Nikonovshchina as a diagnosis: why we quarreled with Kazakhstan again

Nikonov probably received a scolding at the top, immediately repented and tried to explain that he had not said what the people heard.

Sergey Baimukhametov, publicist, historian (Moscow)

In the television program "Big Game" Nikonov stated: “Kazakhstan simply did not exist, North Kazakhstan was not inhabited at all. They (Kazakhs) existed much to the south. And, in fact, the territory of Kazakhstan is a great gift from Russia and the Soviet Union".

Many Russian publications quoted only the last phrase from Nikonov's statement. This approach can be understood: by quoting something like that, you are afraid: are you unwillingly contributing to the spread, inciting hatred?

Naturally, an indignant reaction from the Kazakh side followed, up to a diplomatic note of protest: "The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Kazakhstan expects an adequate assessment by the Russian side of such statements and calls for measures to prevent such statements from statesmen of the Russian Federation in the future".

Presumably, Nikonov received a scolding at the top and immediately backed down:

“I believe that the interests of Kazakhstan were fully observed when defining the borders of the Kazakh SSR, which became the borders of the Republic of Kazakhstan. This is exactly what I said in the Big Game program. I take this opportunity to once again express my warmest feelings to the brotherly people of Kazakhstan".

But what is said is said. And it is understood as it is understood.

All this was, was, was... And it is absolutely known where it came from. In the first days after the August 1991 coup, the Leningrad newspaper "Rush Chas" published a transcript of a meeting in the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Lithuania, at which an instructor who came from Moscow, from the "big" Central Committee, instructed the Lithuanian comrades: if the power of the Communist Party is overthrown, start illegal work, rely on on workers, play on national feelings, raise the Poles of the Vilnius region and the Russian-speaking population, as we have already done in Transnistria...

That's all the secrets. In full view. In the best Bolshevik traditions: both illegal activities and appeal to the base, aggressive feelings of the crowd, united by a common alleged resentment...

The Central Committee of the CPSU is long gone, but the style, methods, certain structures and just followers, at all times catching a fish in troubled waters, remain.

Two years later, in the winter of 1993, a loud campaign began to implement the Transnistrian scenario in Kazakhstan.

- Our brothers are dying there! - the young man shouted from the rostrum.

Who exactly "died", why "the brothers are dying" and what is happening "there" was not specified, and no one in the audience asked: it was said - "they are dying." And in exactly the same way it is clear to everyone: “there” is in Kazakhstan, or, more precisely, in Northern Kazakhstan, in Petropavlovsk, from where two “representatives” came from, who told the audience about the “oppression of the Russian-speaking population”.

The nervous young man was replaced by a gray-haired, folded old man in a Cossack uniform.

- President Nazarbayev is leading the genocide of the Russian people! He said firmly.

If we consider that “genocide” is the physical extermination of certain groups of the population on racial, ethnic or religious grounds, comparable and associated in the history of mankind with crimes and with the names of people like Hitler or Pol Pot, then it became terrifying.

A hefty man in a colonel's Cossack shoulder straps was arguing, though somewhat agitated, but businesslike:

- It was difficult for me to fight in Transnistria, but in Kazakhstan it will be easier, because I myself am from Kazakhstan, a native of Shchuchinsk: I know life, conditions, nature... I have a detachment of eight hundred armed Cossacks, everyone is ready...

No more and no less. What are you ready for? Intrusion? Ready to shed blood and ready to start a war ?! Did any of them imagine what the war between Kazakhstan and Russia on the 6,000-kilometer border is? Are they crazy?

But these were not just conversations in the kitchen and not even just a gathering of the Cossacks in Omsk - it was a program of Russian state television, which was broadcast throughout the CIS countries. Moreover, the statements of the participants of the gathering were given in the program as a given: no journalistic comments, questions, doubts ... And if there are none, then it is an indisputable, obvious fact? What did people think, seeing and hearing this, who had never been to Kazakhstan in general and Petropavlovsk in particular, who did not know the life there and who drew all the information from television programs? Then, in 1993-94, TV programs from Moscow were perceived as the voice of the Center, Central Television out of habit. And therefore in Kazakhstan, many simple-minded people believed that Russia was preparing an armed invasion of Kazakhstan. And in Russia itself, after such broadcasts and articles in newspapers, they believed that in Petropavlovsk "the Kazakh school is being built at the expense of Russian schools"; there “the Russians plow and the Kazakhs dance”, because “all the leading positions are occupied only by representatives of the titular nation,” and so on.

And now, reader, get ready ... None of the authors of those programs and those newspaper articles was in Petropavlovsk. None.

