LH35. CONTENDING FOR KAZAKHSTAN: THE DECEMBER 1986 ALMA-ATA EVENTS AND THE COLLAPSE OF THE SOVIET UNION

This course is based on Dr. Stefany’s doctoral dissertation in history at the University of Kansas. It is the first English language study of the December 1986 Alma-Ata (“Zheltoksan”) protests, which were in response to Mikhail Gorbachev’s replacement of long-serving First Secretary of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan Dinmukhamed Kunaev with the Russian Gennadi Kolbin – and which many view as a harbinger of the collapse of the Soviet Union. The instructor will discuss the history and Russian colonization of the Kazakhs, Soviet “nationalities problem” dating from Lenin on, Stalinism, and the Khrushchev and Brezhnev periods – during which Kunaev rose to power and began putting Kazahs in positions of authority in the Kazakh Societ Socialist Republic (KSSR).