniki,

milk-men, tractorists who remained in Kazakh schools.

Nagima, who worked as a librarian at the Kazakh Academy of Sciences in the

1990s, recounted how she and her brother were sent to Almaty by her father, a

schoolteacher in Shymkent, to obtain Russian language education. She described

her father as extremely well-versed in Kazakh literature and Arabic, but not very

competent in Russian. ‘He told us to study very hard and make sure that we pass

the Russian entrance exams to enter the university,’ said Nagima, adding ‘it is

thanks to this that I am here today and not in a kolkhoz.’ She quoted her father’s

words: ‘Kazakh schools exist only to prepare us to go to one of the vocational

training schools (proftekhuchilishche), or study through correspondence courses

so that we continue to work in the kolkhoz. They [Russians] don’t want to do this

work and don’t want us to leave the aul.’

The only institutes that regularly offered instruction in Kazakh were the

Kazakh Agricultural Institute and the Women’s Pedagogical Institute, both located

in Almaty. These institutions drew a large number of candidates from the five

southern predominantly Kazakh-speaking oblasts, whereas upwardly mobile

Kazakhs aspired to study in other top vuzy, or in the ‘European’ republics.

Kazakh-speaking students from the south, who were either unwilling or unable to

get into a vuz in the distant Russophone cities of their home republic, often

studied in Tashkent, where classes were taught in Kazakh as well. A letter by a

Kazakh official to the CP of Kazakhstan mentioned that about 70 per cent of

students in the vuzy and Secondary Technical Schools in Tashkent were receiving

instructions in Uzbek in 1968–69, whereas the corresponding share of students in

Kazakhstan who were studying in Kazakh was much smaller.

For students from

the southern oblasts, Tashkent, rather than Almaty, appeared to be the ‘centre’,

although this fact was to change subsequently, when Dinmukhamed Kunaev

became the first secretary of the Kazakh CP in 1962. As a native of Almaty

oblast, he facilitated access among his fellow clan members to education and jobs

in the capital.

66 Becoming mankurts? The hegemony of Russian

The informal continuation of affirmative action in favouring the titular group

in admissions to vuzy and other administrative positions did not necessarily mean

that the criteria for testing Russian language proficiency was relaxed, at least not

in the Russophone cities in Kazakhstan. A directive issued by Moscow to the

Kazakh Ministry of Education in 1954 asserted that the ‘era of preferences

(l’goty) is now over’. Kazakh youth who had studied in Russian schools were to

be admitted on an equal footing with those who had been admitted ‘on the basis

of a competition [a reference to Slavs]’. Those who studied in native language

schools were also required to take entrance exams in Russian language and

literature and demonstrate equal competence in all remaining subjects as well.

Concerned by the diminishing prestige of Kazakh in the 1950s, and the tendency

among urban Kazakh parents to speak Russian with their children, a Kazakh writer

reprimanded his fellow Kazakhs:

Many of our intelligentsia, grazhdane [‘citizens’– a reference used in irony

here] now think that the Kazakh language has no future, that it has outlived

its time. All of them are sending their children to Russian schools. The urban

youth now speaks Kazakh with a foreign accent, proudly flouting the ignorance

of their mother tongue by saying men kazaksha bilmemin [grammatically

incorrect rendering of ‘I don’t know Kazakh’].

Several complaints addressed to CP officials referred to the indifference of fellow

Kazakh officials to the plight of the native language. A decree issued by the

Kazakh CP in 1949 stated that all official meetings and party proceedings in the

republic had to be held in Russian as well, and all the government directives

(ukazy) had to be issued in Russian.

Sheker Alimova, a pensioner who was a

Party activist in Qyzylorda recalled that even the proceedings of the annual

congresses of shepherds (kongress chabanov) were carried out in Russian. She

noted, ‘The Kazakh kolkhoz director, more eager to impress his Russian boss,

addressed the entire meeting in Russian. In 1951, few shepherds (chabany)

understood Russian and had little inkling of what was being debated, but all voted

unanimously.’

Local officials, many of whom were Kazakhs, issued several

‘modernizing’ diktats and informal instructions for widening the use of Russian.

