The unknown Russian party functionary whose appointment to Kazakhstan ignited the Zheltoksan uprising
On 16 December 1986, the 5th Plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan in Almaty lasted just eighteen minutes. When Moscow's envoy Razumovsky announced Kunaev's dismissal and Kolbin's appointment, the hall fell into heavy silence.
Gennady Kolbin was a textbook Brezhnev-era party apparatchik who spent his career in the CPSU apparatus, but his 1986 appointment by Gorbachev as First Secretary of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan placed him unexpectedly at a historical watershed. An ethnic Russian from Nizhny Tagil with no prior connection to Kazakhstan, his installation (replacing the Kazakh Dinmukhamed Kunaev at an 18-minute plenum) triggered the Zheltoksan (December) uprising, when thousands of young Kazakhs poured into the streets of Alma-Ata in what became the first mass anti-Moscow protest of the perestroika era. After three turbulent years he was replaced by Nursultan Nazarbayev, recalled to Moscow to chair the Party Control Committee, and retired in 1990. He died of a heart attack on the Moscow Metro in 1998 and lay unidentified for five days.
Career Timeline
- 1959–1962Second/First Secretary, Lenin District Committee, Nizhny Tagil
- 1962–1970Second/First Secretary, Nizhny Tagil City Committee
- 1970–1975Secretary/Second Secretary, Sverdlovsk Regional Committee
- 1975–1984Second Secretary, Central Committee, CP of Georgia
- 1983–1986First Secretary, Ulyanovsk Regional Committee
- 1986–1989First Secretary, Central Committee, CP of Kazakhstan
- 1989–1990Chairman, USSR People's Control Committee