Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Kazakh SSR was formally created on the 5th of December 1936, when the Kazakh Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was elevated to the status of a full union-level republic within the USSR. The territory had existed in earlier forms since 1920, first as the Kirghiz ASSR and then as the Kazakh ASSR from 1925 onward.
Estimates of deaths in the Kazakh famine of 1930-1933 range from one to two million people. Official census data show the Kazakh population dropped from 3.6 million in 1926 to 2.3 million in 1939, and different estimates suggest up to 40% of ethnic Kazakhs either died of starvation or fled the territory.
Jeltoqsan was a four-day uprising from the 16th to the 19th of December 1986, sparked by the dismissal of the popular Kazakh Communist Party leader Dinmukhamed Kunaev and his replacement by Gennady Kolbin, an ethnic Russian. Student demonstrators rioted in Brezhnev Square in Alma-Ata, and between 168 and 200 civilians were killed. The unrest spread to Shymkent, Pavlodar, Karaganda, and Taldykorgan.
Baikonur Cosmodrome, built in the 1950s on Kazakh soil, served as the primary launch site for the Soviet space program. It was the site of launches involving Sputnik 1, Yuri Gagarin's historic spaceflight, Valentina Tereshkova's mission, and the mission of Toktar Aubakirov.
The Republic of Kazakhstan declared independence on the 16th of December 1991, making it the last Soviet republic to secede. The Kazakh SSR had been renamed the Republic of Kazakhstan on the 10th of December 1991, and six days later its capital hosted the Alma-Ata Protocol, which dissolved the Soviet Union and established the Commonwealth of Independent States.
Nursultan Nazarbayev was elected president of the Kazakh SSR on the 25th of March 1990 after serving as chairman of the Supreme Soviet. He condemned the failed Moscow coup of August 1991 and led Kazakhstan to independence on the 16th of December 1991. He remained president of the independent Republic of Kazakhstan until 2019.