Aziza Zhunispeisova recalled that the Kazakh mayor of the town Leninsk in

Qyzylorda oblast ordered Kazakhs to use forks and a proper dining table while

entertaining Russians, and not sit at the dastarkhan (a low-lying table) on the

floor, or eat besh barmak from a common platter.

The Kazakh mayor of

Qyzylorda in the 1950s banned the pervasive practice of husking sunflower seeds

in public and eating them, describing it as ‘uncivilized’, and responsible for

dirtying the streets.

The use of Kazakh in the Russified urban settings often provoked negative

stereotypes of being ‘illiterate’ (negramotnye), speaking a backward ‘dialect’, and

betraying one’s ‘tribal’ attachments. Speaking Kazakh in a public space or work

setting dominated by Russians was considered not just impolite, but also risky, as

it could invite allegations of ‘nationalism’ and ‘tribalism’. In a Party archive of

Becoming mankurts? The hegemony of Russian 67

the late 1950s, one Kazakh linguist blamed the then Minister of Education,

Sembaev, ‘for making sure that there is no need to teach Kazakh either in vuzy or

in Russian secondary schools at a time when the larger masses, the rural youth do

not know Russian’.

While the small stratum of Russian-educated Kazakhs who

held high positions in the party were under tremendous pressure to display their

‘internationalism’, there was a latent rivalry between those educated in Kazakh

and others educated in Russian, with clan and regional ties acquiring a visible

role. By this time, however, the small Russian-educated urban Kazakh CP elite

had already set the pattern of adopting the Russian language for fellow Kazakhs

from the aul.

The hegemony of Russian

Unlike other colonial powers that had restricted native access to education in

European languages, the Soviet state provided numerous avenues for the

dissemination of Russian among the ‘subaltern’ strata of the population, the biggest

beneficiaries of the equities of the socialist system. Thus, Russian was no longer

a scarce resource that could be exploited and monopolized by a narrow and

privileged circle of bilingual native elites.

Russian language education offered

new vistas for upward mobility and integration to Kazakhs who were struggling

to recover from the dislocation associated with collectivization and adapt to the

new socio-economic environment.

To be sure, even the most coercive socio-economic policies and zealous

cultural transformation enacted by an empire or a centralized state often involve

collaboration of a core stratum of native elites. Material and career objectives,

ethnic survival, ideological pressures and day-to-day functioning necessitate

competence in the metropolitan language. For Kazakhs who had no prior access

to education, Russian denoted being ‘cultured’ (kul’turnyi) and belonging to a

larger, ‘European’ civilization. Knowledge of Russian was seen as providing a

broader vision and a sense of empowerment. The unequivocal linkage of Russian

with modernity and mobility, its diffusion to all echelons of the society and its

role in promoting egalitarianism enabled it to attain hegemony. ‘Hegemony’ here

can be seen as a rational, almost commonsensical acceptance of the ‘normality’

and ascendancy of a given order and set of practices.

If there were some murmurings of dissent against the prominence of Russians

and calls for restoring the visibility and status of Kazakh national symbols, they

surfaced in the public domain only when such dissent was implicitly authorized

by Moscow. Thus, Khrushchev’s famous denunciation of the personality cult

under Stalin at the Twentieth CP Congress in 1956 offered Soviet citizens an

opportunity to voice their grievances. A number of young Kazakh scholars used

this freedom to express their concerns over the Russianization of their republic

and the virtual absence of Kazakh in state offices and public life in the capital

Almaty. The newspaper Qazaq adebieti, following the tone of dissent expressed in

the central newspaper Literaturnaia gazeta, published several articles advocating

urgent action to save Kazakh from ‘extinction’ and restore its prestige. A number

68 Becoming mankurts? The hegemony of Russian

of Kazakh writers and academics criticized the Party’s disregard for Kazakh as a

violation of the Leninist promise of the equal development of all national

languages. Rakhmanqul Berdibai, a Kazakh folklorist and a prominent young

writer who then initiated a campaign in the newspaper Qazaq adebieti to restore

the prestige of Kazakh, said, ‘I thought the censors would allow it – after all we

had just had the Twentieth Party Congress.’

