Kazakhstan
Covering 1,048,310 square miles, or about one-third of the size of the United States, Kazakhstan is the largest Central Asian state. It has a population of 17.1 million, 37.8% of which are ethnic Russians. The terrain is a mixture of desert, grassy plateau, and mountain, with areas of fertile black earth where crops grow well.
The main river is the Irtysh in the Northeast of the country. In the West, the Ural river flows into the Caspian sea. The highest elevations are found in the Tien Shan system of the Altai mountain range. The capital is Almaty (Russian Alma Ata), which means "father of apples" in Kazakh. The city is located on an oasis at the foot of the Altai mountains. Kazakhstan has a climate with sharp differences in season temperature and little rainfall.
Kazakhstan emerged as a nation in the mid-15th century and was inhabited by Turkic Muslim peoples. Over the next three centuries, the Kazakhs developed into three separate groups called hordes (Russian orda, Kazakh juzes)—the small, middle, and the great horde—ruled by a single Khan. These hordes, similar in structure to Scottish clans, remained in place until the Soviets came to power in 1917. For most of their history, the Kazakhs were nomadic shepherds living in large round tents called yurts. To feed their livestock, each horde migrated within its own territory. The Kazakhs began to come under Russian control in the 1700s. The tsars sent Cossacks to set up outposts and protect trade routes to Asia. Eventually, the Kazakh khans accepted the Russian encroachment.
In the 1920s, Stalin collectivized private agricultural lands into state-run farms, forcing the Kazakhs to transform from a nomadic to a sedentary existence. This difficult transformation killed as much as one-third of the population and most of the livestock. Many Kazakhs fled to neighboring Mongolia. The Kazakhs became a minority in their own country, outnumbered by the Russians (presently, the Kazakhs have surpassed the Russians, accounting for 40% of the population). In 1936, Kazakhstan became a separate republic within the Soviet Union. In October 1990, Kazakhstan declared its sovereignty and in December 1991, its independence. The current president is Nursultan Nazarbayev.
Nazarbayev is more or less skilled at cultivating good ties with Russia while gaining support from the West. His support from the West is mostly because of Kazakhstan's possession of nuclear weapons left over from the days of the Soviet Union, and of course, the country's natural gas and oil reserves. Nonetheless, Kazakhstan's gas and oil reserves cannot be exported without the approval of Russia, because Kazakhstan is landlocked. Relations between kazakhstan and Russia have shown signs of strain. Tensions between Russians and kazakhs in the country have increased dramatically, especially between Russian Cossack groups (who are devout Orthodox Christians) and Kazakh nationalists (who are Sunni Muslims). The only positive thing that has happened recently is that Nazarbayev has declared Russian as well as Kazakh as official government languages, a move that should help alleviate some of the tension.
The Kazakh language belongs to the Turkic branch of the Uralo-Altaic language family. The three Kazakh dialects spoken today correspond to the languages spoken by the original three Kazakh hordes. Since 1938, the Kazakh language uses the Cyrillic alphabet.
Zinc and lead smelters and a uranium processing mill have polluted cities in eastern Kazakhstan. In the southwest, the shrunken Aral sea remains a health problem. In Semipalatinsk, the nuclear test site, aboveground nuclear weapons tests accounted for high rates of chromosome damage and stillbirths in that region.
In 1993, a Kazakh health commission report claimed that the number of children born with defects in districts near the test site was rising by some 150 percent. In December of that year, Vice President Gore visited Kazakhstan, and at that time the Kazakh parliament voted in favor of ratifying the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. In the spring of 1995, Kazakhstan declared itself free of all nuclear weapons. Last year, Kazakhstan agreed to a proposal to sell weapons-grade uranium to the United States so that it would not fall into the hands of anti-Western regimes.
Food: horse meat, shashlik (shishkebab made of lamb), beshbarmak (boiled onions, carrots, and noodles), fried dough balls, and lots and lots of tea.
Proverb: If you are friendly with a Russian, take care to have an ax with you.
Sources: Batalden, Stephen, The Newly Independent States of Eurasia, Phoenix, AZ, Oryx Press, 1993; Cultural Handbook to the Newly Independent States, Washington, DC, ACTR, 1996; National Geographic Magazine, March 1993, February 1990.