How it was №412 04/04/1998 (1998)

Student revolt in Alma-Ata, 1986.

On December 16, 1986, the first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan, Dinmukhamed Kunayev, resigned.

Having risen to the head of the republic even in Khrushchev's time, Kunayev experienced Brezhnev, Andropov and Chernenko.

He remained the first person in Kazakhstan and under Gorbachev, but it was Gorbachev, who began the perestroika, who replaced Kunayev, one of the last representatives of Brezhnev team.

On December 16 at 15:00 on the republican radio it was announced that the plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan had appointed Gennady Kolbin as the first secretary of the Central Committee for a completely new man for the republic.

Perestroika came to Kazakhstan, however, this appointment caused a wave of general discontent.

The next day at 8 am on the square named after Brezhnev in front of the building of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan for a rally of protest came out about 200 students of Alma-Ata universities.

In an official TASS report on these events, the rally participants were called "hooliganous, parasitic, antisocial persons."

This really did not happen yet, that someone openly opposed the CPSU. This message rushed around the city, about 3000 people gathered for lunch on the square.

Many were just curious, but by noon the police had already surrounded the area and did not allow new demonstrators there.

But the students broke through.

At 12:15 the first clashes took place ...

The further development of events on December 17-18, 1986 is remembered by eyewitnesses: journalist Hasen Kozha-Ahmet, former head of the propaganda department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan Albert Ustinov, a former student of Nurlan Nurgazin, former druzhinnik Sergei Zlotnikov, actor Vladimir Kravchenko.

Interview in the recording: the former 1st secretaries of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan Gennady Kolbin and Dinmukhamed Kunaev.

The program includes footage of the chronicle, excerpts from the documentary "The Chronicle of an undeclared demonstration" (1991, A. Baigozhina), as well as a fragment of an audio recording of an unknown rally participant about bullying the detainees in the police.