Berdibai was chastised for raising

the ‘national question’ and lost his job. ‘The people who silenced him were all

Kazakhs,’ said Dinara, a student in Kazakh philology. Berdibai was reinstated in

his job when Kunaev took charge in Kazakhstan in 1960.

The Kazakh CP apparatus, which had a majority of Kazakh members, repri-

manded those who sought to rehabilitate and revive Kazakh for propounding

‘nationalist’ ideas. A rival group of Kazakh elites within the republican party

apparatus mobilized campaigns against ‘nationalists’ in the same way as attacks

on so-called great Russian chauvinism were typically initiated by Russians in the

1920s and 1930s. This was consistent with the practice of internationalism and

the friendship of peoples. Halima Adamovna, the widow of the prominent Kazakh

historian Yermukhan Bekmakhanov, who was sentenced to hard labour by Stalin

in 1951, noted that her husband was let down by his co-ethnics in the Academy

of Sciences who were envious of his success, and not by ‘Russians’ or

‘Moscow’.

She noted that he was ‘too honourable a Kazakh’ to point fingers at

his brethren and did not hold any grudge against his birzherler [those from the

same place of origin] who had offered testimony against him.

The Kazakh

writer Olzhas Suleimenov, who writes in Russian, was frequently taunted by

nationalists for his inability to speak correct Kazakh. In retaliation, he asserted

that ‘personal rivalries and factionalism within the Kazakh Union of Writers and

Journalists have exacerbated the decline of Kazakh.’

The active projection of oneself as an ‘internationalist’ offered a fast-track for

promoting one’s career goals. Internationalism and the emphasis on forging a

‘Soviet community of peoples’, which were tirelessly trumpeted by the Soviet

state, resonated in people’s life experience and attained widespread support.

Critics of Suleimenov and other ‘Russified’ Kazakhs note that fluency in Russian,

membership in the CP and a spouse of Slavic background constituted the most

effective antidotes against charges of nationalism.

While many top Kazakh

Party members had internalized elements of Soviet internationalist discourse and

its disapproval of ‘nationalism’, internationalism was not an empty slogan. As a

Kazakh journalist noted, ‘[M]ost did feel themselves part of this new historical

community, partially due to the fact that it was far less dangerous to feel that

way.’

These perspectives are a testament to the hegemony of the Soviet

language-centred conception of nation and the yearning for inclusion in the

Soviet community.

Mankurtism is an enduring consequence of the dislocation of the traditional

culture, the loss of genealogical knowledge and the demise of Kazakh oral

folklore, which pushed the Kazakhs towards an adaptation to Russian. A broad

spectrum of Kazakhs, from the fervent advocates of national revival and the

so-called internationalists, concur that the nomadic civilization and nomadic way

Becoming mankurts? The hegemony of Russian 69

of life that had earlier embodied the essence of being Kazakh (equivalent with

being a nomad, able to recount his genealogy at least to seven generations)

disappeared during the Soviet era. The debate on Kazakh language loss and

mankurtizatsiia arose in response to the eventual dissolution of the Soviet state

and the failure of Russian to live up to its global promise. By then, however, the

Kazakh elites as a whole, as well as a large stratum of the subalterns, had already

learned to articulate their power in the language of the dominant culture.

70 Becoming mankurts? The hegemony of Russian

The [Soviet] campaigns against intelligentsia would not have acquired the

importance that it gained, had they not been realized through support of that very

intelligentsia.

(Pyotr Gurevich, Totalitarizm protiv intelligentsii, 1992)

The desire for parity is in fact a desire for superiority.

(Donald Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict, 1985)

There could be no resistance, it was simply not allowed.

(Layla, a Kazakh woman)

It is now widely acknowledged that Soviet rule inculcated a new conception of

territorialized nationhood among the Kazakhs and Central Asians together with a

feeling of pride in belonging to the Soviet socialist state. Yet these newly instilled

identifications with the nation and the Soviet state rested on a self-conscious

repudiation of nationalism and a depoliticization of ethnic identities. In 1992,

when I had unwittingly indicated my interest in exploring the emergence of

nationalism among the Kazakhs while filling out a form to obtain a library card

in what then was the Pushkin library (now the Abai National Library), Rosa, a

librarian, enquired: ‘How could the Kazakhs, a small nation, reduced to a

minority in their own homeland just like the Red Indians in America, with their

language and culture marginalized, ever have developed a sense of nationalism?’

