My big fat Kazakh-Russian-Tatar-Bashkir wedding: ethnic peace in Central Asia AFP
ASTANA Dec 8-Konstantin Oshaganov better get some rest before hitting the dance floor at his wedding in the Kazakh capital Astana this weekend.
"There'll be Kazakh dancers and Uighur dancers and Tatar dancers," he said, adding that in fact any dance in the world might be performed.
The bride and groom themselves are equally exotic. Oshaganov, 28, is of Russian and Kazakh descent. His fiancee is half-Tatar, half-Bashkir. Oshaganov's best man is... Korean.
No less than 130 ethnic groups, many of them barely known to the wider world, make up Kazakhstan's 15 million population, the eight million Kazakhs and approximately five million Russians being the largest.
Just as remarkable, for the ex-Soviet Union at least, they live together in complete peace -- a factor that helped President Nursultan Nazarbayev to landslide re-election last Sunday.
"Nazarbayev has founded an ideal model of inter-ethnic friendship," said Zhumatai Aliyev, the deputy head of the state-run Assembly of the Peoples of Kazakhstan.
Kazakhstan's melting pot has tragic roots.
The Russians first came as Tsarist colonisers, then Soviet settlers. But many lesser-known groups are remnants of Stalin's ruthless, sometimes genocidal penchant for the deportation of millions to the frozen steppes of Central Asia, then a yawning gap on the Soviet map.
These included Balkars, Germans, Greeks, Kalmyks, Karachais, Koreans, Latvians, Lithuanians and Poles.
One victim was Salman Geroyev, 65, deported along with the entire Ingush people, and the closely related Chechens in February, 1944. He was five when he arrived by cattle train. His father had died en route.
"I remember the soldiers with rifles and I remember the cold," Geroyev said, his eyes suddenly swimming with tears. He also remembered his first meeting with a local Russian boy. "I threw a snowball at him!" Geroyev recalled, tears turning to laughter.
Most survivors have since left, but many remain and the potpourri of nations gets along well.
So well, that in a historical irony thousands of Chechens have fled the war in Chechnya to take refuge in Kazakhstan, already home to 56,000 Chechens and Ingush left from the deportation.
"You know the situation in Chechnya," Geroyev said. "Here, there's nothing like that. Here we are equals. Nazarbayev never stops saying how inter-ethnic accord is our goal."
The two main groups -- Kazakhs and Russians -- are also happy. Kazakhs hold most political power, but there is none of the sense of revenge that has marred relations with the indigenous people's former imperial masters as in other parts of the former Soviet Union, especially in the Baltics.
About a million Russians have emigrated since the Soviet break-up, said community leader Yury Bunakov. But for those who stayed, Kazakhstan became a new homeland.
"I consider myself a rooted Kazakh now," this descendant of Soviet settlers said. "There are many examples where Russians went to Russia and found they couldn't settle. They were treated like foreigners. Some have started to return."
Analysts say Nazarbayev's leadership and insistence on equality has been crucial.
"His policies have really helped. He is very strict in this area," Eduard Poletayev, editor of Asian World magazine, said.
Others say the country's many ethnicities simply feel solidarity in a rapidly developing, oil-rich state.
"Here, the economy is going well and people have work, so they're all in it together," said Ruslan Mamadulayev, a half-Kazakh, half-Russian waiter at the Samovar Cafe in Astana.
Others source the harmony to the famously relaxed ways of Kazakhstan. "We are an open people. We like guests," Almaz Poshanov said at the mayor's office in Astana, one of the few ex-Soviet capitals where drivers are courteous to pedestrians.
But Kazakh tolerance for guests has limits -- and one of them concerns teeming, neighbouring China.
"We need very strict immigration rules," Poshanov said. "We have to guard carefully, because otherwise, before you know it, we'd all be just Chinese."
Nu, zayats, pogodi!
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