Relation of the national and democratic aspects in the process of Kazakhstan statehood development

To date the Republic of Kazakhstan has been existing for 21 years as sovereign independent state. In this case the formation and development of Kazakhstan statehood invariably go on in combination of two key vectors of this process, i.e. formation of the national state and democratization of its political system.

It should be noted that the national state represents the form of self-determination and organization of the specific nation in definite sovereign territory, and expresses the will of this nation [1]. Therewith this notion should not be identified with monoethnic state. According to prominent representative of American political philosophy Michael Walzer “the term national state means only that some dominating group arranges the life  of the whole society in accordance with its own history and culture, and if everything moves on how it’s been conceived, it performs historic progress and develops culture” [2].

Definite steps towards formation of the national state in Kazakhstan were taken as far back as the Republic was a part of the Union of the Soviet Republics. This circumstance was caused by demolition of the totalitarian political system that was increasing since 1985 and associating centrifugal processes that ultimately resulted in collapse of the state-empire under consideration.

Below are given specific measures on the way of achieving the national statehood by Kazakhstan:

• Institution of the office of the President of the Kazakh SSR on April 24, 1990 with electing to this position the first secretary of the Central Committee of the communist party N.A. Nazarbaev by the Supreme Soviet of Kazakhstan;
• Adoption of Declaration on State Sovereignty of the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic by the Supreme Soviet on October 25, 1990. Actually this document refers to exercising by Kazakhstan its rights established by the Treaty of At the same time it emphasized intention of Kazakhstan to voluntarily unite with other union republics into the Union of sovereign republics that was assumed to be formed instead of the USSR, and build  mutual  relationships  with  them on contractual  basis  with  retaining the right  for withdrawal  from this union;
• Adoption of Enactment by the Supreme Soviet on August 24, 1991 “On Evaluation of the Current Time and Measures of strengthening the Republic sovereignty”, which created the preconditions for practical transition of the Union enterprises and entities standing under the jurisdiction of Kazakhstan and pursuing independent external economic activity;
• Holding presidential election on nation-wide basis and A. Nazarbaev election to the office of the head of the state On December 1, 1991.

Kazakhstan gained real independence only after collapse of the USSR, which began on December 8, 1991 in Minsk with signing Agreement about creation of the Commonwealth of Independent States by the  presidents of Byelorussia, Russia and Ukraine. This legally implied disestablishment of the USSR.

On December 10 the same year the Supreme Soviet adopted the Law on changing the name of the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic. Pursuant to this law the state began to be called Republic of Kazakhstan. And Constitutional Law on independent statehood of the Republic of Kazakhstan was ultimately adopted on December 16, 1991 that proclaimed Kazakhstan the absolutely independent state not being a part of any other State formations and not bounding its sovereignty by acknowledgment of their resolutions and regulatory legal acts.

Practically from the very beginning of Kazakhstan development as independent state the attempts were undertaken at high official level to tie the sovereign state values and fundamentals of the formed democratic system with traditions and attitudes of Kazakh titular ethnic group related to the statehood development.

It is very illustrative in this respect the citation from the speech of the RK President N.A.Nazarbaev at the first session of the Assembly of the Peoples of Kazakhstan held on March 24, 1995: “Over many ages Kazakh nation was forced to fight for its independence and sovereignty. Thanks to its best qualities, ability to stick and hold together in the hour of danger and not least of all conciliatory spirit, striving to live in good neighbourliness and consensus with other peoples, this nation did not vanish in the course of history and was able to restore its statehood over decades… And those who to date admit to cast doubt upon the right of this nation for its statehood are not aware or hate to know the severity of its drama. I am convinced that Kazakh nation deserves the statehood not less than any other nation. Kazakh statehood was born in travail of history” [3].

With allowance for such important qualities of the Kazakh nation as love of liberty and susceptibility to changes, the leadership of Kazakhstan also proclaimed reforming the system of social relations as official political policy of the Republic aimed at building democracy, law-governed state and market economy.

