The last three days, the people of Kazakhstan lived in an atmosphere of waiting alarm. It is very possible to compare this alarm with the atmosphere of fear during the military coup.
The cause of the people's anxiety was the declaration of the president of Russia, Boris Yeltsin, about territorial claims of Russia on all neighboring republics. He made this statement on Aug. 26.The reason for troubles in Kazakhstan is that the majority of the population of seven industrial regions in the north of the republic are Russians. Almost all natural resources concentrate in these regions.
These lands were given to Kazakhstan by the will of Stalin during mass repressions of the 1930s. Using such methods, the leaders of the Bolsheviks put a mine under the foundation of relations between different republics for the future.
"Can this mine really be blasted?" ask the people in Kazakhstan. To everybody it was clear that strained relations between nations can lead to blood and new injustice.
The president of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev, succeeded in calming the fear. At the extraordinary session of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, he declared that he guarantees the right of people of all nationalities in Kazakhstan in accordance with the Helsinki declaration (on human rights).
"Kazakhstan is ready to receive an international commission on the people's right for constant work in our republic," he said. "We are eager to stop any violation of peoples' rights - the heritage of the past.
"We are ready to invite an international commission to examine all patients of the hospitals of mental diseases in our republics. Immediately, we'll begin revision of all economic crimes."
(The greatest punishment for economic crimes had been for free enterprise, according to Nazarbayev.)
On Aug. 28, the media carried a short article about the meeting of Nazarbayev and Yeltsin. The president of Russia claimed he intended to raise the territorial question only with those republics that want to leave the Soviet Union.
Yeltsin said Russia has no territorial claims to Kazakhstan, the initiator of a new union, or to the Baltic republics, whose independence Russia has already recognized.
Yeltsin's declaration set off a chain reaction. Recently Byelorussia announced that it has the intention of raising territorial claims to Lithuania. Some of Byelorussia's land was given to Lithuania by Stalin in 1939.
On another issue, the new chief of the general staff of the Soviet army, Colonel-Gen. Lobov, declared that during the military coup and presently, nuclear weapons have always been under strict control.
Because many republics have declared their independence of the USSR, a main adviser to USSR President Mikhail Gorbachev proposed to invite an international commission to come to the USSR to control the country's nuclear potential during this time of instability.