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secular state during the Soviet period. In a religious state there are many absurd restrictions going back to the medieval epoch. It is only a civic, secular state that has a future, and all flourishing European countries are secular, civic states. Supporters of a religious (Sharia) state (they comprise 16.4%) maintain that religion is the main factor in human life, and in a religious state based on strict laws people would fear to commit crimes. They say that they would like to live in a Sharia state, but not like Saudi Arabia, that religion should be the way of life, and that ultimately all people will be living in a religious state.
From the cited results of sociological polls it is seen that in 2011 there were more supporters of an Islamic state than in 1998, especially among young people. It shows that Islamic ideology becomes more widespread and popular. People of middle and old age do not change their attitude and, as a rule, favor a secular state. Most experts believe that it is necessary to adhere to the constitutional principle of the separation of religious associations from the state and school from the church. They come out for the secular development of Dagestan and the entire North Caucasus within the framework of the Russian Federation.
"Vestnik Dagestanskogo nauchnogo tsentra RAN," Makhachkala, 2012, No 45, pp. 105-108.
CITIES AND PEOPLE: SOCIO-CULTURAL TRANSFORMATION IN KAZAKHSTAN
The author1 (former director of the Kazakhstan Institute of Strategic Studies) examines the socio-cultural aspects of Kazakhstan's urbanization during the post-Soviet period.
1 A. Sultangaliyeva. Cities and People: Socio-Cultural Transformation in Kazakhstan (Almaty, 2010).
The urbanization of Kazakhstan is an incomplete process, despite its rapid pace during the Soviet period. The decrease of the absolute and relative numerical strength of the urban population during the past twenty years gives grounds to talk of the de-urbanization trend. Compared to the late Soviet period, the share of urban citizens in the country's population diminished from 57.1 to 54.1 percent, with the simultaneous absolute and relative increase of inhabitants in rural areas. The share of Russians in the urban population decreased from 51.3 in 1989 to 41.1 percent in 1999. For the first time Kazakhs became the predominant urban population.
Inconsistency, absence of continuity, and absence of the proper form of the urban way of life are characteristic features of the social and cultural development of the Kazakh city. Hence, contradictions in the social and cultural pattern and image of the modern Kazakh city, characterized by several opposite trends: "post-modernism" on one pole and archaic features on the other. On the one hand, there is the Internetbanking service, or "Wi-Fi" in the "Starbucks" Coffee House, and on the other, private homes heated by coal in cities, or unclean and suspiciously looking taxi drivers tugging passengers by sleeves at the international airport. Between these poles are several transitional forms: pre-industrial, socialist, capitalist, industrial and post-industrial. Each one of them has its features and advantages - from archaic and traditionally conservative to modernistic and extremely westernized.
Thus, we cannot talk of a linear transition from one stage to another at the post-Soviet stage of the social and cultural transformation of urban life: from the simple to the complex, from authoritarianism to democracy, or from a closed society to an open society.
There is a tradition in the historical genealogy of the Kazakh city, namely, when political history is changed (pre-Soviet, Soviet, postSoviet) the preceding stage is either ignored or denied. In the course of
this process the social structure of society is destroyed, material objects (buildings, monuments, etc.) are removed, and habitual symbols (names) changed. As a result, the continuity of social and cultural experience is interrupted, and the memory of the past is obliterated. Naturally, we mean the values and standards which contribute to humanization of the urban medium, social mobility, growing social interest, etc.
In the post-Soviet period most Kazakh industrial cities, which used to be centers of production, are now in a state of decline. Denationalization, privatization and closing down of city-forming industries lead to the degradation of the city structure and the outflow of the population. The phenomenon of "dying cities" or ghost-cities appears, and their population decreases by 15 percent. At the same time, the population of big cities is increasing and now reaches 70 percent of all urban dwellers in Kazakhstan. But these cities, whose life did not depend on just one enterprise, find themselves in a less favorable situation than metropolitan cities, like multifunctional Alma Ata or Astana, the new capital of Kazakhstan. Having lost the status of the capital, Alma Ata with its diversified urban economy proved to be better adapted to the shock processes of the early 1990s. The number of its population not only does not decrease, but grows, and its share in the economy reaches 26.4 percent. True, it reflects the trend noticed in many post-socialist countries where the biggest cities, especially their capitals, developed economically, whereas other parts of these states lived through a prolonged crisis and even experienced collapse.
One of the reasons for the better adaptation of Alma Ata to the new conditions is the fact that in its diverse and well-developed economy the sector of educational and intellectual services was the most advanced. And in the new market conditions it was in great demand. One-third of all students of the country is living and studying
in Alma Ata. Besides, it is the center of economic activity, and the number of legal entities comprises 12.2 percent of their entire number of the economically active population, whereas this figure is much lower for the entire country, on average - 3.3 percent.
The socio-economic changes have also influenced the social structure of the Kazakh urban population. Its relative homogeneity of the Soviet period, when the majority was represented by the "middle class" (office workers employed in education and science) and the "lower class" (workers of low and medium skill, especially on railways) gradually disappears.
In contrast to the previous period, stratification and inequality between the indigenous Kazakhs and most "new" urban citizens - rural migrants are increasing. This is based on social and property inequality, when the former live much better against the latter's poverty. Besides, polarization becomes greater between the narrow section of the very rich, the "highest and high middle section" (owners of the means of production and highly-paid managers in the private and public sectors) (10 percent) and a majority of hired workers of average means representing the "middle and lower middle section" (55 percent). The middle section proper comprises not more than 15 percent and consists of people employed in the financial sphere with the average monthly salary of $1,000, and also owners of medium-sized enterprises. The "lower section" (20 percent) -- unemployed, independent individual workers concentrated in the informal sector of urban services - holds a special place.