Similar responses followed when I asked several of my informants to comment

on the protests by Kazakh youth in Almaty in December 1986 when Mikhail

Gorbachev ousted Kazakhstan’s long-serving leader Dinmukhamed Kunaev and

replaced him with Gennadii Kolbin, a Russian. These protests represented the

first spontaneous defiance of Gorbachev’s efforts to replace old Brezhnev allies

and loyalists in the republics. The protests had no ‘ethnic’ or ‘nationalist’ overtones,

averred several inhabitants of the former capital when asked about their opinions.

Many readily endorsed the official version that the riots denoted an act of

‘hooliganism’ by ‘marginal elements of the society’. Others asserted that such

events were instigated by the ‘authorities’, implying that both Moscow and the

Kazakh CP apparatus were implicated. Overall, the testimonies of the Kazakhs

conveyed the self-image of a quiescent people, a small nation that has never

4 Ethnic entitlements and

compliance

displayed nationalist traits linked to territorial or cultural conquests or a desire for

domination and control. The repudiation of ‘nationalism’ by Rosa and a vast

majority of Kazakhs fully resonated with the official Soviet perspective of

nationhood as a ‘safe’ cultural category, a depoliticized identity and an institutional

framework.

Rosa’s analogy between the Kazakhs and the ‘red Indians of America’ also

suggested an underlying belief in their indigenous entitlement which Soviet

affirmative action policies had inculcated among its so-called backward nations

by offering them subsidies (l’goty), incentives and opportunities for rapid

development. Kazakhs seized upon these opportunities not only to remedy what

the Bolsheviks had characterized as their historical backwardness, but also to

overcome the dislocation caused by their forced collectivization which had

deprived them of a traditional livelihood and an identity anchored in the nomadic

kinship structure. The socialist state’s preferential disbursement of education,

employment, mobility and status to the titular nationality within its republic

paved the way for the emergence of a defensive, entitlement-based nationalism.

In this way, as Katherine Verdery notes, nationalism was unintentionally ‘built

into’ the organization of socialism, which had in fact sought to contain it.

Notwithstanding the pervasive institutionalization of nationality at the

sub-state level,

the normative and discursive taboo on articulating nationalism,

understood as the political assertion of group claims, deterred the development of

an autonomous national identity discourse or the mobilization of ethno-cultural

claims. This produced a disjunction between a pervasive public repudiation of

nationalism and the habitual assertion of the primacy of titular claims, as Rosa’s

testimony conveys. Related to this is an equally striking disjunction between the

Kazakhs’ quiet assertion of ethnic entitlements and nationality power, particularly

under the leadership of Kunaev, and their inability to turn nationality into a

political force.

From this standpoint, it should not surprise us that Kazakhstan, and much of

Central Asia, remained quiet and apparently unaffected by the waves and cycles

of nationalist mobilizations that had engulfed numerous parts of the Soviet

Union, from the Baltic republics, Ukraine, Georgia and Armenia to Moldova.

The Kazakh Communist Party (CP) leaders showed little inclination to speak out

against the imposition of a Russian to head the Kazakh CP. Nor did the cultural

elites, intelligentsia and other social strata come out openly against the apparent

collaboration of their national elites with Moscow.

Olivier Roy has pointed to the failure of intellectuals in Central Asia to develop

a national imagination and ‘[t]o give a real content to the concept of national

culture’.

The national intellectuals, whom Roy blames for the failure to develop

nationalism, are part of the Soviet-nurtured Kazakh intelligentsia who together

with the party elites at the helm of the republic’s party apparatus were among the

most prominent recipients of the affirmative action benefits that the socialist state

dispensed to its ‘backward’ nations. Their failure to develop a national imagination

or undertake a collective national action raise larger questions of the representation

and legitimacy of the Kazakh communist elite and intelligentsia, who not only

72 Ethnic entitlements and compliance

retained their Soviet era status and benefits, but were able to enhance these with

the attainment of sovereign statehood. The quiet and reflexive transformation of

former communists into custodians of national culture and interests in the

post-Soviet context, which I describe here as the ‘communist-turned-nationalist’

phenomenon, has so far been seen as too commonplace to be considered anomalous

or to merit a serious enquiry.

