The December 1986 uprising in Kazakhstan did not escape the attention of the Kremlin alone — faraway Tokyo was watching too. Japanese diplomats closely monitored the political situation in Almaty and relayed details of the unfolding events to their home country through secret cables. This year marks the 40th anniversary of the landmark events. Ahead of that milestone, previously unknown material has come to light, infohub.kz reports.

Japanologist and historian Olzhas Quanbay has identified a 97-page document on the December events in the archive of Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It sets out the causes of the protests, the background to Moscow's personnel decision and the mood of Kazakh society at the time. A Dalanews.kz correspondent spoke with the scholar about the historical significance of the records held in the Tokyo collection.

According to the researcher, the archival materials, kept secret for a long time, were made available to the public only on November 20, 2019.

Quanbay found the historical materials on November 14, 2025, in the archive of Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Tokyo. At the time, the researcher was conducting academic work at Tokyo University of Foreign Studies.

"As a PhD Japanologist and historian, I was carrying out research in my field and, while studying archival materials, came across documents relating to the December events. I found them on November 14, 2025, at 14:54. That year I was writing a book on Japanese history, so I had no opportunity to publish this material immediately," the researcher said.

According to him, the same archive holds other valuable materials on Kazakhstan's history, including records on the 1969 Zhalanashkol conflict and the life of the Kazakhs of the Ili region.

"I am now translating the documents from Japanese and compiling them into a single collection. I plan to publish them as an archival collection in the future," Quanbay said.

The first document on the December events consists of two parts and six archival records, totaling 97 pages. The material is held in the archive of Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs under the title "Soviet domestic policy and national conditions." One of the sections devoted to the events in Almaty is titled "The incident of mass disturbances in Alma-Ata."

Information from the first days of the uprising was recorded in handwritten form, hastily written in a notebook, and later sent to Tokyo by cable. One of the documents bears the marking "secret document No. 609."

"The names of political figures in the document are encrypted with special symbols. For example, Kunaev is designated 'Ku,' Kolbin 'Ko,' Ryzhkov 'Ru,' Gorbachev 'Go' and Brezhnev 'Bu,'" the historian said.

The information dated December 24, 1986, was sent in a top-secret, encrypted cable, No. 11-027.

According to the documents, information about the events in Almaty was gathered through Japan's diplomatic missions in the Soviet Union. Japan's ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary to the USSR, Yasue Katori, consul Saiki, and diplomats Kyoji Komachi and Toshio Tsunozaki took part in this work.

From 1984 to 1987, Kyoji Komachi served as adviser to Ambassador Yasue Katori at the Japanese Embassy in Moscow and was responsible for political analysis and contacts with Soviet officials. The embassy's first secretary, Toshio Tsunozaki, gathered political information, prepared reports for Tokyo and obtained material from Soviet journalists and officials.

"The embassy in Moscow and local consulates exchanged encrypted cables and sent a steady flow of information to Tokyo about events in the Soviet Union. In the documents on the December uprising, the names of Ambassador Katori and Consul Saiki appear side by side," Quanbay said.

The next document, sent on December 29, 1986, was titled "The USSR's domestic policy. Disturbances in the city of Alma-Ata." Document No. 6375 was marked "urgent" and "priority handling" and indicated that it had been sent by fax.

In the Japanese diplomats' analysis, one of the main causes of the December events was Moscow's failure to properly assess the Kazakh people's support for Dinmukhamed Kunaev. The document notes that Kunaev, originally a mining specialist, enjoyed great authority among the people as head of the republic despite his limited party experience.

"According to the Japanese consul's conclusion, the Soviet leadership took the Kazakhs' particular support for Kunaev lightly. Before Kunaev, the leadership of the republic had been held by representatives of the Russian nationality three times in a row. Replacing a Kazakh leader who enjoyed the people's support with a Russian citizen sent in from outside provoked public discontent," the researcher said.

The archive states that discontent among Kazakhstan's population with the union center had long been building over unfair investment allocated to the republic and other issues. Kolbin's appointment triggered the open expression of this opposition. Japanese diplomats assessed the situation not merely as the removal of one individual from office but as a conflict between national interests and the center's policy.

