Kazakhstan: Unfulfilled Promise
Kazakhstan is the second-largest fragment left over from the implosion of the USSR, next to Russia itself. Its population, however, is quite sparse and split between Slavs and Kazakhs. Given these contours, which include Kazakhstan's principal significance to the outside world--oil--what sort of nation and government have formed there? Such is Olcott's guiding question in her survey of Kazakhstan's decade of independence. Olcott describes how President Nursultan Nazarbayev has stuffed relatives into key positions of the state and business, a by-product of which is rampant corruption. And Nazarbayev preserves the status quo through electoral chicanery. Beneath the plane of a clan-run government run fissures that Olcott describes in great detail: ethnic, linguistic, financial, and secular attitudes in the north versus Islamic ones in the south. Unedifying as its government is, the country will probably not fall apart--at least territorially, predicts Olcott--but investors or scholars interested in the country can rely on her factual report to form their own opinions.Gilbert TaylorCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.