The "upper class" (about three percent) is the only social section with clear-cut features which realizes and formulates its interests properly. As a rule, it consists of members of the former socialist nomenklatura and the new business and political elites. The connection of "new" money with the upper state bureaucracy is especially
noticeable in the conditions of Kazakhstan. The openness of the Kazakh "upper class" to globalization and Westernization leads to its growing alienation from the less numerous middle class, all the more so, from the lower middle class and the poor. At the same time the lower middle section is always on the verge of sliding down to the poor majority.
The Kazakh creative intelligentsia in its Soviet version deprived of government support is gradually disappearing as a separate social section. At the same time, the scope and range of the commercial entertainment forms of Kazakh-language urban culture - pop music and various shows - are rapidly growing.
The influence of the new realities of urban life is increasingly felt in the traditional social ties. In particular, the city becomes more "Kazakh" and "Kazakh-language" due to the outflow of the Russian population and the flow of Kazakh rural migrants. Thus, to confirm Kazakh identity it is no longer necessary to broaden the circle of family ties. They are rapidly commercialized, acquiring a market price. For the rich section of the Kazakh population these ties become an additional competitive advantage (the more ancient the family, the weightier the right of its representatives to definite resources, such as power, money, and social status). For the poor Kazakh majority reliance on tradition becomes its social capital in the absence of material capital. Relations between the rich and the poor relatives acquire the nature of the patron -client relations.
Traditional informal practices in the conditions of the Kazakh ethnic-oriented statehood do not serve the preservation of ethnic and cultural features now, but are simply a means of personal survival. Thus, the intra-ethnic consolidation of Kazakhs, weakened as it is by profound socio-cultural alienation between the Russian-speaking urban Kazakh dwellers and rural Kazakhs, acquires a more complicated character.
In the conditions of early capitalism and its values and striving for personal advantage, reliance on traditionally strong family ties turns into dominance of nepotism and corruption. As a result, the significance of the common good is replaced by individual and narrowclan selfish interests inherent in rural inhabitants.
All this prevents the formation of civic self-consciousness and proper understanding of urban community. This, in turn, hampers the cohesion of society on the basis of Kazakh patriotism and civic values. As a result, it is not the city that gives examples of behavior to numerous new urban dwellers, but, on the contrary, the latter set the rural standards of socialized behavior in the city.
At the same time against the backdrop of this socio-cultural multi-form structure the socialist heritage is still seen and felt and it exerts a profound and prolonged influence. This was due to the fact that the Soviet period was the most recent and prolonged. This was why it became possible to transfer values and patterns of behavior within the family from parents to children. The past trends of urban development continue to influence its present progress.
The inertia of the Soviet methods of municipal government can largely be seen and felt in the ineffective management of the post-socialist city. This explains why in the market conditions the former command-administrative and simplified methods of management enter into contradictions with the changed economic conditions - the absolute predomination of private and minimal share of state property.
Thus, by the beginning of the 21st century the Kazakhstan city was "unprepared" for new challenges and changes. Under the constant influence of migrations, both internal and external and ethnically different, the city was unable to create a mature and stable socio-cultural medium.
The excessive concentration of rural migrants in the two main cities of the country leads to the physical growth of the city without its proper development, and its infrastructure is unable to accept and absorb these migrants. This has a negative impact on the socio-cultural sphere of cities.
Given the absence of society's real participation in municipal management, private interests prevail over the common good not only in the system of municipal power, but in the entire day-to-day behavior of city dwellers. Quasi-local management cannot seriously be considered a balance to municipal authorities. This leads to the establishment and consolidation of conservative socio-cultural models: apathy and cynicism, paternalism and rebirth of primitive standards of behavior.
The "urban revolution" of Kazakhs, which began in Soviet times, continues in the new conditions and at another level. In the present epoch of early capitalism it is already free from the regulating and guiding role of the state. But inasmuch as the system of social and economic guarantees of the state has collapsed, the socio-cultural development of the Kazakh urban population has now lagged behind its physical growth. As a result, the opportunities for vertical social mobility have sharply narrowed down and the process of social and property differentiation has become more rapid.
The sharp social stratification within the Kazakh ethnos leads to a situation in which the narrow section of the well-to-do Kazakh people becomes internationalized and cosmopolitan in its essence by being integrated in the ranks of the "world bourgeoisie." Settlement of quite a few rich Kazakhs in advanced and prosperous western countries is a vivid proof of this.
To solve the problems of the urban construction of Kazakhstan in a proper manner is impossible without a broader reform of the
territorial management of the country, including decentralization, greater financial independence of its regions and cities, electivity of municipal bodies of power, and the introduction of real local self-government.
We believe that Kazakh cities, due to historical specific features and regional environment, can hardly be referred to any concrete region or a group of countries. They remain part of the post-Soviet urban "civilization," but the latter becomes ever more heterogeneous itself, when internal differences undermined its former entirety. The socio-cultural transformation of the Kazakhstan city has not yet been finished. This is connected with the continuing adaptation of the entire urban infrastructure to the market conditions and ethnocultural demographic changes.
"Zhurnal vostokovedeniya i afrikanistiki," Moscow, 2012, No 2, pp. 51-57.
E. Borodin,
Ph. D. (Econ.)
A CLAN CHARACTER OF THE STRUCTURE OF THE KYRGYZ REPUBLIC
The elites in present-day Kyrgyzstan are dominated by natives of rural districts. Nevertheless, prior to the coup of 2005 the congeneric relations were manifested primarily in the rural medium which formed the majority of the population of the Kyrgyz Republic, whereas now tribalism as a system of social relations is consolidated in towns and cities. This can largely be explained by increasing inner migration (from the South to the North), which acquired a mass character in 2005 - 2010, having exacerbated contradictions between the Northerners and the Southerners.
