Kazakstan

Country Profile Kazakstan
Formal Name: Republic of Kazakstan. Short Form: Kazakstan.
Term for Citizens: Kazakstani (s).
Capital: Almaty scheduled to move to Aqmola 1998. Date of Independence:
December 16, 1991.
Geography
Size: Approximately 2,717,300 square kilometers.
Topography: Substantial variation according to region. Altay and Tian Shan
ranges in east and northeast, about 12 percent of territory, reaching an
elevation of nearly 7,000 meters. more than three-quarters of the territory
is desert or semi-desert, with elevations below sea level along Caspian Sea
coast in the far west.
Climate:
Continental and very dry except in eastern mountains, where snowfall can be
heavy. Wide temperature variations between winter and summer.

Society
Population: By 1994 estimate, 17,268,000; annual growth rate
1.1 percent in 1994; population density 6.2 persons per square kilometer in
1994.
Ethnic Groups: In 1994, Kazaks 45 percent, Russians 36 percent, Ukrainians 5
percent, Germans 4 percent, Tatars and Uzbeks 2 percent each.
Languages: Official state language a contentious issue; 1995 constitution
stipulates Kazak and Russian as state languages. Russian primary language in
business, science, and academia. Non-Kazak population exerts pressure
against requirements for use of Kazak.
Religion: In 1994, some 47 percent Muslim (Sunni branch), 44 percent Russian
Orthodox, 2 percent Protestant (mainly Baptist), with smaller numbers of
Roman Catholic, Pentecostal, and Jewish believers.
Education and Literacy: Literacy in 1989 was 97.5 percent.  Education, fully
supported by state funds, hampered by shortage of facilities and materials
and low pay for teachers; major program to restructure Soviet system in
progress mid 1990s; primary language of instruction Russian at all levels.
Health:  Soviet-era free health system declined drastically in early 1990s,
mainly because of low funding.  Drugs and materials in short supply, doctors
underpaid and leaving medicine, child health care especially poor.  Infant
mortality and contagious diseases rising, mid-1990s.

Economy
Gross National Product (GNP):  Estimated 1993 at US$ 26.5 billion, or US$
1,530 per capita.  In 1994 estimated growth rate -25.4 percent. In early
1990s, growth hindered by Soviet-era specialization and centralization, slow
privatization.
Agriculture: Large-scale misallocation of land in Soviet Virgin Lands
program, emphasizing cultivation over livestock, continues to distort land
use.  Main crops wheat, cotton, and rice; main livestock products meat and
milk.  State farms continue to dominate 1996; land privatization minimal.
Industry and Mining:  Outmoded heavy industry infrastructure inherited from
Soviet era, specializing in chemicals, machinery, oil refining, and
metallurgy; coal, iron ore, manganese, phosphates, and various other
minerals mined.  Some light industry.  Industrial productivity hampered by
lost markets and enterprise debt.
Energy:  Plentiful reserves of oil, coal, and natural gas make energy
production dominant industrial sector.  Offshore Caspian Sea fields, in
early production stages, have huge capacity; extraction expanding with
Western investment and new pipeline project. Natural gas fields, notably
Karachaganak, will expand output in later 1990s. Thermoelectric power
plants, main source of power, fueled by lignite mines.  Kazakstan remains
net importer of energy and fuel, 1995.
Exports: Mainly raw materials: metals, oil and petroleum products,
chemicals, worth US$ 3.08 billion in 1994; share of bartered goods,
substantial in early 1990s, smaller in 1995 and mainly with Commonwealth of
Independent States (CIS) partners.  Cash sales to CIS partners increased
substantially in 1995, partially replacing barter.  Export structure
shifting steadily to non-CIS partners, mid-1990s, as Western oil sales
increase; non-CIS expansion needed to balance imports for industrial
restructuring.
Imports:  In 1994, worth US$ 3.49 billion, mainly energy products,
machinery, vehicles, chemicals, and food.  Industrial machinery and
technology imports will increase, energy products decrease, in late 1990s.
Trade deficits with both CIS and non-CIS groups, 1994.  Main trading
partners Russia, Ukraine, Germany, Netherlands, Switzerland, Czech Republic,
Italy, and China.
Balance of Payments:  In 1994, deficit of US$ 2.5 billion.
Exchange Rate:  Tenge introduced November 1993 when Kazakstan left ruble
zone.  Exchange rate sixty-four to US$ l, January 1996.
Inflation:  Hyperinflation, 1993 and 1994, brought under better control with
tightened loan policy; estimated 1995 annual rate 190 percent.
Fiscal Year:  Calendar year.
Fiscal Policy:  Centralized system; fundamental streamlining of tax code,
1995, emphasizing taxation of individuals over taxation of enterprises.
Targeted 1995 budget shortfall 3.5 percent of gross domestic product (GDP).

