This is a newly erected monument in the heart of Almaty. If you look closely at the bottom you can see "Zheltoksan 1986," which is December 1986, an event which provokes heated responses from many quarters of Kazakh society. In December 1986, the Communist Party decided to replace the current Kazakh secretary, an ethnic Kazakh, with an ethnic Russian. In response, hundreds of Kazakh students took to the streets in protest. A Party-sponsored counter protest was organized and a bloodbath soon ensued. Yet attempts to define the story further than this have encountered resistance. Official records maintain that under a hundred people were killed, while Kazakh friends tell me hundreds, including some of their closest friends, died during the protests. The documentation surrounding the protests has been "lost," most importantly the paper trail of who gave the orders to fire on demonstrators. President Nazarbayev's own role in the event (he was at that time an official in the Kazakh Communist Party) remains murky. Yet December 1986 has become firmly entrenched in the national memory, both through the personal remembrances of those who lost friends and through the current government's efforts to claim it as a moment of national consciousness.