Review of citizens’ letters to authorities on interethnic relations in Kazakhstan in 1985-1990s

Abstract

There was a practice of ordinary citizens addressing the authorities about acute problems through letters in the Soviet Union. The authorities emphasized letters as important sources of social information. Letters were on a par in importance as citizens' meetings, voter orders, print, radio and television. The issues of interethnic relations, nationalism, chauvinism, Russophobia, problems of the use of Russian and national languages, Russification in the Union republics occupy a special place in the appeals/complaints during the perestroika period. Letters on the situation and development of the Russian population in the Union republics occupy a notable place.

This article provides an overview of private letters from representatives of various nationalities to the Central Committee of the CPSU and the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan in order to study public opinion about the state of interethnic relations in the Kazakh SSR during the perestroika period. Letters received by the authorities were conditionally divided into four groups according to their content. In the article, the authors made an attempt to construct the social reality, the worldview of citizens of the Kazakh SSR in the field of interethnic relations in the second half of the 1980s. After reviewing the letters/complaints/statements, the authors concluded that the grievances were mutual. The article uses published and unpublished archival materials of the Archive of the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan, the State Archive of Astana, the Russian State Archive of Contemporary History, the Russian State Archive of Social and Political History of the Russian Federation