Transportation and Telecommunications
Highways:  In 1994, about 189,000 kilometers of roads, of which 108,000
kilometers gravel or paved.  Road transport declining element of economic
infrastructure; maintenance and truck fleet inadequate to expand service.
Railroads:  Three railroad companies provide about 90 percent of national
freight haulage, but infrastructure and equipment supply unreliable.  In
1993, system had 14,148 kilometers of track, of which 3,050 kilometers
electrified, concentrated in north, mainly connecting with Russian system.
Civil Aviation:  Kazakstan Airlines and six private companies use twenty
airports, one of which (Almaty) has international connections.  Regular
flights to some major cities in CIS countries, Western Europe, Asia, and
Middle East.
Inland Waterways:  Two rivers, Syrdariya and Ertis, total 4,000 kilometers
of navigable water; nineteen river transport companies, under state control.
In 1992, 1.6 million passengers, 7 million tons of freight moved.
Ports: On Caspian Sea, Aqtau, Atyrau, and Fort Shevchenko, with limited
commercial value.
Pipelines:  In 1992, some 3,480 kilometers for natural gas, 2,850 kilometers
for crude oil, and 1,500 kilometers for refined products.  Systems mainly
connected with Russian lines to north; new lines in planning stage, 1996,
with Western aid, to connect with Europe and other international
destinations.
Telecommunications: Limited service, inadequate to planned economic
expansion.  In 1994, seventeen of 100 urban citizens had telephones, heavily
concentrated in Almaty.  Most equipment outmoded, overburdened.  All
international connections through Moscow.  Radio and television broadcasting
government controlled; satellite television broadcasts from other countries;
sixty-one domestic radio stations, one domestic television network, 1996.

Government and Politics
Government: Strong presidential system, prescribed in 1993 constitution and
reinforced by dismissal of parliament and beginning of direct presidential
rule by Nursultan Nazarbayev, 1995.  Presidential election delayed by
referendum until 2000.  New constitution, approved in August 1995
referendum, mandates bicameral parliament and increases presidential power.
Parliamentary election for both houses held December 1995.  Nineteen
provinces and city of Almaty run by executives appointed by national
president.
Politics:  Close government control of legal political parties has not
prevented numerous groups from forming.  Participation in 1994 and 1995
parliamentary elections limited to approved parties, but 1994 parliament
strongly opposed many of Nazarbayev's programs.  Election of 1994 declared
invalid, and parliament dissolved in early 1995.  Nazarbayev's People's
Unity Party retained plurality in 1995 elections.  Several Kazak and Russian
nationalist parties with small representation in government.
Foreign Policy:   Post-Soviet broad search for international support, role
as bridge between East and West, under personal direction of President
Nazarbayev.  Critical balance of Russian and Chinese influence, careful
reserve toward Muslim world outside Central Asia; proposal of Euro-Asian
Union to replace CIS, 1994.  Active diplomatic role in CIS crises (Nagorno
Karabakh, Tajikistan.)
International Agreements and Memberships:  Member of United Nations (UN),
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Partnership for Peace,
Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), Economic
Cooperation Organization (ECO), Asian Bank, International Monetary Fund
(IMF), World Bank, CIS, International Criminal Police Organization
(Interpol.)

National Security
Armed Forces: Planned strength 80,000 to 90,000; 1996 army strength about
25,000, air force about 15,000, border troops 5,000 to 6,000, naval force in
planning stage.

Major Military Units: Army has two motorized rifle divisions, one tank
division, one artillery regiment.  National Guard operates 25 percent of
boats in Caspian Sea Flotilla.  Air force has one heavy bomber regiment; one
division with three fighter-bomber regiments; and single, independent
reconnaissance, fighter, and helicopter regiments.

Military Budget: In 1995, estimated at US$ 297 million.
Internal Security: System largely unchanged from Soviet period. National
Security Committee, successor to Committee for State Security (KGB),
performs intelligence and counterintelligence operations.  Ministry of
justice runs police (militia) and prison systems.

