Latvia's education system shows little movement toward ethnic integration in the sense of homogenization, yet there is integration in the sense of a widely accepted status quo. Linguistically separated schools act as safeguards of cultural identity for Latvians and non-Latvians alike and may well be the linchpin guaranteeing ethnic peace. As argued by pluralist thinkers, comprehensive ethnic mixing and homogenizing of multiethnic populations can be problematic, whereas providing a framework for the stable preservation of distinct identities can lead to better integration overall. The multi-lingual school system of Latvia that operates in the broader context of smooth economic integration illustrates the merits of such a mixed integrative policy.

In their rapidity and chaotic character, the changes Kazakstan is experiencing create a kind of kaleidoscope. The very act of creating a state was both dramatic and unexpected. In the course of five years, referendums and changes of constitution and parliament have occurred. This calls for an attempt to etch the general line of development: whence, how and whither is the society of Kazakstan going. Such a broad approach proceeds necessarily from the premise that the modern world consists of a dense network of interrelations, into which all societies and peoples on the planet are drawn. This article examines the problem of the modern geopolitical self-determination of Kazakstan from the point of view of the Steppe and of its contribution to political traditions of the world.

The present article is concerned with the ethnopolitical dimensions of the environmental problem within the Russian nationalistic movement in the USSR. As distinct from Western Europe, there has never been a “pure” ecological movement in the Soviet Union, and until recently the environmental issue has been raised mainly by national movements as a part of the national question.

At the Treaty of Bucharest in 1812, Russia annexed the eastern half of Moldavia, the territory between the Dnestr and Prut Rivers, which it called “Bessarabia.” One historian argues that this was an effort to circumvent the Tilsit agreement with Napoleon in which Russia had agreed to vacate both Romanian principalities. Since Tilsit “did not mention ‘Bessarabia’ the Russian troops could remain there.”

“For what we all are, really, is elegant scarecrows on fields of words.” Gabriel Liiceanu's metaphor of “discourse” is particularly revealing for the case of the Moldavian nation. When the field is already covered with scarecrows, a new one will have trouble finding a free spot and functioning properly. Rivaling nationalist and communist interpretations of Moldavian history have left little free space for an original view: historical facts have been interpreted and reinterpreted time and time again, so it has become increasingly difficult to create new meanings and to find fresh words.

The search for ways to solve problems in Europe after World War II has sometimes touched on the subject of regional and inter-regional development. However, socio-spatial definitions of region are very diverse. According to macro approaches, a category of region is established on the basis of a certain kind of affinity (e.g., social, economic, cultural) and more intensive cooperation (already realized or expected) among groups of neighboring countries within the European continent. But on the other side of this socio-spatial continuum there are significantly smaller socio-spatial categories of region which are defined by certain commonly shared affinities existing within individual countries.

Introduction

The fall of the Soviet Union prompted an outpouring of concern over borders, identity, and stability. Many students of the region predicted that the breakup would lead to violence and instability. Scholars of the Soviet region emphasized cultural pluralism—in particular ethnic and religious pluralism or the “national question”—as the ultimate lesson of the Gorbachev era. In other words, ignore ethnicity at your own peril. To this point, that has not been the case. There have been only a few areas where instability, ethnic strife, and violence have been rampant—the Transdniestr region, Tajikistan, and Chechnia in particular. Why has this been the case? The lack of ethnic violence and severe ethnic tensions in this diverse region should lead one to reconsider the role of ethnicity in politics.

Values play an important role in any culture, shaping attitudes and aspirations, and supporting economic activities. They are widely acknowledged to be defining elements of business culture for managers and workers alike, despite difficulties in tracing the exact linkages they have with behaviors and events (Connor and Becker 1994). They impact individuals’ ability to make critical adjustments under conditions of accelerating technological change and unprecedented expansion of information transfer (Rothschild 1992). They also are thought to affect how well technological changes and economic activity are integrated with dominant social-political structures, helping to make public policy harmonious with frames of reference individuals hold, and lending meaning to appeals for courses of action (Buchholtz 1986).

