Kazakhstan

I

INTRODUCTION

Kazakhstan, republic in Central Asia, bounded on the north by Russia; on the east by China; on the south by Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan; and on the west by the Caspian Sea and Russia. Almost all of Kazakhstan is located in the west central portion of the Asian continent; however, a small part of the republic lies west of the Ural River on the European continent. The northern city of Astana (formerly Aqmola) is the capital of the country.

In Kazakh, the official state language, Kazakhstan is called Qazaqstan Respublikasy. The Kazakhs, a Turkic people, constitute a majority of the population. Kazakhstan was part of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) from 1922 until December 1991, when it became independent. The republic has maintained a presidential system of government since independence. In 1995 Kazakhstan adopted a new constitution that granted extensive powers to the president.

II

THE PEOPLE OF KAZAKHSTAN

People of Kazakhstan

In 2008 Kazakhstan had an estimated population of 15,340,533, giving it an average population density of 6 persons per sq km (15 per sq mi). Some 56 percent of the population lives in urban areas, making Kazakhstan the most urbanized of the Central Asian republics. The republic’s larger cities include Almaty, the former capital; Qaraghandy (also spelled Karaganda); Shymkent (Chimkent); Semey; and Pavlodar. Astana, which replaced Almaty as the capital in 1997, is a relatively small city located in the north.

A

Ethnic Groups

Kazakhs constitute 53 percent of Kazakhstan’s population, according to the 1999 census. The next largest ethnic group is Russians, with 30 percent of the population. Russians are concentrated in the north and in large urban areas, whereas Kazakhs are the predominant ethnic group in rural areas. Other ethnic groups in Kazakhstan include Ukrainians, Uzbeks, Germans, Uygurs (Uighurs), Chechens, Tatars, and Koreans.

Kazakhstan was the only Soviet republic in which the titular nationality (or ethnic group for which a republic was named) constituted less than 50 percent of the population. Large numbers of Russians and Ukrainians settled in Kazakhstan in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, after Central Asia became part of the Russian Empire. During World War II (1939-1945), the Soviet authorities deported Germans, Crimean Tatars, Koreans, and others to Kazakhstan from other parts of the Soviet Union. Another wave of large-scale immigration of Russians and other Slavs into Kazakhstan began in 1954 as part of a Soviet program to increase the amount of cultivated land in northern Kazakhstan. By 1959 Russians outnumbered Kazakhs in the republic. During the 1980s this demographic trend reversed. Birth rates were higher among Kazakhs, and the immigration of other ethnic groups abated. By 1989, when the last Soviet census was conducted, Kazakhs outnumbered Russians, although only by a slim margin. At that time Kazakhs constituted 39.7 percent of the population, and Russians made up 37.8 percent. After Kazakhstan became an independent republic in 1991, the proportion of Kazakhs continued to increase because many Germans, Russians, and members of other ethnic groups left Kazakhstan, while a significant number of Kazakhs moved into the republic from the neighboring Central Asian states and from Mongolia. In addition, the birth rate was generally higher among Kazakhs.

B

Languages

The official language of Kazakhstan is Kazakh, which belongs to the Kipchak (or Western Turkic) branch of the Turkic languages. The Kazakh language developed originally in the Arabic script, but in 1928 the Soviet government mandated a switch to the Latin (or Roman) alphabet. Then in 1940 the Soviet authorities imposed the Cyrillic alphabet (the script of the Russian language), with some modifications for the Kazakh language. This writing system continues to be used today.

Russian is the primary language of interethnic communication in Kazakhstan. Most Russians do not know the Kazakh language, while many Kazakhs have a working knowledge of Russian. During the Soviet period, Russian was the primary language of instruction in most schools, and knowledge of Russian was necessary to acquire skilled jobs. Beginning in the late 1980s it became more important for residents to learn and speak Kazakh. In 1989 the Supreme Soviet (legislature) of Kazakhstan adopted legislation making Kazakh the official language of the republic, and the constitution of 1993 ratified this designation. However, the language law recognizes Russian as a national language and allows it to be used in education, government, the military, and the courts.

C

Religion

The Kazakhs are a Muslim people. Their first significant contact with Islam occurred in the 16th century, long after the Central Asian peoples to the south were introduced to the religion during the Arab conquests of the 8th century. Sufi ascetics, who wandered across western Asia during the 16th century, introduced the Kazakhs to Sufism, or Islamic mysticism. The personal focus of Sufism was compatible with the Kazakhs’ nomadic way of life. The Kazakhs adopted Islam gradually, with their conversion only becoming complete in the early 19th century.