BY FAR THE LARGEST of the Central Asian republics of the former Soviet
Union, independent Kazakstan is the world's ninth-largest nation in
geographic area.  The population density of Kazakstan is among the lowest in
the world, partly because the country includes large areas of inhospitable
terrain.  Kazakstan is located deep within the Asian continent, with
coastline only on the landlocked Caspian Sea.  The proximity of unstable
countries such as Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and Azerbaijan to the west and
south further isolates Kazakstan.
Within the centrally controlled structure of the Soviet system, Kazakstan
played a vital industrial and agricultural role; the vast coal deposits
discovered in Kazakstani territory in the twentieth century promised to
replace the depleted fuel reserves in the European territories of the union.
The vast distances between the European industrial centers and coal fields
in Kazakstan presented a formidable problem that was only partially solved
by Soviet efforts to industrialize Central Asia.  That endeavor left the
newly independent Republic of Kazakstan a mixed legacy: a population that
includes nearly as many Russians as Kazaks; the presence of a dominating
class of Russian technocrats, who are necessary to economic progress but
ethnically unassimilated; and a well-developed energy industry, based mainly
on coal and oil, whose efficiency is inhibited by major infrastructure
deficiencies.
Kazakstan has followed the same general political pattern as the other four
Central Asian states.  After declaring independence from the Soviet
political structure completely dominated by Moscow and the Communist Party
of the Soviet Union (CPSU) until 1991, Kazakstan retained the basic
governmental structure and, in fact, most of the same leadership that had
occupied the top levels of power in 1990.  Nursultan Nazarbayev, first
secretary of the Communist Party of Kazakstan (CPK) beginning in 1989, was
elected president of the republic in 1991 and remained in undisputed power
five years later.  Nazarbayev took several effective steps to ensure his
position.  The constitution of 1993 made the prime minister and the Council
of Ministers responsible solely to the president, and in 1995 a new
constitution reinforced that relationship.  Furthermore, opposition parties
were severely limited by legal restrictions on their activities.  Within
that rigid framework, Nazarbayev gained substantial popularity by limiting
the economic shock of separation from the security of the Soviet Union and
by maintaining ethnic harmony, despite some discontent among Kazak
nationalists and the huge Russian minority.
In the mid-1990s, Russia remained the most important sponsor of Kazakstan in
economic and national security matters, but in such matters Nazarbayev also
backed the strengthening of the multinational structures of the Commonwealth
of Independent States (CIS-see Glossary), the loose confederation that
succeeded the Soviet Union.  As sensitive ethnic, national security, and
economic issues cooled relations with Russia in the 1990s, Nazarbayev
cultivated relations with China, the other Central Asian nations, and the
West. Nevertheless, Kazakstan remains principally dependent on Russia.
Kazakstan entered the 1990s with vast natural resources, an underdeveloped
industrial infrastructure, a stable but rigid political structure, a small
and ethnically divided population, and a commercially disadvantageous
geographic position.  In the mid-1990s, the balance of those qualities
remained quite uncertain.

Historical Setting - Early Tribal Movements - Forming the Modern Nation -
Russian Control - In the Soviet Union - Reform and Nationalist Conflict -
The Rise of Nazarbayev - Sovereignty and Independence - Physical
Environment - Topography and Drainage - Climate - Environmental Problems.



Historical Setting

Until the arrival of Russians in the eighteenth century, the history of
Kazakstan was determined by the movements, conflicts, and alliances of
Turkic and Mongol tribes.  The nomadic tribal society of what came to be the
Kazak people then suffered increasingly frequent incursions by the Russian
Empire, ultimately being included in that empire and the Soviet Union that
followed it.

Early Tribal Movements

Humans have inhabited present-day Kazakstan since the earliest Stone Age,
generally pursuing the nomadic pastoralism for which the region's climate
and terrain are best suited.  The earliest well-documented state in the
region was the Turkic Kaganate, which came into existence in the sixth
century A.D. The Qarluqs, a confederation of Turkic tribes, established a
state in what is now eastern Kazakstan in 766.  In the eighth and ninth
centuries, portions of southern Kazakstan were conquered by Arabs, who also
introduced Islam.  The Oghuz Turks controlled western Kazakstan from the
ninth through the eleventh centuries; the Kimak and Kipchak peoples, also of
Turkic origin, controlled the east at roughly the same time.  The large
central desert of Kazakstan is still called Dashti-Kipchak, or the Kipchak
Steppe.
In the late ninth century, the Qarluq state was destroyed by invaders who
established the large Qarakhanid state, which occupied a region known as
Transoxania, the area north and east of the Oxus River (the present-day
Syrdariya), extending into what is now China.  Beginning in the early
eleventh century, the Qarakhanids fought constantly among themselves and
with the Seljuk Turks to the south.  In the course of these conflicts, parts
of present-day Kazakstan shifted back and forth between the combatants.  The
Qarakhanids, who accepted Islam and the authority of the Arab Abbasid
caliphs of Baghdad during their dominant period, were conquered in the 1130s
by the Karakitai, a Turkic confederation from northern China.  In the
mid-twelfth century, an independent state of Khorazm (also seen as Khorezm
or Khwarazm) along the Oxus River broke away from the weakening Karakitai,
but the bulk of the Karakitai state lasted until the invasion of Chinggis
(Genghis) Khan in 1219-21.
After the Mongol capture of the Karakitai State, Kazakstan fell under the
control of a succession of rulers of the Mongolian Golden Horde, the western
branch of the Mongol Empire. (The horde, or zhuz, is the precursor of the
present-day clan, which is still an important element of Kazak society (see
Population and Society, this ch.) By the early fifteenth century, the ruling
structure had split into several large groups known as khanates, including
the Nogai Horde and the Uzbek Khanate.