This chapter will consider two issues. It will examine how the Soviet state

erected, institutionalized and legitimized a structure of titular ethnic entitlements

in Kazakhstan while steadily undermining the political salience of ethnicity. It will

then explore how the national elites, by-products and beneficiaries of Soviet

socialist subsidies and affirmative action, have been able to pose as legitimate

representatives of their nation despite their thorough co-optation in the Soviet

system through patronage networks between the centre and the republican party

apparatus. An analysis of the Almaty protests of December 1986 will serve as the

basis for the latter discussion.

The rooting of ethnic preferences

By parcelling out of distinct national entities in Central Asia and introducing a

package of affirmative action policies, the Bolsheviks set the institutional and

normative parameters for transforming the ‘backward’ or ‘oppressed’ peoples

(otstalye narody) into nations (natsii). Stalin envisaged these newly demarcated

ethno-territorial entities as evolving into ‘socialist nations’ by undergoing a

transition from the feudal-agrarian stage to socialism by skipping the capitalist

phase of development. The explicit goal of socialist nation-building was to eradicate

economic backwardness and enable the new nations to attain equalization

(vyravnivanie) with other advanced nations. Nation was defined as an objective

category, with four distinct socio-economic or material indicators: territory,

language, common economic mode of life and national character.

In a formal

sense, the fourth indicator ‘national character’, denoting the psychological make-up

of a nation referred to a subjective element. However, nations lacked a sense of

subjectivity in determining their national character. As a result, depictions of

‘national character’tended to be based on prevalent generalizations and stereotypes,

which endowed objective traits to a nation. Overall, the concept of nation

precluded a subjective expression of group identity and cultural claims based on

other markers. The empowerment of the backward or subaltern nations was a

critical step in laying the foundation of the Soviet multinational state, whose

eventual aim was to dissolve ethno-national differences and establish a Soviet

socialist community of nations.

Korenizatsiia, translated as nativization or indigenization, refers to the Bolshevik

policy of the 1920s and early 1930s of ‘rooting’ (derived from the Russian word

koren’, meaning root) of national cultures, languages and cadres in the newly

demarcated national territories. The term was a vital component of the Bolshevik

decolonizing rhetoric which was intended to appease indigenous claims over those

of settlers, who were referred to as the ‘newly arrived elements’( prishlye elementy).

Ethnic entitlements and compliance 73

Korenizatsiia denoted an accelerated form of affirmative action, whose aim was

to create skilled native cadres to staff the various positions in the party,

administration and cultural-educational institutions; to expedite the modernization

agenda; and to entrench Soviet rule in non-Russian territories. In this way, as

Terry Martin notes, it was to serve as a ‘prophylactic policy designed to defuse

and prevent the development of nationalism among the formerly oppressed

non-Russian colonial peoples through the provision of national territories,

languages, elites, and cultures’.

The development of a pool of skilled native

cadres in as short a time frame as possible was vital to the effective and speedy

implementation of the CP directives pertaining to nation-building (natsional’noe

stroitel’stvo) and consolidation of the Soviet socialist state. The Muslim groups in

Central Asia simply lacked a pool of skilled cadres, possessing neither an

industrial proletariat nor an identifiable educated urban class. Korenizatsiia was

an attempt to root the CP apparatus in local conditions by enhancing native

representation and participation and thus procuring legitimacy for the Soviet

order at a time when few Kazakhs (or non-Russians) had any understanding of the

concepts of socialism, nationhood and industrialization. The development of

skilled communist cadres and an ‘indigenized’ party apparatus depended on the

ability of the Bolsheviks to explain these goals to the natives in order to win over

their support. The CP apparatus in the republics was expected to ‘speak in the

national language’, which meant that the numerous ‘European’ officials

who were sent to develop the backward national peripheries had to learn the

native language.