Since the early 1980s, the study of political institutions has made a remarkable come-back within political science. After a long period of concentrating on the “outputs” of the political process, many political scientists have begun to give greater attention to the formal and informal structures that circumscribe political behavior: governmental departments, ministries, standard operating procedures, social norms, duties, obligations. Especially in its more inductive, interpretive forms, contemporary institutional analysis has focused less on political outcomes and more on the political process itself—the “how” questions of politics rather than the “why” questions addressed both by highly quantitative methods and by deductive, rational choice approaches. One legacy of the behavioral revolution has been a propensity for researchers to see the elucidation of why some groups win out over others in the political process as the chief end of political science. But by examining the strategic boundaries within which action takes place, modern institutional analysis—labelled the “new institutionalism” as early as 1984—seeks to remind political scientists that, quite simply, institutions matter.

Despite the fact that the former Soviet Union was perhaps the most multinational state in the world, until recently data were not available to undertake a systematic investigation of patterns of nationality population, distribution, redistribution and segregation within Soviet cities. However, nationality data were recently published for the 32 rayons of Moscow for the last two census years of 1979 and 1989.

In 1929 a young Communist activist named A. Nurkhat traversed Central Asia gathering information about grassroots-level party social work and propaganda among indigenous women. An Uzbek woman who converted to Bolshevism, Nurkhat accepted the social and political reasons for the regime's push to win the support of local women in its struggle against traditional ways of life. Seeking to document these efforts, she traveled to nomadic regions and followed a “red yurt” expedition. Over one hundred red yurts operated across Kazakstan, providing literacy programs, medical treatment, and legal counseling to remote nomadic areas. When Nurkhat visited one red yurt, a Kazak man from a nearby village rushed in seeking help for his wife, who had endured more than a day in labor. The local baqsy (shaman) had been unable to induce birth and the family desperately sought help from the red yurt's nurse, an ethnic Russian, who was able successfully to deliver a healthy baby. Afterward, Nurkhat asked the red yurt's nurse, “What is the Kazak women's attitude to [Western] medical treatment?” The nurse responded,

Good neighbors are rare. Those who are most proximate might offer the potential for mutual assistance and reassurance. Mistrust and rivalry, however, seem endemic among individuals and groups sharing space and resources. Schopenhauer's simile refers to porcupines who huddle together in the winter to keep warm, but separate as they feel each other's quills, until they discover “a mean distance at which they could most tolerably exist.” Referring to Schopenhauer, Freud observed that “No one can tolerate a too intimate approach to his neighbor.”

“Our culture was virtually annihilated. The great paradox is our children study German, French and English in school. They can use Latin letters for these foreign languages, but not for their native language.” Thus spoke Mikhail Chimpoi, a prominent literary critic and candidate for the national legislature in 1989; as, in the spirit of the “new” Moldova, restrictions were loosened on what officials were allowed to say in public about the language situation.

Problems of building a new democratic Russia based on federative principles and the region's long-refractory “national question,” forming a knotty tangle of complicated issues, have steadily remained in the political limelight. In a number of regions worldwide dramatic changes have occurred, related in one way or the other to the processes of national-territorial self-determination. As a result of this, the Eurasian political landscape has been marked by the emergence of some twenty newly independent states. Suffice it to say that the Soviet Union, a preponderant superpower feared by all, collapsed; and in Europe the Federative Republic of Yugoslavia ceased to exist, bringing on a long-term national conflict threatening not only regional but even global security. In East Central Europe binational Czechoslovakia split up into two independent nation states. Elsewhere, even in the absence of militarized national conflict, political processes have dramatically intensified. In Asia, for example, the multinational Chinese Republic with its Tibetan and Uighur problems, and ethnically heterogeneous India with its population speaking more than 400 languages and dialects have long attracted public attention as sources of potential instability in the region. The “Sikh issue” alone, for instance, continues to pose a threat to India. Even the North American continent, a peaceful region in terms of its political and ethnic stability, is confronted with similar problems. The integrity of Canada is still in question with the franco-lingual province of Quebec striving for independence.