Forming the Modern Nation

The present-day Kazaks became a recognizable group in the mid-fifteenth
century, when clan leaders broke away from Abul Khayr, leader of the Uzbeks,
to seek their own territory in the lands of Semirech'ye, between the Chu and
Talas rivers in present-day southeastern Kazakstan.  The first Kazak leader
was Khan Kasym (r. 1511-23), who united the Kazak tribes into one people.
In the sixteenth century, when the Nogai Horde and Siberian khanates broke
up, clans from each jurisdiction joined the Kazaks.  The Kazaks subsequently
separated into three new hordes: the Great Horde, which controlled
Semirech'ye and southern Kazakstan; the Middle Horde occupied north central
Kazakstan; and the Lesser Horde, which occupied western Kazakstan.
Russian traders and soldiers began to appear on the northwestern edge of
Kazak territory in the seventeenth century, when Cossacks established the
forts that later became the cities of Oral (Ural'sk) and Atyrau (Gur'yev).
Russians were able to seize Kazak territory because the khanates were
preoccupied by Kalmyk invaders of Mongol origin, who in the late sixteenth
century had begun to move into Kazak territory from the east.  Forced
westward in what they call their Great Retreat, the Kazaks were increasingly
caught between the Kalmyks and the Russians.  In 1730 Abul Khayr, one of the
khans of the Lesser Horde, sought Russian assistance.  Although Abul Khayr's
intent had been to form a temporary alliance against the stronger Kalmyks,
the Russians gained permanent control of the Lesser Horde as a result of his
decision.  The Russians conquered the Middle Horde by 1798, but the Great
Horde managed to remain independent until the 1820s, when the expanding
Quqon (Kokand) Khanate to the south forced the Great Horde khans to choose
Russian protection, which seemed to them the lesser of two evils.
The Kazaks began to resist Russian control almost as soon as it became
complete.  The first mass uprising was led by Khan Kene (Kenisary Kasimov)
of the Middle Horde, whose followers fought the Russians between 1836 and
1847.  Khan Kene is now considered a Kazak national hero.

Russian Control

In 1863 Russia elaborated a new imperial policy, announced in the Gorchakov
Circular, asserting the right to annex "troublesome" areas on the empire's
borders.  This policy led immediately to the Russian conquest of the rest of
Central Asia and the creation of two administrative districts, the Guberniya
(Governorate General) of Turkestan and the Steppe District.  Most of
present-day Kazakstan was in the Steppe District, and parts of present-day
southern Kazakstan were in the Governorate General.
In the early nineteenth century, the construction of Russian forts began to
have a destructive effect on the Kazak traditional economy by limiting the
once-vast territory over which the nomadic tribes could drive their herds
and flocks.  The final disruption of nomadism began in the 1890s, when many
Russian settlers were introduced into the fertile lands of northern and
eastern Kazakstan.  Between 1906 and 1912, more than a half million Russian
farms were started as part of the reforms of Russian minister of the
interior Petr Stolypin, shattering what remained of the traditional Kazak
way of life.
Starving and displaced, many Kazaks joined in the general Central Asian
resistance to conscription into the Russian imperial army, which the Tsar
ordered in July 1916 as part of the effort against Germany in World War 1.
In late 1916, Russian forces brutally suppressed the widespread armed
resistance to the taking of land and conscription of Central Asians.
Thousands of Kazaks were killed, and thousands of others fled to China and
Mongolia.

