Kazakh Riots Widespread, Premier Says

The premier of Kazakhstan said Wednesday that two people died and 200 were injured in December during nationalist demonstrations and riots in this Central Asian city.

Nursultan A. Nazarbayev, the top government official in the republic, portrayed the rioting as considerably more widespread and more violent than previous official descriptions.

Nazarbayev told a group of visiting journalists that “a maximum of 3,000 people” took part, with two deaths and 200 injuries requiring medical treatment.

Soviet officials and the government-controlled press earlier said that only “several hundred” demonstrators gathered in the city’s main square. One month after the riots, the Soviet press reported a single death, and earlier accounts of injuries did not specify the number.

Nazarbayev also said the students that gathered on Brezhnev Square had voiced legitimate concerns, including food shortages and the housing problem in Alma Ata.

Moscow-Based Reporters

Nazarbayev gave his account to 12 Moscow-based correspondents, the first foreign reporters allowed into Alma Ata since riots in the Kazakh capital Dec. 17 and 18.

Tass news agency, in a report on Nazarbayev’s meeting with the foreign journalists, did not mention injuries from the rioting. Tass said Nazarbayev blamed the unrest on “very young people” who were concerned with the inadequacy of social services.

Although Soviet officials were unusually open in acknowledging the riots, they have been much less forthcoming with details.

Nazarbayev said a student and a volunteer policeman died after receiving blows to the head. He also reported that three demonstrators have been sentenced to prison or labor camp and 28 others are still under investigation.

Nazarbayev also acknowledged that nationalist conflicts played a role in the disturbance, which broke out the day after Kazakh Communist Party officials elected an ethnic Russian, Gennady V. Kolbin, as party chief in the republic. Kolbin replaced Dinmukhamed A. Kunayev, a Kazakh who headed the party for 22 years.

‘Hooligans and Parasites’

Soviet press accounts played down the importance of the nationalities issue, blamed the riots instead on “hooligans and parasites” and implied that Kunayev cronies helped instigate them.

Nazarbayev, noting that most of the demonstrators were ethnic Kazakh students, said, “They did not say they were against Kolbin, and they did not say ‘We are for Kunayev.’ ”

But they were clearly displeased with the choice of a Russian as party chairman, he said. Kolbin previously was party chief of the Ulyanovsk region in the Russian republic.

More than 100 nationalities live in the Soviet Union. Russians are a majority of the country’s population, but many other groups maintain strong ethnic identities and harbor resentment against Russians who control most party and government organs.

The nationalities issue is particularly sensitive in republics such as Kazakhstan, where Russians outnumber Kazakhs.

In his meeting with reporters, Nazarbayev said that half the members of the republic’s party Central Committee are ethnic Kazakhs. In electing a Russian to replace Kunayev, the committee members were agreeing to a recommendation from the national Communist Party Central Committee in Moscow, he said.