The declaration of independence of Kazakhstan and the Republic’s first steps in the international arena
Independence is the main asset of any state. Different peoples achieve independence in different ways, through revolutions, wars, and national liberation movements. For Kazakhstan, the events of December 1986 marked the beginning of the people’s desire for sovereignty and self-determination. On October 25, 1990, the Kazakh SSR adopted the Declaration of State Sovereignty of the republic, which played an important role on the path to independence of Kazakhstan. In 1991, on December 16, the Supreme Council of the Republic of Kazakhstan adopted the Constitutional Law “On the State Independence of the Republic of Kazakhstan”. This year we celebrate the 33rd anniversary of Independence Day, the formation of a sovereign state called the Republic of Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan’s independence became possible as a result of the collapse of the USSR, of which our republic was a part for 74 years. Until recently, the leadership of Kazakhstan fought for the preservation of the Soviet Union, making efforts to adopt a new treaty on the creation of a renewed union state. However, nothing came of it. The political and economic crisis in the USSR in the late 80s and early 90s reached its peak. The decrepit and incapacitated Soviet state machine, inherited by the last leader of the country, the architect of perestroika, Mikhail Gorbachev, glitched after glitch. The perestroika put forward at the April 1985 Plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU, which brought about glasnost and, to a certain extent, democratization of public life, did not have a significant impact on improving the living conditions of the Soviet people. The USSR was experiencing a severe systemic crisis. And in such a difficult situation, since the early 1990s, political movements for independence and secession from the USSR began to emerge in the republics. The Union Republics adopted declarations of sovereignty, establishing the supremacy of their laws. This process has firmly established itself as a “parade of sovereignties.” The attempts to use force made by the Soviet leadership in Tbilisi (1989), Baku (1990) and Vilnius (1991) had the opposite result: the protests multiplied and became more widespread. The dramatic events of those years became a bitter but important experience for us. Realizing the reasons for the rapid fall of a once great power and analyzing the tactical mistakes of the allied leadership, we learned important lessons from what was happening. They helped in the fight against difficulties, and Kazakhstan had a lot of them,” the first President N.A.Nazarbayev wrote in his book “The Era of Independence” [1, 24]. Political reforms in the USSR in the late 80s and early 90s, the proclamation of a course towards the creation of Soviet parliamentarism, the convening of a new supreme authority – the Congress of People’s Deputies, the introduction of the institute of the President of the USSR, the formation of a multiparty system – led to the democratization of society and made inevitable the aggravation of a seemingly long-ago “resolved” national issue. Forced internationalization without taking into account national interests has led to serious miscalculations in national policy. On May 18, 1989, Lithuania was the first Soviet republic to adopt a Declaration of Sovereignty. By the summer of 1991, most of the Union republics of the USSR had adopted laws on sovereignty, which forced the union leadership to accelerate the development of a new Union Treaty. The signing of such an agreement meant not only the preservation of a single state, but also the transition to its real federal structure. On March 17, 1991, a referendum was held on the question: to be or not to be the USSR and what it should be like. The majority voted for the preservation of the USSR. The Baltic republics, Moldova, Georgia and Armenia did not participate in the voting. In September, the Extraordinary Congress of People’s Deputies of the USSR recognized the independence of the Baltic republics. The leaders of seven republics – Russia, Belarus, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Tajikistan – have announced their intention to create a new interstate entity, the Union of Sovereign States (UCC). But that didn’t happen. On December 8, 1991, in Belovezhskaya Pushcha near Brest, the leaders of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus signed an agreement on the establishment of the Commonwealth of Independent States. It stated that the USSR, as a subject of international law, was ceasing to exist. December 21, 1991 In Almaty, the leaders of 11 states (except Georgia) signed a Declaration on the final termination of the existence of the USSR and the formation of the CIS – the Commonwealth of Independent States. On December 25, 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev announced his resignation from the post of President of the USSR. Thus, 1991 was marked by epochal events: the failed coup attempt, the liquidation of the CPSU, and the collapse of the empire called the USSR. Thus, by the end of 1991, Kazakhstan had developed a favorable political environment for gaining its independence, the August 1991 coup, the collapse of the USSR, the creation of the Commonwealth of Independent States, and the formation of the former Soviet republics as independent states accelerated the adoption of the Law on Kazakhstan’s Independence. After the August coup in Kazakhstan, the Communist Party was dissolved, and the republic became virtually independent. The President of the USSR, Mikhail Gorbachev, could not prevent the centrifugal tendencies, and every day his power weakened more and more. In order to make his power more legitimate, N.A.Nazarbayev went on a major democratization of the political system and announced the holding of national presidential elections. On December 1, 1991, the first national presidential elections were held in Kazakhstan, and on December 10, Kazakhstan ceased to be socialist. On this day, the Law “On Changing the name of the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic” was adopted, which approved the new name – the Republic of Kazakhstan. On December 16, 1991, the Law “On the State Independence of the Republic of Kazakhstan” declared Kazakhstan an independent state with an independent system of government bodies, an independent economic system, its own armed forces and a