History

Most of the information in this section is quoted from the excellent book and travel guide 'Kazakhstan - Nomadic Routes from Caspian to Altai' by Dagmar Schreiber (Odyssee, 2008).

The state of Kazakhstan only exists since 1991, when the former Kazakh Republic seperated from Russia. In the many centuries before the territory of Kazakhstan had seen a lot of struggles between a wide variety of clans and people, often with inviting foreign interference.

The first traces of human presence on the territory of present-day Kazakhstan (on several places) date back 5000 years ago. These first inhabitants were farmers. not nomads. Historians have always assumed that the first signs of nomadism in Kazakhstan, in the northeast of the country, were related to the Androvo Culture (ca. 2000-1500 BC).|

However, in March 2009 new research was published indicating that more than 1000 years earlier (3500 BC) in the steppes of North Kazakhstan already horses had been domesticated! By people that rode on them and drank their milk. 

Also in the Karasuk Culture (ca. 1500-800 BC) nomad people and farmers lived together in a symbiosis, supplementing each other both materially and spiritually. From the 8th century BC however the Kazakhs lands came more and more under control of a wave of Indo-European speaking immigrants, the Sak. 

Little is known about them. Probably they were a clan or a branch of the Scythians, a people who are thought ultimately to have migrated from the inner Asian regions north of China, and settled from the coasts of the Black Sea to as far as southern Siberia. 
On many places throughout Kazakhstan Sak burials ('kurgans') have been found and excavated. Most famously in 1969 a kurgan at the town of Issyk (nearby Almaty) that  contained the skeleton of a Sak warrior, called '"'the Golden Man".

The history of the region at this time is both onscure and somewhat confusing. However, the evolution of the Silk Road brought international trade and 'clarity'. This famous network of international trading routes connecting East ans West existed between 300 BC and 1600 AD.

As the Silk Road evolved, the movements of tribes and peoples across the steppe continued. Around 300-200 BC, the Sak were gradually overrun from the east by the Usun, another eastern people. Until the start of the 13th century the Kazakh lands were dominated by nomadic Turkish people coming from Mongolia and the Altai. In the year 960 AD the ruler of that time accepted Islam, though there was no wholesale conversion of the general population at that time.  

In 1207 Genghis Khan started the build-up of an empire that was to stretch from Peking to the Danube. From 1218 he attacked Semirechye (the land between the Tien Shan Mountains and Lake Balgash, approx. present-day Almaty province) and in 1220 he moved on to Otrar and the rest of the cities of Central Asia.

Although the agriculture and the infrastructure of sedentary society in the Kazakh lands had been devastated by Genghis's invasion, with the establishment of Pax Mongolica, the trade routes across the continent were restored, and caravans could once again move freely anfd safely again. Tolerance prevailed, cultures came together abd lived in harmony.

While alive Genghis Khan, who passed away in 1227 (his grave has yet to be found...) had divided his entire territorium and Kazakhstan was split into three parts.
A period unrests, infighting and divisions were soon the order of the day, until Tamerlane, a warlord and military genius of Turkic-Mongol descent who married into Genghis Khan's family, in 1360 managed to dominate the whole region one again. Under his reign, from the capital of Samarkand in present-day Uzbekistan, the second Mongel Empire stretching from Moscow to India became a reality.

Tamerlane died in Otrar in 1405, and only from the 15th and 16th century the Kazakh nation as such, with a statehood of its own, did take shape. At first three major tribal confederations (Hordes, or Zhuzy in Kazakh) emerged; the Senior Horde in the south, the Middle Horde in the center and north and the Junior Horde in the west. The origins of this important division are still unknown. (Even today every Kazakh relates to one of these Hordes and there's still political infigthing between the groups!)

From the middle of the 15th century these Hordes are called 'Kazakhs', which means "free" or "independent" in Turkish, and the first Kazakh Khanate is established. The Khanate manages to expand to approximately the present-day borders of Kazakhstan. After some infighting a peace treaty was signed with Uzbek groups in 1598 and a period of prosperity of 100 years follows.

But prosperity leads to envy, and as a logical result the sultans' claims to power were to increase within the Khanate, as well as the struggle for influence between the three Hordes. The Khanate weakened and in the beginning of the 18th century attacked by the Zhungars, a Lamaist-Buddhist tribe in western China. The Khanate was forced to seek protection from Russia, its powerful neighbour to the north, though no actual intervention was necessary at that moment.

