THE DECLARATION ON STATE SOVEREIGNTY – THE HERALD OF KAZAKHSTAN’S GENUINE INDEPENDENCE
Авторская колонка Aminov Talgatbek Makhmetovich Chief Researcher , с.h.s Теги: The adoption of the Declaration “On the State Sovereignty of the Kazakh SSR” on 25 October 1990 constituted a pivotal historical step in the process of acquiring independence. The Declaration provided the Republic with the legal capacity to act as an autonomous subject of international relations, to define its foreign policy in accordance with its own interests, and to independently determine matters of foreign economic activity. This stage was marked by a rapid rise in national self-consciousness among the peoples of the Union republics, as well as by the radicalization of activities undertaken by various political parties, public organizations, and movements across all Union republics of the former USSR. In October 2022, speaking at the solemn ceremony of conferring state awards and prizes, the Head of State Kassym-Jomart Tokayev emphasized that the Kazakh people had been moving along the sacred path toward sovereignty for many years. In his words: “The Declaration on the State Sovereignty of Kazakhstan opened the way to our sacred Independence. Therefore, this document is of historical significance. Today we are marking Republic Day in a renewed manner, having granted it the status of a national holiday. I am confident that this initiative will receive broad support in society and will become a good tradition. Republic Day is a momentous holiday intended to uplift the spirit of the people, strengthen statehood, and reinforce our unity and solidarity” [1]. According to K.–J. Tokayev: “The Declaration of Sovereignty is a triumph of courage and diplomacy, reason and patience. Very soon we felt the force of this historic document. We renewed the foundations of society and aspired to new heights. Having overcome a difficult transitional period, Kazakhstan embarked on the path of building a strong statehood” [1]. The Declaration on State Sovereignty proclaimed the supremacy of the Constitution of the Kazakh SSR and the laws adopted on the territory of Kazakhstan, as well as the Republic’s right to suspend the effect of Union-wide acts that infringed upon its sovereign rights. It was from this Declaration that the Republic effectively began to exercise its state sovereignty in practice. While remaining within the USSR, Kazakhstan possessed sovereignty only in a formal-legal sense and, in fact, did not possess it substantively; accordingly, it could not function as a genuine subject of international law. The Declaration of 25 October 1990 affirmed the indivisibility and inviolability of the territory of Kazakhstan, and defined the country as a subject of international law. The proclamation of the Republic’s exclusive ownership of all natural resources, as well as of its economic, scientific, and technical potential, enabled Kazakhstan to pursue an independent economic policy. For the first time, the Declaration rejected a class-based approach to defining the social foundations of the state and proclaimed the national character of statehood. The Declaration became the fundamental legislative act from which began the subsequent development of the state–legal system of the country in the direction of formalizing full state independence. Its historical significance lies in the fact that it endowed the Republic’s sovereignty with real content, recalled the historically rooted statehood of Kazakhstan with its centuries-long history, emphasized the principle of territorial integrity, and proclaimed the separation of powers as the core principle underpinning the functioning of the Republic as a democratic and law-governed state. Thus, in the dynamic year of 1990, internal forces were awakened within Kazakhstani society which soon led to the formation of a new independent state — the Republic of Kazakhstan. The attainment of independence became possible only after the collapse of the totalitarian Soviet regime. As is well known, by the late 1980s and early 1990s the political and economic crisis in the USSR had reached its apex. The decrepit and functionally incapacitated Soviet state machinery — inherited by the last leader of the Union and architect of perestroika, Mikhail Gorbachev — began to fail repeatedly. The USSR was undergoing a profound systemic crisis. Political movements advocating independence and withdrawal from the USSR began to emerge across the Union republics. The attempts by the Soviet leadership to deploy force — in Tbilisi (1989), Baku (1990), and Vilnius (1991) — had the opposite effect: protests multiplied and became increasingly massive. The dramatic events of those years constituted a bitter, yet important, historical experience. Recognizing the causes of the rapid disintegration of a once powerful state and analyzing the tactical mistakes of the central leadership enabled us to draw essential lessons from what was unfolding [2]. The political reforms undertaken in the USSR in the late 1980s and early 1990s — including the proclamation of a course towards building a socialist rule-of-law state, the establishment of Soviet parliamentarianism, the convocation of a new supreme representative body (the Congress of People’s Deputies), the introduction of the Presidency of the USSR, and the formation of multiparty politics — resulted in the democratization of society and rendered inevitable the re-emergence of the “national question”, previously considered to have been “resolved”. Accelerated internationalization without regard for national interests led to grave miscalculations in nationalities policy. On 18 May 1989, Lithuania became the first of the Soviet republics to adopt a Declaration of Sovereignty. By the summer of 1991 the majority of the Union republics had enacted sovereignty laws, compelling the central authorities to accelerate work on a new Union Treaty. The signing of such a treaty would not only have preserved a single state, but also would have entailed a transition to a genuinely federal structure. On 17 March 1991, a referendum was held on the question of whether the USSR should continue to exist and, if so, in what form. The majority of those who participated voted in favor of preserving the USSR. The Baltic republics, Moldova, Georgia, and Armenia did not take part in the vote. 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 —