On the Road

On Kazakhstan
'There Is No War on Dissidents'
Interview with Nursultan Nazarbayev, President of Kazakhstan
Monday, July 22, 2002; Page A11

Nursultan Nazarbayev, the president of Kazakhstan, gave an interview to The Washington Post earlier this month in Astana, the capital. Some excerpts:

On democratization of Kazakhstan:
"They have been criticizing us for the entire 10 years [of independence]. It always surprised me -- why are you criticizing us for these 10 years? We declared that we were going to create a free country with democratic principles, a civil society. Did anybody really think that we could immediately achieve the standard that exists in your country, or in Europe? The United States of America celebrated its 226th birthday this year, right? And in your country, 150 years ago, you had a civil war. You were never anyone's colony. You didn't survive the two world wars that we survived. You didn't survive the [Bolshevik] revolution that we survived. You didn't survive the Stalinist repressions, thank God. And your country wasn't used as the place of exile for a million and a half people, or the destination for another million and a half who were deported [from other parts of the Soviet Union]. I read Hillary [Rodham] Clinton's book, "It Takes a Village," it's called, and she provides statistics that the older generation living in America remembers when blacks and whites could not sit together in the same school or restaurant. It took more than 50 years for women to get the right to vote. So why do you want us to do everything in one year?

"In the United States two parties exist, the Democrats and the Republicans, right? And these two parties do not oppose one another on basic principles: statehood, arms, the state system, democracy, defense of human rights, etc., etc. But in our country, each party conducts its own policy. Nobody wants to agree with anybody in the interests of the state. You may ask why. Because there is no culture of democracy. None. Therefore, in these conditions, we had to introduce democracy, and freedom, gradually. If I had not given top priority to our independence and internal political stability, then there would be nothing here, nothing."

On his critics and opponents:
"Most of them [are] people whom I dismissed from government responsibilities because they did not conduct themselves properly. Kazakhstan was the first nation of the former Soviet Union to adopt a law on the struggle against corruption. In accordance with this law we are currently pursuing government officials who broke the law. Tell me, if the court finds someone guilty of stealing big money from the state, what should he be called? A political opponent? Or a criminal? A man offering himself for a role in the political arena must be, at least, clean, and he must demonstrate his cleanliness.

"So I think, as they say in the Russian language, we have to separate the wheat from the chaff. Grain is one thing, and trash is something else. We're going to continue the struggle against corruption despite attempts to portray it as a war on dissidents. There is no war on dissidents. No one is sitting in jail because of his convictions."

On the future of his country:
"Kazakhstan is sincerely committed to democratic development. It is our well-thought-out choice. No one made us take it. We consider it our decision. But we can't do it all in one day. Of course we have failings. We aren't Americans, or Frenchmen. We're Kazakhs. We have a completely different sense about the relations among peoples that you just don't understand.

"I wish the American press said more about the importance of understanding this region . . . its history, the mentality of its people. . . . Kazakhstan, you know, survived five empires, including the Soviet empire."

© 2002 The Washington Post Company

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