During the Soviet period, the officially atheistic Communist regime sought to restrict the practice of Islam because of its potential for creating organized dissident movements. Most of Kazakhstan’s mosques were forcibly shut down in the 1920s. The regime briefly relaxed its antireligious stance during World War II but then reinstated restrictions. In the mid-1980s the Soviet government lifted most of these restrictions, and the number of practicing Muslims in Kazakhstan began to increase considerably. The revival of Islam in Kazakhstan intensified after independence in 1991.

Uzbeks and Tatars are also Muslims. The Slavic peoples of Kazakhstan are traditionally Orthodox Christians, and the Russian Orthodox Church is the largest Christian denomination in the republic. The Christian community also includes small numbers of Protestants (mainly Lutherans) and Roman Catholics.

III

ECONOMY

Economy of Kazakhstan

Gross domestic product (GDP in U.S.$)	$81 billion (2006)
GDP per capita (U.S.$)	$5,291.50 (2006)
Monetary unit	1 tenge (T), consisting of 100 tein
Number of workers	8,121,887 (2006)
Unemployment rate	7.8 percent (2006)

The economy of Kazakhstan is largely based on its extensive natural resources. Kazakhstan’s vast steppes support wheat farms and livestock grazing. Abundant fossil fuel and other mineral resources lie beneath the land. Heavy industry was developed to support the extraction of these mineral reserves, giving the country a relatively diversified economy. In the 1990s the service sector increased in importance, due to an increase in retail outlets and financial services. In 2006 the gross domestic product (GDP), which measures the value of goods and services produced in the country, was $81 billion. Services (including education, health care, and retail trade) produced 52 percent of GDP, industry (including mining, manufacturing, and construction) produced 42 percent, and agriculture produced 6 percent.

At the beginning of the 20th century the Kazakh economy was based primarily on nomadic agriculture. The country underwent a rapid transformation during the Soviet period. Large sections of the northern steppes were converted into state farms, and some industry was introduced. Soviet planning also tightly tied the region to Russia. Most communication and transportation routes led through Russia, complicating Kazakhstan’s transition to an independent economy following the breakup of the Soviet Union.

The economy of Kazakhstan declined precipitously following independence. The GDP immediately fell by more than half, as economic decline throughout the former Soviet Union resulted in plummeting regional trade. The economy continued to decline through most of the 1990s. Austerity measures began to bring Kazakhstan’s skyrocketing inflation under control in 1995, but the country faced a severe balance-of-payments problem due to its massive foreign debt. The growing fiscal crisis came to a head in 1999. That year, the government implemented an emergency program that included massive reductions in government jobs. Helped by growing regional demand and market prices for Kazakhstan’s products, the economy significantly improved in 2000. The government has remained committed to the transition to a free-market economy, although reforms have proceeded slowly. For example, it implemented several phases of mass privatization, with the goal of transferring the majority of state-owned enterprises and farms to the private sector. The government also opened the economy to foreign investment, which has tended to focus on the extraction and export of the country’s large petroleum and gas reserves.

Kazakhstan is home to the Baikonur Cosmodrome, the leading space center of the former USSR. During the Soviet period the complex was operated almost exclusively by residents of Russia and created very little benefit for the Kazakh economy. Following independence, the facility was leased to Russia.

A

Agriculture

Before 1920 agriculture consisted primarily of herding livestock on the country’s expansive grass-covered plains. Wool, meat, milk, and other livestock products are still leading agricultural commodities, but the nomadic lifestyle of the herder has almost completely disappeared. During the Soviet period crop cultivation was greatly expanded, due in part to widespread mechanization and the construction of large-scale irrigation projects. Kazakhstan is a major producer of wheat, which is grown primarily in the north. Other crops include rice and cotton, which are grown on irrigated lands in the south. In 2003 the government of Kazakhstan passed a land reform bill that allows for private land ownership for the first time in the country. Opponents of the law voiced concern that it would benefit wealthy individuals who could afford to purchase large tracts of land, rather than farmers who work the land.

B

Mining

Mining is the leading branch of industry in Kazakhstan. The republic contains large reserves of tungsten, lead, copper, manganese, iron ore, gold, chrome, and zinc. It also possesses great quantities of coal, petroleum, and natural gas. The value of mineral extraction increased substantially in the 1990s. The increase is attributed to private investment, which has enabled the sector to benefit from new efficiency-boosting technologies and processes.