In the Soviet Union

In 1917 a group of secular nationalists called the Alash Orda (Horde of
Alash), named for a legendary founder of the Kazak people, attempted to set
up an independent national government.  This state lasted less than two
years (1918-20) before surrendering to the Bolshevik authorities, who then
sought to preserve Russian control under a new political system.  The Kyrgyz
Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was set up in 1920 and was renamed the
Kazak Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic in 1925 when Kazaks were
differentiated officially from the Kyrgyz. (The Russian Empire recognized
the ethnic difference between the two groups; it called them both "Kyrgyz"
to avoid confusion between the terms "Kazak" and "Cossack.")
In 1925 the autonomous republic's original capital, Orenburg, was
reincorporated into Russian territory.  Almaty (called Alma-Ata during the
Soviet period), a provincial city in the far southeast, became the new
capital.  In 1936 the territory was made a full Soviet republic.  From 1929
to 1934, during the period when Soviet leader Joseph V. Stalin was trying to
collectivize agriculture, Kazakstan endured repeated famines because
peasants had slaughtered their livestock in protest against Soviet
agricultural policy.  In that period, at least 1.5 million Kazaks and 80
percent of the republic's livestock died.  Thousands more Kazaks tried to
escape to China, although most starved in the attempt.
Many European Soviet citizens and much of Russia's industry were relocated
to Kazakstan during World War II, when Nazi armies threatened to capture all
the European industrial centers of the Soviet Union.  Groups of Crimean
Tatars, Germans, and Muslims from the North Caucasus region were deported to
Kazakstan during the war because it was feared that they would collaborate
with the enemy.  Many more non-Kazaks arrived in the years 1953-65, during
the so-called Virgin Lands campaign of Soviet premier Nikita S. Khrushchev
(in office 1956-64).  Under that program, huge tracts of Kazak grazing land
were put to the plow for the cultivation of wheat and other cereal grains.
Still more settlers came in the late 1960s and 1970s, when the government
paid handsome bonuses to workers participating in a program to relocate
Soviet industry close to the extensive coal, gas, and oil deposits of
Central Asia.  One consequence of the decimation of the nomadic Kazak
population and the in-migration of non-Kazaks was that by the 1970s
Kazakstan was the only Soviet republic in which the eponymous nationality
was a minority in its own republic (see Ethnic Groups, this ch.).

Reform and Nationalist Conflict

The 1980s brought glimmers of political independence, as well as conflict,
as the central government's hold progressively weakened.  In this period,
Kazakstan was ruled by a succession of three Communist Party officials; the
third of those men, Nursultan Nazarbayev, continued as president of the
Republic of Kazakstan when independence was proclaimed in 1991.
In December 1986, Soviet premier Mikhail S. Gorbachev (in office 1985-91)
forced the resignation of Dinmukhamed Kunayev, an ethnic Kazak who had led
the republic as first secretary of the CPK from 1959 to 1962, and again
starting in 1964.  During 1985, Kunayev had been under official attack for
cronyism, mismanagement, and malfeasance; thus, his departure was not a
surprise.  However, his replacement, Gennadiy Kolbin, an ethnic Russian with
no previous ties to Kazakstan, was unexpected.  Kolbin was a typical
administrator of the early Gorbachev era-enthusiastic about economic and
administrative reforms but hardly mindful of their consequences or
viability.
The announcement of Kolbin's appointment provoked spontaneous street
demonstrations by Kazaks, to which Soviet authorities responded with force.
Demonstrators, many of them students, rioted. Two days of disorder followed,
and at least 200 people died or were summarily executed soon after.  Some
accounts estimate casualties at more than 1,000.
Kunayev had been ousted largely because the economy was failing. Although
Kazakstan had the third-largest gross domestic product (GDP-see Glossary) in
the Soviet Union, trailing only Russia and Ukraine, by 1987 labor
productivity had decreased 12 percent, and per capita income had fallen by
24 percent of the national norm.  By that time, Kazakstan was under
producing steel at an annual rate of more than a million tons.  Agricultural
output also was dropping precipitously.
While Kolbin was promoting a series of unrealistic, Moscow directed
campaigns of social reform, expressions of Kazak nationalism were prompting
Gorbachev to address some of the non-Russians' complaints about cultural
self-determination.  One consequence was a new tolerance of bilingualism in
the non-Russian regions.  Kolbin made a strong commitment to promoting the
local language and in 1987 suggested that Kazak become the republic's
official language.  However, none of his initiatives went beyond empty
public-relations ploys.  In fact, the campaign in favor of bilingualism was
transformed into a campaign to improve the teaching of Russian.
While attempting to conciliate the Kazak population with promises, Kolbin
also conducted a wholesale purge of pro Kunayev members of the CPK,
replacing hundreds of republic level and local officials.  Although
officially "nationality-blind," Kolbin's policies seemed to be directed
mostly against Kazaks.  The downfall of Kolbin, however, was the continued
deterioration of the republic's economy during his tenure.  Agricultural
output had fallen so low by 1989 that Kolbin proposed to fulfill meat quotas
by slaughtering the millions of wild ducks that migrate through Kazakstan.
The republic's industrial sector had begun to recover slightly in 1989, but
credit for this progress was given largely to Nursultan Nazarbayev, an
ethnic Kazak who had become chairman of Kazakstan's Council of Ministers in
1984.
As nationalist protests became more violent across the Soviet Union in 1989,
Gorbachev began calling for the creation of popularly elected legislatures
and for the loosening of central political controls to make such elections
possible.  These measures made it increasingly plain in Kazakstan that
Kolbin and his associates soon would be replaced by a new generation of
Kazak leaders.
Rather than reinvigorate the Soviet people to meet national tasks,
Gorbachev's encouragement of voluntary local organizations only stimulated
the formation of informal political groups, many of which had overtly
nationalist agendas.  For the Kazaks, such agendas were presented forcefully
on national television at the first Congress of People's Deputies, which was
convened in Moscow in June 1989.  By that time, Kolbin was already scheduled
for rotation back to Moscow, but his departure probably was hastened by
riots in June 1989 in Novyy Uzen, an impoverished western Kazakstan town
that produced natural gas.  That rioting lasted nearly a week and claimed at
least four lives.

