Word: kazakhs
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...December 1986, Kazakh youths rampaged through Alma Ata to protest the appointment of an ethnic Russian as party first secretary of Kazakhstan. In July 1987, Crimean Tatars demanded the right to return to their homeland on the Black Sea, from which they were removed in 1944. Last February, Armenians and Azerbaijanis began to clash over control of Nagorno-Karabakh, a predominantly Armenian enclave south of the Caucasus. And last week in the Estonian capital of Tallinn, the local supreme soviet turned down constitutional amendments proposed by Moscow and voiced new demands for sovereignty. Two days later, the Lithuanian supreme soviet...
...concrete aptly named Brezhnev Square. Three officers in a yellow-and-blue militia bus keep watch over the few cars and pedestrians passing through on an icy evening. Club-carrying civilian police auxiliaries patrol nearby streets where, on the night and morning of Dec. 17-18, mobs of Kazakh youths smashed windows and torched cars. In some parts of the square, new trees have been planted, apparently to replace those damaged by demonstrators...
...physical damage from the night of rioting has been repaired, psychological scars remain. "There was quite a bit of tension between Russians and Kazakhs afterward," said a Kazakh schoolteacher. Young ethnic Russians were openly resentful of the demonstrators and, in some cases, of Kazakhs generally. "They didn't like it when Kunaev got thrown out," said one Russian student. "They got everything without working, through their relatives and cronies...
...demonstrations the following day. According to officials in Alma-Ata, the demonstrators were angered not so much by Kunaev's dismissal as by the decision to replace him with an outsider, Russian or not. But the motives may have run deeper than that. Prime Minister Nursultan Nazarbaev, a Kazakh who rose to the premiership when Kunaev was in power, said that some demonstrators shouted slogans like "Kazakhstan for Kazakhs!" and attacked non-Kazakhs on the streets. "It was a manifestation of nationalism -- we are not trying to get around that," he said. But he insisted many demonstrators were motivated...
...Kremlin was quick to punish, it was also quick to placate. The Politburo's Solomentsev paid highly publicized visits to stores, markets and housing complexes to hear citizens' complaints about food shortages and poor housing. "Before Dec. 18 there was nothing in the shops," said a Kazakh. "There were shortages of meat, milk, cheese, everything. But in three days, suddenly, the shops were full." A special effort was made to provide adequate supplies of good-quality mutton, beloved by the Kazakhs, who do not eat pork because of Muslim dietary rules...