Kazakhstan contains two of the world’s largest oil fields: the Tengiz field, located on the eastern shore of the Caspian Sea, and the offshore Kashagan field. The Tengiz field was first discovered in 1979, but it remained undeveloped until 1993. The Kashagan field was discovered in 2000 and is believed to contain reserves exceeding those of Tengiz. The country’s largest known gas reserves are also located near the Caspian Sea, at the Karachaganak field. Foreign investment has been key to development of the fields and their distribution routes. The Caspian Pipeline Consortium was formed in 1993 to address the lack of viable oil and gas pipelines from landlocked Kazakhstan. The consortium involves international oil companies and the governments of Kazakhstan, Russia, and Oman. In 2001 the consortium opened a new pipeline from the Tengiz field to the Russian Black Sea port of Novorossiysk. Domestic use of the country’s oil and gas is hindered by the lack of pipelines connecting producing areas in the west with consuming areas in the populous southeast and industrial north. The country therefore exports gas and oil through Russia and imports its energy needs from Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.

IV				HISTORY
A			Russian Conquest

Meanwhile, Cossacks (frontier settlers) from Russia had begun to settle along the Ural River in the 16th century. By the end of the 17th century a formal relationship had developed between the Cossacks and the Russian imperial government, in which the Cossacks protected the Russian frontier in exchange for title to land and local autonomy. In the early 18th century the Cossacks established a line of settlements and fortifications across the Kazakhs’ northern boundary in order to defend the Russian frontier, which had expanded eastward into Siberia. During the Dzungar invasions, the Kazakhs appealed to Russia for protection and military supplies. Although Russia was, at the time, unwilling to become involved, the Kazakh hordes subsequently declared allegiance to Russia in return for Russian protection. In 1731 the Little Horde signed an oath of allegiance, followed by the Middle Horde in 1740 and the Great Horde in 1742, although part of this horde was subject to the Qing dynasty of China between 1757 and 1781. The khans of each horde promised to protect Russian borders adjacent to Kazakh lands, to defend Russian trade caravans in the steppes, to provide troops when needed, and to pay tribute to Russia. Russia gradually came to dominate local affairs, limiting the powers of the Kazakh khans and imposing the Russian administrative system. As Russian domination increased, the power of the khans eroded. In the 1790s the Kazakhs revolted against Russian rule, but their uprisings were ultimately ineffectual and were followed by Russia’s decision to abolish Kazakh autonomy. The Kazakh hordes lost their independence in succession—the Middle Horde in 1822, the Little Horde in 1824, and the Great Horde in 1848—and Kazakh lands were absorbed into the Russian Empire.

In the 1860s Russian forces mounted a large-scale military offensive southward in an attempt to secure free access to Khiva and other trade centers of southern Central Asia. By the 1880s Russian forces had conquered all of Central Asia. In present-day Kazakhstan, Cossack outposts developed into peasant settlements as Russians and other Slavs migrated to the steppes in increasingly large numbers. In the period between 1906 and 1914, the influx of settlers averaged more than 140,000 people per year.

The settlements severely restricted the Kazakhs’ traditional nomadic routes, and friction developed between the Kazakhs and the new settlers. Tensions were exacerbated by a June 1916 governmental decree recruiting Kazakhs and other Central Asians into workers’ battalions. The Central Asian peoples revolted against the decree in what, by August, became a widespread and bloody rebellion. The Kazakhs directed their wrath against Russian settlers, killing thousands, while settlers in some areas formed armed groups that massacred the local population. During the revolt, which continued until the end of the year in some areas, about 300,000 Kazakhs fled to the Xinjiang Province of China.

Russian imperial rule ended with the Russian Revolution of 1917, and Bolsheviks (militant socialists) seized control of the Russian government. A Kazakh nationalist party, Alash Orda, proclaimed the autonomy of the Kazakh people in December 1917. Alash Orda leaders then established a Kazakh government, which was divided into eastern and western administrative zones due to the immensity of the Kazakh lands.

B

Soviet Period

Alash Orda leaders initially sided against the Bolsheviks during the Russian Civil War (1918-1921). Some Kazakh leaders appealed to the anti-Bolshevik forces known as the Whites for weapons to help fight the Bolshevik forces. The leader of the Whites, Admiral Aleksandr Kolchak, refused the request and ordered the suppression of Alash Orda. The Kazakh nationalists then sought compromise with the Bolsheviks and received assurances from them that Kazakh autonomy would be maintained. In 1920 an area roughly corresponding to present-day Kazakhstan (borders were later redrawn) was designated an autonomous socialist republic. The Kazakh national elite, composed mostly of Alash Orda leaders, participated in local government. In the early 1920s the Kazakh population suffered a devastating famine in which 1 million to 3 million people died from starvation.

In December 1922 the Bolsheviks founded the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). Kazakhstan was incorporated into the USSR as the Kirgiz Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (ASSR). It kept that name until 1925, when it was renamed the Kazakh ASSR. In 1929 the southeastern city of Almaty was designated the capital of the republic. In 1936 the Kazakh ASSR was upgraded to the status of a constituent republic, or Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR), of the Soviet Union. In 1937 the Communist Party of Kazakhstan, a branch of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), was established.