The Rise of Nazarbayev

In June 1989, Kolbin was replaced by Nazarbayev, a politician trained as a
metallurgist and engineer.  Nazarbayev had become involved in party work in
1979, when he became a protege of reform members of the CPSU.  Having taken
a major role in the attacks on Kunayev, Nazarbayev may have expected to
replace him in 1986.  When he was passed over, Nazarbayev submitted to
Kolbin's authority and used his party position to support Gorbachev's new
line, attributing economic stagnation in the Soviet republics to past
subordination of local interests to the mandates of Moscow.
Soon proving himself a skilled negotiator, Nazarbayev bridged the gap
between the republic's Kazaks and Russians at a time of increasing
nationalism while also managing to remain personally loyal to the Gorbachev
reform program.  Nazarbayev's firm support of the major Gorbachev positions
in turn helped him gain national and, after 1990, even international
visibility.  Many reports indicate that Gorbachev was planning to name
Nazarbayev as his deputy in the new union planned to succeed the Soviet
Union.
Even as he supported Gorbachev during the last two years of the Soviet
Union, Nazarbayev fought Moscow to increase his republic's income from the
resources it had long been supplying to the center. Although his appointment
as party first secretary had originated in Moscow, Nazarbayev realized that
for his administration to succeed under the new conditions of that time, he
had to cultivate a popular mandate within the republic.  This difficult task
meant finding a way to make Kazakstan more Kazak without alienating the
republic's large and economically significant Russian and European
populations. Following the example of other Soviet republics, Nazarbayev
sponsored legislation that made Kazak the official language and permitted
examination of the negative role of collectivization and other Soviet
policies on the republic's history.  Nazarbayev also permitted a widened
role for religion, which encouraged a resurgence of Islam.  In late 1989,
although he did not have the legal power to do so, Nazarbayev created an
independent religious administration for Kazakstan, severing relations with
the Muslim Board of Central Asia, the Soviet approved oversight body in
Tashkent.
In March 1990, elections were held for a new legislature in the republic's
first multiple-candidate contests since 1925.  The winners represented
overwhelmingly the republic's existing elite, who were loyal to Nazarbayev
and to the Communist Party apparatus.  The legislature also was
disproportionately ethnic Kazak: 54.2 percent to the Russians' 28.8 percent.