Thereby the democratization process of Kazakhstan society and the state was commenced. The analysis of this process enables to single out the main features of the domestic democracy system:

• Transitional character caused by conducting the appropriate social-political conversions in terms of the country transition from totalitarian governance regime that existed during the soviet statehood to democratic political system;
• Gradual development of the democratic values and institutions, which is mainly connected with lack of corresponding traditions and democratic political culture not inherent in the Kazakhstan society;
• Simultaneous processes of formation and further development of the democratic institutions, on the one hand, and carrying out economic conversions or taking anti-recessionary measures, on the other hand, giving preference to the second trend of the state policy based on the principle “Economics comes first, and the politics comes second”;
• The State represented by the ruling authorities (acting government) acting as the key initiator of implementing political conversions of democratic character which is caused by insufficient maturity of the civil society and its institutions;
• Representative character because the citizens delegate their right for taking political decisions to representatives elected by them in combination with direct democracy elements represented by the institution of the Republican Referendum;
• Carrying out democratic conversions in the terms of raising efficiency and insuring maximum stability of the Republic political system;
• Refusal from automatic imitation of the western democracy models on account of the specific character of the Kazakhstan society and the

First, Democratic character of the Kazakhstan statehood is confirmed by the approved RK Constitution and world-wide acknowledged civil, political, social and economic rights and liberties and guarantees of their observance, and also ideological and political variety, everybody’s equality before the law and  court,  separation of powers and so on.

Secondly, corresponding strategic guidelines of the government. Thus, for example, Strategic Plan of the Republic of Kazakhstan development up to 2010 points out that “democratic trend of the political system development was formed in Kazakhstan” [4].

And thirdly, real diversity of the acting institutions of the civil society including political parties, trade unions, non-governmental organizations, religious associations and mass media and so on.

Alongside with that, contemporary status of Kazakhstan shows that the process of its formation as the perfect national and democratic state is not completed yet. It is obvious in the first case that possession of sovereignty, boundaries and other attributes of an independent state is not enough to correspond to the status under consideration.

Theoretically national state presumes that all the citizens speak common language and possess common culture and values. At the same time the factors of polyethnic Kazakhstan society consisting of 130 ethnic groups’ representatives and actual predomination of the Russian language in the language medium of the Republic one way or another restrict Kazakhstan from achieving such level of its national statehood.

So it was quite predictable that in April 2010 the head of the state approved the Doctrine of Kazakhstan National Unity developed under the auspice of the Assembly of the Peoples of Kazakhstan. This document determines the necessity of reaching the national unity based on acknowledgement of values and fundamentals system common for all citizens of the Republic including state language acquisition by every citizen in the  long term.

In this regard such thesis of the Doctrine as “There is no nation without unity. There is no state without the nation” [5] actually acknowledges the fact that the perfect nation has still not been formed in Kazakhstan. It logically follows thence that only reaching the national unity will enable to bring up Kazakhstan to higher level as the national state.

As for further democracy development, it is necessary to admit that this process is influenced by such negative restraining factors as:

1. Countervailing and paternalistic mentality being inherent by certain people of Kazakhstan preventing them to realize the importance of the political development vector selected by Kazakhstan, and take the active part in this process;
2. Imperfect system of the state power and administration including its exposure to bureaucracy, corruption, frequent abuse by government officials of their positions and consequently complications in intercommunication between the government and society;
3. Focus of certain civil society institutions on meeting their private and lucrative interests in their activity, which decreases their involvement in the democratization process of the Kazakhstan society and the

Therefore the leadership of the Republic is faced with important challenges of the strategic character such  as final building of the national statehood, and modernization of the political system in accordance with the Strategic Plan of the Republic of Kazakhstan Development till 2020.

1. Grand Legal Dictionary (edited by Sukharev , Krutskih V.). – M.: Infra-M, 2001. – С. 453.
2. Michael On Toleration. – M.: Idea-Press, 2000. – P. 59.
3. For peace and consent in our common home. Speech of the RK Prersident Nazarbaev at the first session of the Assembly of the Kazakhstan nations // Nazarbaev N.A. Policy of Peacr and – Astana: Elorda, 2008. – P. 259- 260.
4. Strategic plan of the Republic of Kazakhstan development till 2010 (approved by the Edict of the RK President dated December 4, 2001 №735) // Legal reference book «Legislation».
5. Doctrine of Kazakhstan national unity // – 2010. – 29 April.