Another noteworthy item in the Japanese archive is the conclusion that Nikolai Ryzhkov, chairman of the USSR Council of Ministers, influenced Gennady Kolbin's appointment to Kazakhstan. The authors of the document describe Kolbin as a man trusted by Ryzhkov. In the Japanese consul's assessment, Moscow aimed through this personnel decision to intensify the development of Kazakhstan's natural resources.

"The archive says that around 1984 a natural gas field was discovered on the territory of the Kazakh SSR. After the Chernobyl disaster, the energy shortage in the Soviet Union deepened and developing the new field became a pressing issue. Ryzhkov came to Kazakhstan and criticized the slow pace of work. It is surmised that he then sought to speed up resource development by sending his trusted man Kolbin to head the republic," Quanbay said.

However, the Japanese diplomat noted that such a step was bound to provoke resistance from the local population, since Kazakhstanis saw the lag in production not as the incompetence of local leaders but as Moscow's unfair distribution of investment.

While gathering information on the December events, the Japanese diplomats also spoke with Vitaly Korionov, international political commentator for the newspaper Pravda. At a specially arranged dinner, he conveyed the Soviet authorities' position on the events in Almaty to Kyoji Komachi and Toshio Tsunozaki.

Korionov touched on the demographic situation in Kazakhstan and tried to explain the high share of Russians and other Slavic peoples in the republic as a consequence of the Virgin Lands campaign and industrialization. He said this should not be assessed as a deliberate policy of Russification. The Soviet journalist also put forward the version that the December uprising was organized by people who feared losing their positions around Kunaev.

"His answer shows that the Japanese diplomats raised the issues of the Kazakh people's interests, the Russification policy and national discontent at the meeting. Korionov tried to justify the Soviet Union's national policy before the conversation had even begun," the historian said.

According to the records, the archive preserves both the Soviet official position and the Japanese diplomats' independent analysis.

Another feature that caught Quanbay's attention was the Japanese diplomat's choice of wording. Alongside official names such as "the Kazakh SSR" or "the population of Kazakhstan," the documents frequently use expressions such as "the Kazakh people," "the Kazakh Republic," "the Kazakh leadership," "the Kazakhs' support for Kunaev," "the people's warm affection for Kunaev" and "the national feeling of the Kazakh nation." This shows that the Japanese diplomats sought to understand the protest in Almaty not simply as a disturbance but as a political phenomenon of a national character.

"Soviet official information described the events as 'disturbances organized by nationalist elements.' Japanese diplomats, however, saw beneath this opposition to Moscow's personnel policy, to national inequality and to the union center's attitude toward the republic," the researcher said.

The Soviet Union's TASS news agency reported the December events as "disturbances in Almaty." The official account said students had burned cars and destroyed shops, but gave no full information about the actions of the security forces or the casualties.

Japan's Asahi Shimbun, Yomiuri Shimbun and Mainichi Shimbun newspapers, as well as television channels, reported on the events in Almaty on December 19–20, 1986, relying on TASS and on reports from Kyodo News and Jiji Press correspondents working in Moscow.

"Japanese publications reported that the protests began after Kunaev's removal from office and the appointment in his place of Gennady Kolbin, who had no connection to Kazakhstan. However, because foreign journalists were not allowed to travel to Almaty, the true scale of the events did not fully reach the international community," Quanbay said.

The documents preserved in Tokyo show that the December events went beyond the borders of the Soviet Union and drew the attention of foreign diplomats. Japanese representatives monitored the protests in Almaty daily and delivered the information to Tokyo by encrypted cable.

These records make it possible to view December from a perspective separate from the Soviet official interpretation. The documents analyze in interconnection Moscow's personnel policy, interest in the republic's natural resources, inequality in the distribution of investment and the national interests of the Kazakh people.

The historian Olzhas Quanbay says his task now is to translate the archival materials in full and bring them into scholarly circulation.

"Much about the December events remains undisclosed. The documents in the Japanese archive offer an outside assessment of that historical period. Translating, systematizing and publishing them is a contribution to a deeper understanding of the truth about December," he said.