Sovereignty and Independence

In June 1990, Moscow declared formally the sovereignty of the central
government over Kazakstan, forcing Kazakstan to elaborate its own statement
of sovereignty.  This exchange greatly exacerbated tensions between the
republic's two largest ethnic groups, who at that point were numerically
about equal.  Beginning in mid-August 1990, Kazak and Russian nationalists
began to demonstrate frequently around Kazakstan's parliament building,
attempting to influence the final statement of sovereignty being developed
within.  The statement was adopted in October 1990.
In keeping with practices in other republics at that time, parliament named
Nazarbayev its chairman soon afterward converting chairmanship to presidency
of the republic.  In contrast to presidents of other republics, especially
those in the independence minded Baltic states, Nazarbayev remained strongly
committed to perpetuation of the Soviet Union throughout the spring and
summer of 1991.  He took this position largely because he considered the
republics too interdependent economically to survive separation.  At the
same time, however, Nazarbayev fought hard to secure republic control of
Kazakstan's enormous mineral wealth and industrial potential.  This
objective became particularly important after 1990, when it was learned that
Gorbachev had negotiated an agreement with Chevron, a United States oil
company, to develop Kazakstan's Tengiz oil fields. Gorbachev did not consult
Nazarbayev until talks were nearly complete.  At Nazarbayev's insistence,
Moscow surrendered control of the republic's mineral resources in June 1991.
Gorbachev's authority crumbled rapidly throughout 1991.  Nazarbayev,
however, continued to support him, persistently urging other republic
leaders to sign the revised Union Treaty, which Gorbachev had put forward in
a last attempt to hold the Soviet Union together.
Because of the coup attempted by Moscow hard-liners against the Gorbachev
government in August 1991, the Union Treaty never was signed.  Ambivalent
about the removal of Gorbachev, Nazarbayev did not condemn the coup attempt
until its second day.  However, once the incompetence of the plotters became
clear, Nazarbayev threw his weight solidly behind Gorbachev and continuation
of some form of union, largely because of his conviction that independence
would be economic suicide.
At the same time, however, Nazarbayev pragmatically began preparing his
republic for much greater freedom, if not for actual independence.  He
appointed professional economists and managers to high posts, and he began
to seek the advice of foreign development and business experts.  The
outlawing of the CPK, which followed the attempted coup, also permitted
Nazarbayev to take virtually complete control of the republic's economy,
more than 90 percent of which had been under the partial or complete
direction of the central Soviet government until late 1991.  Nazarbayev
solidified his position by winning an uncontested election for president in
December 1991.
A week after the election, Nazarbayev became the president of an independent
state when the leaders of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus signed documents
dissolving the Soviet Union.  Nazarbayev quickly convened a meeting of the
leaders of the five Central Asian states, thus effectively raising the
specter of a "Turkic" confederation of former republics as a counterweight
to the "Slavic" states (Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus) in whatever federation
might succeed the Soviet Union.  This move persuaded the three Slavic
presidents to include Kazakstan among the signatories to a recast document
of dissolution.  Thus, the capital of Kazakstan lent its name to the
Alma-Ata Declaration, in which eleven of the fifteen Soviet republics
announced the expansion of the thirteen-day-old CIS.  On December 16, 1991,
just five days before that declaration, Kazakstan had become the last of the
republics to proclaim its independence.

Physical Environment

With an area of about 2,717,300 square kilometers, Kazakstan is more than
twice the combined size of the other four Central Asian states.  The country
borders Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan to the south; Russia to the
north; Russia and the Caspian Sea to the west; and China's Xinjiang Uygur
Autonomous Region to the east.

Topography and Drainage

There is considerable topographical variation within Kazakstan.  The highest
elevation, Khan Tengri Mountain, on the Kyrgyz border in the Tian Shan
range, is 6,995 meters; the lowest point, at Karagiye, in the Caspian
Depression in the west, is 132 meters below sea level (see fig. 2).  Only
12.4 percent of Kazakstan is mountainous, with most of the mountains located
in the Altay and Tian Shan ranges of the east and northeast, although the
Ural Mountains extend southward from Russia into the northern part of
west-central Kazakstan.  Many of the peaks of the Altay and Tian Shan ranges
are snow covered year-round, and their run-off is the source for most of
Kazakstan's rivers and streams.
Except for the Tobol, Ishim, and Irtysh rivers (the Kazak names for which
are, respectively, Tobyl, Esil, and Ertis), portions of which flow through
Kazakstan, all of Kazakstan's rivers and streams are part of landlocked
systems.  They either flow into isolated bodies of water such as the Caspian
Sea or simply disappear into the steppes and deserts of central and southern
Kazakstan.  Many rivers, streams, and lakes are seasonal, evaporating in
summer.  The three largest bodies of water are Lake Balkhash, a partially
fresh, partially saline lake in the east, near Almaty, and the Caspian and
Aral seas, both of which lie partially within Kazakstan.
Some 9.4 percent of Kazakstan's land is mixed prairie and forest or treeless
prairie, primarily in the north or in the basin of the Ural River in the
west.  More than three-quarters of the country, including the entire west
and most of the south, is either semi-desert (33.2 percent) or desert (44
percent).  The terrain in these regions is bare, eroded, broken uplands,
with sand dunes in the Qizilqum (red sand; in the Russian form, Kyzylkum)
and Moyunqum (in the Russian form, Moin Kum) deserts, which occupy
south-central Kazakstan.  Most of the country lies at between 200 and 300
meters above sea level, but Kazakstan's Caspian shore includes some of the
lowest elevations on Earth.

Climate

Because Kazakstan is so far from the oceans, the climate is sharply
continental and very dry.  Precipitation in the mountains of the east
averages as much as 600 millimeters per year, mostly in the form of snow,
but most of the republic receives only 100 to 200 millimeters per year.
Precipitation totals less than 100 millimeters in the south-central regions
around Qyzylorda.  A lack of precipitation makes Kazakstan a sunny republic;
the north averages 120 clear days a year, and the south averages 260.  The
lack of moderating bodies of water also means that temperatures can vary
widely.  Average winter temperatures are -3'C in the north and 18'C in the
south; summer temperatures average 19'C in the north and 28'-30'C in the
south.  Within locations differences are extreme, and temperature can change
very suddenly.  The winter air temperature can fall to -50'C, and in summer
the ground temperature can reach as high as 70'C.