Since few natives had adequate knowledge of Russian, the European officials

sent to Kazakhstan and Central Asia in the 1920s and 1930s had little choice but

to learn the local language. Stalin had emphasized the need for the republic party

apparatus to speak in the native language and to turn each national language into

the prime language of official business (iazyk deloproizvodstva) within each

republic. This recognition of the native language had instilled a perception among

the titular nationality groups that they should eventually staff all key positions in

their national republics. Cautioning against such ‘nationalist’ interpretations,

Stalin repeatedly underscored the ‘socialist’, rather than ‘nationalist’ intent of

korenizatsiia: emphasizing that its goal was ‘to render Soviet power natural and

close to the people’s hearts (delat’ sovetskuiu vlast’rodnoi i blizkoi)’.

The shortage

of skilled native personnel and an inadequate knowledge of Kazakh among

Russians turned the goal of conducting official business in Kazakh into an

illusory one.

In fact, nowhere in Central Asia did the party apparatus function

predominantly in the native language, although other key elements of indigenization,

such as the proportion of native elites in the party and administration, varied

significantly across these republics. It was easier to increase the number of

natives in the CP and administrative structures than to ensure that they functioned

in the national language of the republic.

Korenizatsiia led to a noticeable increase in the titular representation within the

Kazakh CP apparatus at lower levels. The Kazakh share in the population was

estimated at about 57 per cent in the 1920s. Russians formed about 22 per cent

74 Ethnic entitlements and compliance

and the remaining Slavs and Europeans together about 20 per cent. In 1928, both

Kazakhs and Russians formed about 38 per cent of the total party membership.

However, the numerical increase in Kazakhs representation did not indicate a

corresponding increase in skills and levels of participation. Martin notes that

what korenizatsiia achieved in practice in several republics was a ‘kucherizat-

siia’ (staffing of very low-skilled positions with natives).

Few Kazakhs were

visible in the top leadership of the republic in the late 1920s and early 1930s.

The majority of top party officials, including the first secretary of the CP of

Kazakhstan, were non-natives, as Table 4.1 shows.

All through the period

1920–52, the leadership of the CP of Kazakhstan was rotated among the

representatives of various nationalities.

Filipp I. Goloshchekin (1925–33), a

Jew by nationality, became the first secretary of the CP of Kazakh ASSR when

the new republic was constituted. He spearheaded the forced settlement of

Kazakhs through collectivization, as discussed in Chapter 3. Despite Stalin’s

emphasis on its socialist objectives, in Kazakhstan, as in other republics,

korenizatsiia came to be understood as nationalization and hiring of more

natives to staff positions within the republic administration as attempts to make

the national languages mandatory in government administration were gradually

abandoned.

Acknowledging that a grave shortage of qualified Kazakh cadres had practically

halted korenizatsiia in the republic, Levon Mirzoian, who became the first secretary

Ethnic entitlements and compliance 75

Table 4.1 Ethnic origins of the first secretaries of the CP of Kazakh SSR, 1925–91

First Secretary Nationality Period

Filipp I. Goloshchekin* Jewish 1925–33

Levon I. Mirzoian* Armenian 1933–37

V. I. Naneishvili Georgian 1938 (interim)

Nikolai A. Skvortsov Belarusian 1938–45

Zhumabai Shaiakhmetov Kazakh 1945–54

Panteleimon K. Ponomarenko Ukrainian 1954–55

Leonid Brezhnev Russian 1955–56

Ivan D. Iakovlev Russian 1956–57

Nikolai I. Beliaev Russian 1957–60

Dinmukhamed A. Kunaev Kazakh 1960–62

Ismail Y. Yusupov Uighur 1962–64

Dinmukhamed A. Kunaev Kazakh 1964–86

Gennadii V. Kolbin Russian 1986–89

Nursultan A. Nazarbaev Kazakh 1989–91

Source: http://www.worldstatesmen.org/Kazakhstan.htm#Kazakh%20Soviet%20Socialist%20Republic

last accessed on 15 October 2005. The information on the ethnic affiliations of the first secretaries

was obtained during my research in the CP Archives of Kazakhstan.

Notes

* Goloshchekin and Mirzoian were the first secretaries of the CP of the Kazakh ASSR, which was

part of the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic (RSFSR) until 1936. Mirzoian took over as

the first secretary of the CP of Kazakh SSR in 1936. Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan obtained a full

union republic status (‘SSR’) in 1936.