The "Years of Great Distress", as these times of continuing and increasing Zhungar raids are remembered, resulted in a temporary consolidation of forces between the Hordes. But not for long. In 1731 the tribal elders of the Junior Horde had so little confidence in their own defence forces that they concluded an assistance pact with Russia and placed themselves under Russian sovereignty.

In the course of the next 150 years the entire Kazakh territory became part of the Russian Empire. An initially peaceful process of colonisation subsequently took place. However, more than 300 uprisings during this colonisation prove that not everyone approved the integration with Russia. In 1868 Russia defeated the Khan of Kokand, conquering all of present-day Kazakhstan's territory.
Numerous Russian farmers were settled in the borderlands and nomads' pasturelands were confiscated. A harsh tax system was introduced and in this manner teh livestock-breeding Kazakhs were gradually deprived of their livelihoods. Masses of people were hit by incredible poverty. An imperial decree on the conscription of the Kazakhs into war-imposed labour forces appeared to be the last straw: Under the banner of Islam, the "Great Revolt", initially a unted front of nomads, farmers, officials and traders in Central Asia, broke out. It was harshly surpressed, but with the October Revolution of 1917 erupted once more.

The downfall of Tsarism deprived the liberation movement of its adversary, but revived nationalist thinking. Hope for an independent development of a democratic society took shape, for instance, in the Alash Party. In October 1917 in Orenburg (in present-day Russia) the first All-Kazakh Congress took place, and first steps in that direction were taken. Orenburg also became the first Kazakh capital.

Following the turmoil of the Civil War, which also took place in Central Asia, an autonomous republic within the Russian Federation, together with Kyrgystan, was proclaimed in 1920. Until 1936, when Stalin pursued his nationalities policy and through arbitrarily designed borderlines put the gunpowder in place for later decades...
The Stalinist period inflicted uncurable wounds on the Kazakhs. Under the pretence of liberalization from the yoke of backwardness, Kazakhs were prohibited from following a unique culture and way of life adapted to the conditions. In the 20s and 30s of that last century Stalin forced collectivisation of the Kazakh nomads, causing widespread starvation and emigration. Two million Kazakhs lost their lives and one million moved abroad, in total half of the entire population... This period and these events are called the "Kazakhstan Tragedy".

In the next years, before and during WWII, numerous labor camps were erected in Kazakhstan and entire peoples were deported to the vast land of the Kazakh steppe. Volga Germans, Koreans, Chechens, Crimean Tatars and other ethnic groups suspected by Stalin of collaboration with the enemy. They could all count on the generosity of the Kazakhs, who saved the lives of ten thousands of them.

After WWII, still under Soviet reign, Kazakhstan continued to experience excesses and experiments of the Moscow rulers. In 1954, now with Nikita Khruschev at the helm, the cultivation of the "virgin lands" was introduced and therewith an influx (mostly voluntary this time) of youg people and adventurers from other republics began. In Kazakhstan 255,000 square kilometres of steppe came under the plough and was made for the cultivation of cereals. The ecological and social results of these enormous changes to the country are still felt today. 

In 1949 an area of steppe near Semipalatinsk in the northeast was chosen as a testing ground for atomic bombs. A series of huge test explosions were detonated above ground until 1963, and continued underground thereafter, without any respect for human life in the region. By the late 1980s the human rights movement Nevada-Semipalatinsk protested against and lobbied for cessation of nucleair testing, and fianlly ensured closure of the testing ground in 1991.

Despite these manmade disasters, the Soviet republic of Kazakhstan made incredible progress in fields like heavy industry, the emergence of cultural and scientific institutions and the absorbtion of two million refugees - the human achievement of the Kazakh people should not be underestimated.

Just like in the other Soviet republics, perestroika also reached Kazakhstan in the mid-eighties. A first sign was a ethnic Kazakh uprising in December 1986 for more national influence in the administration of the republic. On December 16th protesers were met with gunfire and an unknown number of them was killed.
On December 16th 1991 (a consciously chosen date) Kazakh Leader Nursultan Nazarbaev declared the Independence of the Republic of Kazakhstan, the last of all Soveit republics to do so.

Despite all initial difficulties Kazakhstan under Nazarbaev has succeeded in developing its economy and reaching a level of prosperity that is unmatched in Central Asia. Not in the least because the large finds of oil and the developing of its reserves of iron, uranium and other resources, in combinatiin with excellent governmental policies.
And even more impressive, despite its potentially dangerous mix of nationalities (divided almost 50-50 in Muslims and Christians), Nazarbaev and the people have managed to keep peace and harmony between the peoples.