One of the most important characteristics of the newly independent republic of Kazakstan is the multinational nature of its population. In addition to the members of the titular Kazak nationality, numerous Slavic, Turkic, and other peoples have made, or have been forced to make, Kazakstan their home. Most of these peoples, with the exception of the Kazaks, could be characterized as diasporas. However, the Uighurs, a Turkic Muslim people living in Kazakstan, are not a standard example of a diaspora. Unlike many of Kazakstan's diasporic communities, such as the Russians, Koreans, Uzbeks, Kyrgyz, and Germans, who can rely on outside support from recognized nation states to protect their rights, the Uighurs are a stateless people whose claims to sovereignty are not internationally recognized. Furthermore, unlike other stateless diasporas in Kazakstan, such as the Tatars, the Chechens, and the Mesketian TurksM whose homelands are clearly located outside of Kazakstan, the Uighurs’ “homeland” in China's Xinjiang province borders on the former Soviet republic, which raises the question of whether or not many Uighurs are indigenous to the territory of Kazakstan.

The fate of democracy in Kazakstan may well depend less upon decisions taken in Kazakstan's capital, Almaty (the capital is now Aqmola), than upon what takes place in Kazakstan's far-flung and disparate regions. This should come as no surprise to anyone who appreciates the history and complexities of democratic development. The history of democracy is a history of bottom-up initiative. The democratic institutions that are the most successful and enduring are those that originate from the common and everyday interests and concerns of citizens. Even in historical cases where the political institutions of democracy were adopted consciously and deliberately to break with authoritarian tradition, democracy has been closely associated with local control, self-governance, public participation, and citizen empowerment. The fate of Kazakstan's constitutional order, on the other hand, depends almost exclusively upon decisions taken at the “center” of the new Kazakstan government. The establishment of a constitutional order is a highly conscious and deliberate process. It is also a highly political undertaking. To what extent has the democratic process in Kazakstan corresponded to the process of the establishment of a constitutional order in Kazakstan? To what extent has constitutional development supported limited, accountable government based on popular sovereignty? To what extent can democratic process and constitutional development be expected to mutually reinforce one another in Kazakstan's future? The answers to these questions have great importance for the development of democracy in Kazakstan. They have great importance for the efforts of the international community to encourage democratic development in Kazakstan. These are the key questions of this article.

In May-June 1905 a special conference on education for non-Russians (inorodtsy) of the eastern Empire met in St Petersburg. The conference was organized by the Ministry of National Enlightenment (i.e. Education) with the concurrence of the Holy Synod. It was chaired by A. S. Budilovich, a member of the Council of Ministers. The conference had been preceded by an investigatory commission, also headed by Budilovich, which visited non-Russian elementary schools in the eastern regions of Russia and interviewed education officials, teachers, and parents involved in the education of non-Russians in the area. The purpose of the commission and the subsequent conference was the “examination of the presently existing legislation concerning the non-Russian schools of eastern Russia and in particular that system among them which is linked to the name of N.I. Il'minskii, compared with the schools of the general type that exist in those regions, on the one hand, and with the confessional schools (especially Moslem and Buddhist), on the other.”

The year 1995 was momentous for the Gagauz people located primarily in the towns and villages of southern Moldova in the area known as Gagauzia. The Gagauz leadership in Comrat and the Moldovan government in Chişinău reached agreement in December 1994 on autonomy for Gagauzia, ending a five-year secessionist movement involving both a war of words and sporadic conflict. For Chişinău, this agreement settled the lesser, but nonetheless important, of two secessionist movements that threatened the Moldovan state's viability. For Gagauzia, the agreement set the terms for extensive cultural, political, and social autonomy within Moldova. For Europe, this agreement broke new ground in granting a small nation control of its affairs within a larger state.