Moreover, the press secretary of the head of the administration of the North Kazakhstan region and the chairman of the local TV and radio company, amazed by what he saw, heard and read, turned to Moscow, phoned the correspondents of Russian publications in neighboring Russian cities: come and see with your own eyes!... guys, colleagues!..

Nobody came.

And therefore I will give a certificate. (At the time when the events took place, in 1993-94).

So, Petropavlovsk is the center of the North Kazakhstan region, bordering in the west with the Kurgan region, in the north with the Tyumen region, in the east with the Omsk region of Russia. The population is 250 thousand people, only 650 thousand lived in the region at that time.

A lot of money was really spent on the construction of the Kazakh school. But at the same time, not a single newspaper or Russian TV program said that in the North Kazakhstan region all (!) Seven hundred (!) Schools are Russian, and only one (!) Is Kazakh. Boarding school.

Anyone who claimed that all senior positions there were occupied exclusively by Kazakhs lied deliberately and deliberately, counting precisely on the ignorance of the Russian people. In fact (at the time when the events took place, in 1993-94):

- the governor of the North Kazakhstan region was a Russian;

- Mayor of the regional center of Petropavlovsk was Russian;

- out of seventeen heads of regional departments - six are Kazakhs;

- out of seven heads of city administrations - one Kazakh;

- out of one hundred and fifty directors of state farms - thirty-nine Kazakhs;

- out of eighteen directors of city plants and factories, one is Kazakh.

The reader has the right to ask: how did this blatant and deliberate lie penetrate practically all newspapers, radio and television in Russia? Where do the legs grow from?

Very simple. Two or three representatives of the "Russian community" urgently created in Petropavlovsk came to the neighboring cities of Russia - Omsk, Kurgan, Tyumen, Chelyabinsk, Orenburg, spoke at meetings, met with correspondents, told them about... (see above). Their speeches and interviews were broadcast by federal TV, radio and federal newspapers. And a turbid wave of lies, slander, concentrated malice, and clearly directed incitement rolled through our country. Because further calls began for a "revision of borders", for "autonomy", and even for a direct armed invasion.

Maybe, after the lapse of time, someone wonders who they were - these "representatives".

I sketch out the portraits of the two main ones - Screamer and Komsomolets. I do not give names and surnames so as not to advertise. Separately, I note: in the provinces, everything is in sight. Everyone there knows and sees. “What are you writing about the Screamer and Komsomolets all the time? - were surprised in Petropavlovsk. - We here know them as peeling, we do not pay attention to them, and you..."

But this is the naive mistake of the inhabitants of small towns, that they often pass off their knowledge as universal, not knowing that outside of Petropavlovsk they have a faint idea of their life, and there, outside, Krikun and Komsomolets are presented by the press as "fighters"...

So Screamer. Member of the CPSU. Born in Petropavlovsk. He worked in Ukraine and Kazakhstan. Until 1987, he held the second-highest positions in regional party newspapers. He made his career on sketches from the life of Lenin. Since 1992 he has been receiving a disability pension. Diagnosis - cyclothymia, a mild form of manic-depressive psychosis, depressive phase. (I am writing about this only because the official diagnosis was announced in the press.) He was a bit anti-communist, a democrat, and then became a "defender of the rights of the Russian-speaking population", called for "to create a fifth column from the Russian people in Northern Kazakhstan".

The second character is Komsomolets. Member of the CPSU. Until the last days of the communist government in Kazakhstan, he headed the ideological department of the regional Komsomol committee. Then, after a break for hesitation, he hung up the apartment with icons, put on boots and a hat, sewed a uniform, put a whip in his belt, put on the colonel's shoulder straps and declared himself the chieftain of the Ishim Cossacks.

They were not taken into account in Petropavlovsk, but in Russia various political circles warmly welcomed and used them.

How did it all end in 1993-1994? Nothing. The fire cannot be fanned without the activity, even if weak, of the "oppressed population" and its discontent. But the Russians, Ukrainians, Germans, who have been living in Northern Kazakhstan for three hundred years, did not even think that they could create some kind of disgrace on their own land. That is why they did not even resent provocative statements, but simply dismissed them.

And what about the Screamer and the Komsomolets? The screamer moved to a neighboring large Russian city and became there ... the chairman of the regional branch of the pensioners' party. How so? Never lived there, never worked, no one knows him there - and immediately the party chairman? It can be assumed that this does not happen just like that, that there were some structures behind it. And Komsomolets moved to Moscow and got a job in some kind of parliamentary organizations. In general, they are not lost.