In 1928 the Soviet authorities removed all Kazakh leaders from the local government. Soviet leader Joseph Stalin then instituted a rigorous program to collectivize agriculture, in which the state confiscated and combined all arable land into large collective and state farms. Kazakh culture and way of life were virtually destroyed as a result of the Soviet program to forcibly settle Kazakhs on these farms. Kazakh nomads slaughtered their livestock rather than turn it over to the Soviet authorities. More than 1 million Kazakhs died as a result of starvation, and many more fled to China to escape the forced settlement. In the late 1930s, during Stalin’s purges of Soviet society, the Kazakh national elite were brutally and systematically eliminated. During World War II (1939-1945), Stalin ordered large-scale deportations of ethnic groups he deemed untrustworthy to the more remote regions of Central Asia. Many of those deported were sent to the Kazakh SSR, including Germans from the Volga River area of Russia, Crimean Tatars from the Crimean Peninsula (in present-day Ukraine), and Koreans from the Soviet Far East.

In the 1950s Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev launched the Virgin Lands program, a scheme to bring extensive tracts of land in southwestern Siberia and the northern part of the Kazakh SSR under cultivation. The program was supervised in the Kazakh republic by Khrushchev’s protégé, Leonid Brezhnev, who in the 1960s succeeded Khrushchev as Soviet leader. Although the program was flawed, it succeeded in rapidly transforming the northern grassy plains of the Kazakh republic into an agricultural area specializing in wheat and other grains. Also during the 1950s the Soviet authorities established a space center called the Baikonur Cosmodrome in the east central part of the Kazakh republic. In addition, the Soviets created nuclear testing sites near Semipalatinsk (now Semey) in the east and huge industrial sites in the north and east. A new wave of Slavic immigrants flooded into the Kazakh republic to provide a skilled labor force for the new industries. Russians surpassed Kazakhs as the republic’s largest ethnic group, a demographic trend that held until the 1980s.

In 1986 the Soviet authorities in Moscow installed a Russian official, Gennady Kolbin, as first secretary of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan. Thousands of Kazakhs rioted in Almaty to protest the ouster of Dinmukhamed Kunayev, a Kazakh official who had held the post since the 1960s. The Soviet leadership had replaced Kunayev in an attempt to eliminate the corruption associated with his government. Exactly how many people died in the riot is still unclear.

Kolbin was a supporter of the extensive political and economic reforms that Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev had begun to implement in the mid-1980s. In 1989 Kolbin was transferred to Moscow, and Soviet authorities appointed Nursultan A. Nazarbayev, a prominent Kazakh official, in his place. In March 1990 the Supreme Soviet (legislature of the Soviet Union) elected Nazarbayev to the newly established post of president of the Kazakh republic. Nazarbayev ran unopposed in the republic’s first democratic presidential elections, held in December 1991, and won 95 percent of the vote. Kazakhstan declared its independence later that month, shortly before the USSR broke apart.

C

Nazarbayev Presidency

After Kazakhstan became independent, former Communist officials continued to dominate the government and the legislature, which was renamed the Supreme Kenges. In 1993 Kazakhstan ratified its first post-Soviet constitution, and in March 1994 the republic held its first free multiparty legislative elections since independence. President Nazarbayev’s supporters emerged as the strongest force in the new 177-member legislature. The People’s Unity Party (PUP), a centrist party led by Nazarbayev, won 33 seats, and individual candidates nominated by Nazarbayev won 42 seats. Independent candidates, who were overwhelmingly supporters of Nazarbayev, won 59 seats. International observers monitoring the election reported a number of irregularities, as a number of candidates were allegedly prevented from registering.

Tensions between Nazarbayev and the legislature flared in early 1995. The legislature refused to adopt a new draft budget prepared by the executive branch of government, although Nazarbayev expressed his support for the budget proposals. In February the Constitutional Court proclaimed the previous legislative elections illegitimate, and in March Nazarbayev used this ruling to dissolve the legislature. More than 100 legislators refused to disband and asked for an international inquiry. Nazarbayev effectively began ruling the country by decree until new elections could be held. In a referendum held in April, voters approved the extension of Nazarbayev’s term, which was set to expire in 1996, until 2000. Meanwhile, Nazarbayev ordered the drafting of a new constitution. In a referendum held in August, voters approved the new constitution, which reconfigured the legislature into two chambers with fewer members. Elections to the new legislature were held in December, with runoff elections in early 1996. Nazarbayev’s supporters again won the dominant share of seats.