Environmental Problems

The environment of Kazakstan has been badly damaged by human activity.  Most
of the water in Kazakstan is polluted by industrial effluents, pesticide and
fertilizer residue, and, in some places, radioactivity.  The most visible
damage has been to the Aral Sea, which as recently as the 1970s was larger
than any of the Great Lakes of North America save Lake Superior.  The sea
began to shrink rapidly when sharply increased irrigation and other demands
on the only significant tributaries, the Syrdariya and the Amu Darya (the
latter reaching the Aral from neighboring Uzbekistan), all but eliminated
inflow.  By 1993 the Aral Sea had lost an estimated 60 percent of its
volume, in the process breaking into three unconnected segments.  Increasing
salinity and reduced habitat have killed the Aral Sea's fish, hence
destroying its once-active fishing industry, and the receding shoreline has
left the former port of Aral'sk more than sixty kilometers from the water's
edge. The depletion of this large body of water has increased temperature
variations in the region, which in turn have had an impact on agriculture.
A much greater agricultural impact, however, has come from the salt- and
pesticide-laden soil that the wind is known to carry as far away as the
Himalayan Mountains and the Pacific Ocean.  Deposition of this heavily
saline soil on nearby fields effectively sterilizes them.  Evidence suggests
that salts, pesticides, and residues of chemical fertilizers are also
adversely affecting human life around the former Aral Sea; infant mortality
in the region approaches 10 percent, compared with the 1991 national rate of
2.7 percent.
By contrast, the water level of the Caspian Sea has been rising steadily
since 1978 for reasons that scientists have not been able to explain fully.
At the northern end of the sea, more than a million hectares of land in
Atyrau Province have been flooded.  Experts estimate that if current rates
of increase persist, the coastal city of Atyrau, eighty-eight other
population centers, and many of Kazakstan's Caspian oil fields could be
submerged by 2020.
Wind erosion has also had an impact in the northern and central parts of the
republic because of the introduction of wide-scale dry-land wheat farming.
In the 1950s and 1960s, much soil was lost when vast tracts of Kazakstan's
prairies were plowed under as part of Khrushchev's Virgin Lands agricultural
project.  By the mid-1990s, an estimated 60 percent of the republic's
pastureland was in various stages of Desertification.
Industrial pollution is a bigger concern in Kazakstan's manufacturing
cities, where aging factories pump huge quantities of unfiltered pollutants
into the air and groundwater.  The capital, Almaty, is particularly
threatened, in part because of the post-independence boom in private
automobile ownership.
The gravest environmental threat to Kazakstan comes from radiation,
especially in the Semey (Semipalatinsk) region of the northeast, where the
Soviet Union tested almost 500 nuclear weapons, 116 of them above ground.
Often, such tests were conducted without evacuating or even alerting the
local population.  Although nuclear testing was halted in 1990, radiation
poisoning, birth defects, severe anemia, and leukemia are very common in the
area (see Health Conditions, this ch.).
With some conspicuous exceptions, lip service has been the primary official
response to Kazakstan's ecological problems.  In February 1989, opposition
to Soviet nuclear testing and its ill effects in Kazakstan led to the
creation of one of the republic's largest and most influential grass-roots
movements, Nevada-Semipalatinsk, which was founded by Kazak poet and public
figure Olzhas Suleymenov.  In the first week of the movement's existence,
Nevada-Semipalatinsk gathered more than 2 million signatures from
Kazakstanis of all ethnic groups on a petition to Gorbachev demanding the
end of nuclear testing in Kazakstan.  After a year of demonstrations and
protests, the test ban took effect in 1990. It remained in force in 1996,
although in 1995 at least one unexploded device reportedly was still in
position near Semey.
Once its major ecological objective was achieved, Nevada Semipalatinsk made
various attempts to broaden into a more general political movement; it has
not pursued a broad ecological or "green" agenda.  A very small green party,
Tagibat, made common cause with the political opposition in the parliament
of 1994.
The government has established a Ministry of Ecology and Bioresources, with
a separate administration for radioecology, but the ministry's programs are
under funded and given low priority.  In 1994 only 23 percent of budgeted
funds were actually allotted to environmental programs.  Many official
meetings and conferences are held (more than 300 have been devoted to the
problem of the Aral Sea alone), but few practical programs have gone into
operation.  In 1994 the World Bank (see Glossary), the International
Monetary Fund (IMF see Glossary), and the United States Environmental
Protection Agency agreed to give Kazakstan US$ 62 million to help the
country overcome ecological problems.