Now let's return to the current diplomatic scandal, to the speech of State Duma Deputy Nikonov on Channel One: “Kazakhstan simply did not exist, Northern Kazakhstan was not inhabited at all. They (Kazakhs) existed much to the south. And, in fact, the territory of Kazakhstan is a great gift from Russia and the Soviet Union".

How was it viewed in Kazakhstan? As territorial claims.

Being an erudite man (once a member of the "What? Where? When?" Club), Nikonov should know that there is nothing more senseless than modern territorial claims based on "history". The territory of Kazakhstan, for example, was part of the territory of the Golden Horde, which included Russia as a vassal state. Nikonov undoubtedly knows that the disintegration of the Golden Horde began after the Kazakhs withdrew from it and in 1465 formed an independent Kazakh Khanate. But for some reason he claims that "Kazakhstan simply did not exist." Northern Kazakhstan, which, according to Nikonov, “It was not inhabited at all, they (the Kazakhs) existed much further south” - in fact, it was the center of the Blue Horde of Khan Tokhtamysh; the very one that in 1382 came to the aid of Dmitry Donskoy, who was expelled from Moscow as a result of a conspiracy of boyars and governors. And even earlier, the interfluve of the Oka and Volga was colonized by the Kiev princes, who founded Moscow, in particular. And Crimea and the Black Sea region in general should be given to the ancient Greeks and ancient Romans, so that they, as before, sent there disgraced poets into exile?

The hard experience of mankind testifies: territorial claims often end in blood, turmoil. It is just after such statements that people in the former USSR look at Russia with alarm and apprehension. There are almost no states left there that are unconditionally friendly to us. Kazakhstan is almost the last. Yes, and he is now agitated by Nikonov's speech. P of the Chairperson of the Committee on International Relations, Defense and Security of the Senate Mukhtar Kul-Muhammed responded harshly: "Is it a militant ignorance, political infantilism or a deliberate attempt to drive a wedge between the two peoples and states?"

Passions run high on social media. Hundreds of comments were left on Vyacheslav Nikonov's Instagram page. The softest of them:

"We must learn history before speaking... These are the illiterate people that spoil relations between countries".

"He probably wanted to say that the north of Kazakhstan was not populated after the artificial famine".

"Either he is very illiterate, or he acts on purpose".

Let's hope that Nikonov's trick is just a trick - and will be forgotten. Although the sediment will remain. The trouble is that, alas, he is not the first, and there are fears that he will not be the last...

Since the Russian press, when talking about the incident, for some reason certainly mentions that Nikonov is Molotov's grandson, I will also mention it. (V.M. Molotov - member of the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee, head of the USSR government in 1930-1941, People's Commissar and Minister of Foreign Affairs of the USSR in 1939-1949 and 1953-1956, known throughout the world for the Soviet-Hitlerite "Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.)

After being retired, he lived in the dacha village of Zhukovka. Once, in the late 60s - early 70s, the wife of Alexander Galich, who arrived in Zhukovka, saw how Molotov, an old, weak, exits the store carrying two large bags. She jumped up to him: "Vyacheslav Mikhailovich, let me, I will help, God be with you!"

Molotov turned to her and answered: "God is not with me".

This is already a parable.

There is no God with those who incite peoples into new strife and new troubles.

The peoples should know and remember that all strife ends in ruin, that the provocateurs-instigators, having done their job, will leave aside, and they, the peoples, will remain to clear up the bitter mess.

This is an explanation, but not an excuse for the subsequent fate of these "peoples." We must think when we listen to provocateurs-instigators. That's why people are given the head.

From the editor

I would like to remind you that Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov was not just a sweet old man, but one of the pillars of Soviet imperialism, who until the end of his days was proud of the main achievement of his long life - the restoration of the Russian Empire within the borders of 1917, the creation of a belt of socialist satellite countries. And in this sense, his grandson is a glorious successor of his grandfather's principles, which do not recognize any realities after 1991 and the collapse of the USSR.

Nikonov's views are well known in all the former Soviet republics, including Kazakhstan. However, Kazakh politicians considered their public display on television on the main channel of Russia a personal insult.

And why?

Do they not know that on our television shows it is allowed to say any nonsense, talk nonsense, insult everyone?

Probably in the know. But this was not expected from the "politically correct" Nikonov. Like Nikonov himself, he has forgotten or does not want to know that the second generation of citizens is growing in Kazakhstan, for whom the concept of independence and territorial integrity will be stronger and more important than even religious dogmas. Well, they are there in Kazakhstan! Independence is the foundation of their social outlook.

Do you want to quarrel with Kazakhs? Well, start a conversation about the return of Tselinograd - Astana - Nur-Sultan of Russia. We assure you that if you don't get it in the face right away, then the insult will remain. Forever and ever...