Kazakstan

The region that is now Kazakstan was settled by Turkic tribes from about the 8th century and incorporated in the Mongol empire of Genghis Khan in the 13th century. The Kazaks, a mixture of Mongol and Turkic peoples, emerged in about the 15th century. Russian incursions in what is now Kazakstan began in the 16th century, as cossacks settled along the Ural River in the western portion of the country. By the end of the 17th century a formal relationship had developed between the czarist government in Russia and the cossacks, who protected the Russian frontier in exchange for title to land and local autonomy. In the 18th century a line of cossack settlements and fortifications was established across the northern boundary of the steppe region in Kazakstan in order to defend the Russian frontier against marauding bands of Kazaks and other nomads. This line remained essentially the same for nearly 70 years under Russia's defensive posture. Beginning in the 1830s, however, Russian forces mounted a large-scale offensive southward, and by 1866 all of present-day Kazakstan was under their control. Cossack outposts grew into peasant settlements as Russian and other Slavic immigrants came to the steppe in increasingly large numbers. In the period from 1906 to 1914, the influx of settlers averaged over 140,000 people per year, although about one-fifth of all immigrants eventually returned to European Russia. Friction developed between the Kazaks and the new settlers, and tensions were exacerbated in 1916 by a governmental decree recruiting Kazaks for military service. In retaliation for the decree, Kazaks attacked and killed thousands of Slavic settlers. The czarist government responded by expelling about 300,000 Kazaks from their lands, many of whom left for the Xinjiang Province in China. In 1917 Russian settlers responded to the killings by attacking and killing some 80,000 Kazaks returning from China. In 1918 an autonomous republic was established in eastern Kazakstan, but it was quickly absorbed by Bolshevik forces. In 1920 the area of present-day Kazakstan was organized as an autonomous republic, and until 1925 it was known as the Kirgiz Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (ASSR). In 1936 it was admitted to the USSR as a constituent republic.  In the late 1920s Soviet authorities under Joseph Stalin instituted a policy of forced settling and collectivization of the Kazak population. As a result of the policy, Kazak culture and lifestyle were decimated. Hundreds of thousands of Kazaks were killed or emigrated to China. In 1954 the Soviet government launched the Virgin and Idle Lands Program, which called for a rapid increase in the amount of sown land in western Siberia and Kazakstan. A new wave of Slavic immigrants flooded the republic, and Slavs became the largest ethnic group in the country. Kazaks subsequently regained their position as the most numerous ethnic group in the country. In 1990 Nursultan Nazarbayev became president of the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic. He ran unopposed in the republic's first democratic presidential elections in December 1991 and won 95 percent of the vote. Kazakstan declared its independence later that month, shortly before the USSR broke apart. As president, Nazarbayev has generally allowed free speech and assembly for all groups in Kazakstan except for Russian and Kazak nationalist extremists. Some Russian cossacks have called for the annexation of northern Kazakstan by Russia, while Kazak extremists have called for the expulsion of all non-Muslims from Kazakstan. Nazarbayev has tolerated fairly severe criticism of his programs in the popular press, but has banned any activities that might foment ethnic distrust. He has established a close economic, military, and political relationship between Kazakstan and Russia, despite opposition by Kazak nationalists, although friction with Russia developed over control of the Baikonur Cosmodrome after independence. In March 1994 the two countries signed an agreement granting Russia control of the complex for 20 years at a cost of $115 million a year. In 1992 Kazakstan, which held a portion of the nuclear arsenal of the former USSR, agreed to destroy the weapons or transfer them to Russian control within seven years. In December 1993 Kazakstan ratified the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. In an effort to promote nuclear disarmament, economic reform, and the development of democratic institutions, the United States more than tripled its amount of aid to Kazakstan in February 1994. In November Kazakstan sent about 590 kg (about 1300 lb) of weapons-grade plutonium to the U.S. for safekeeping in return for additional financial aid. In March 1994 elections were held for a new legislature to replace the 360-member assembly from the Soviet era. Nazarbayev's supporters won at least two-thirds of the seats, though the elections were widely criticized as unfair by international monitors. Later that year, Prime Minister Sergei Tereshchenko and his cabinet were asked to resign, for failure to slow Kazakstan's economic decline. Nazarbayev appointed former deputy prime minister Kazhageldin Akezhan Magzhan Ulu as prime minister.  In July 1994 the parliament announced that the capital would move from Almaty to Aqmola by the year 2000, citing as reasons Almaty's vulnerability to earthquakes, and Aqmola's better communications and a more competitive workforce. Tensions between Nazarbayev and the parliament flared in March 1995. Referring to a Constitutional Court decision that had proclaimed the March elections illegitimate, Nazarbayev disbanded the legislature and called for new elections by mid-year. 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 called. In April a referendum was held to decide whether Nazarbayev's term as president, which was set to expire in 1996, should be extended to the year 2000; reportedly more than 95 percent of the voters approved the extension. Also in April Kazakstan completed the transfer of Soviet-era nuclear weapons to Russia. In August 1995, following approval by the voters of a new constitution that reconfigured the parliament into two chambers with fewer members, new legislative elections were set for December. Conventions of local and regional lawmakers elected members to the Senate in early December. Elections to the Majlis on December 9 failed to fill one-third of the chamber's seats and runoff elections were held in early 1996. In March 1996 President Nazarbayev and Russian officials agreed to cooperate in the fields of energy, electricity, and rail transportation. That same month the Duma (the lower chamber of the Russian parliament) ratified a 20-year Russian lease of Kazakstan's Baikonur Cosmodrome for all manned space flights. Russia will pay Kazakstan $115 million annually in rent for 20 years, and has an option to extend the lease for another 10 years. In April 1996 Russian president Boris Yeltsin and President Nazarbayev reached a preliminary agreement on redistributing the shares of the Caspian Pipeline Consortium, which plans to build a $1.5 billion pipeline to export oil and gas from Kazakstan through Russia to the Black Sea shipping lanes. Russia was given a 24 percent share, Kazakstan 19 percent, Oman 7 percent, and the other 50 percent was divided among eight oil companies. The pipeline is crucial to fully developing the rich Tengiz oil reserves.