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Cable reference id: #09ASTANA1498

“All of them, those in power, and those who want the power, would pamper us, if we agreed to overlook their crookedness by wilfully restricting our activities.” — “Refus Global“, Paul-Émile Borduas

Hide header C O N F I D E N T I A L ASTANA 001498 SIPDIS STATE FOR SCA/CEN, ECA E.O. 12958: DECL: 09/09/2019 TAGS: PGOV [Internal Governmental Affairs], PREL [External Political Relations], PINR [Intelligence], SOCI [Social Conditions], KPAO [Public Affairs Office], KCOR [Corruption and Anti-Corruption], KZ [Kazakhstan] SUBJECT: KAZAKHSTAN: THE BOLASHAK REVOLUTION Classified By: Ambassador Richard E. Hoagland: 1.4 (B), (D) ¶1. (SBU) At a September 8 dinner in honor of the UK Minister for Europe, Baroness Glenyth Kinnock of Holyhead, the Ambassador was seated next to the deputy head of Prime Minister Masimov's office, Dauren Toleukhanov. Before moving to the Prime Minister's apparat, Toleukhanov was a diplomat, having spent much of his career, including a six-year stint at the Embassy of Kazakhstan in London, working on European and U.S. affairs. Earlier, he spent a year in St. Louis, Missouri, as an exchange student, and later completed his graduate studies at Cambridge University in England, where he was a Bolashak grantee. ¶2. (SBU) Soon after independence, President Nazarbayev created the Bolashak program that provides full university education to over one thousand Kazakhstani students a year because he foresaw it would be necessary to educate a new generation of leaders with new mentalities, if the country were to grow and prosper away from its traditional Soviet model. The so-called Bolashak Generation is apparent now througout the public and private sectors -- bright, globalized, young people, almost all speaking English, who are in positions just a level or two away from decision-making authority. ¶3. (C) Toleukhanov mentioned he is serving as a character witness for another Bolashak alumnus, former Deputy Minister of Ecology Babayev, who was caught up in the wave of corruption-scandal arrests in recent months. Toleukhanov asserted that Babayev is "absolutely innocent." When the Ambassador asked if Toleukhanov has any qualms about serving as a character witness for his friend, given his own sensitive, high position, Toleukhanov replied, "Certainly not. It's the right thing to do." Replying to the Ambassador's question why Babayev was arrested in the first place, Toleukhanov answered that he'd gotten caught in the cross-fire of the old guard trying to hang on in the face of the rising younger generation. He said, "You need to understand that Kazakhstan is already experiencing a revolution. So far, it's a slow-motion revolution. It's the Bolashak Revolution." HOAGLAND