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Soviet Union [USSR] Central Asian Nationalities
National discontent in Soviet Central Asia erupted during the
mid-1980s. The discontent began over the removal for corruption of
the native CPSU first secretaries in the Kirgiz, Tadzhik, and
Turkmen republics. When the CPSU first secretary of the Kazakh
Republic was also ousted and replaced with an ethnic Russian in
December 1986, however, an unprecedented two days of rioting
followed, with a large number of casualties. The riots demonstrated
the local population's resentment against Russians' occupying the
most prestigious jobs in the republic, a grievance that was shared
by the native populations of the other Central Asian republics.
Other commonly held grievances of Central Asian nationalities
included resentment against the government's decision to drop the
diversion of Siberian rivers, which would have brought badly needed
water to the area, and the continuous distortion of their national
history by pro-Russian historians.
Data as of May 1989
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