Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic

• 1. Introduction

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  The Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic declared independence on the 16th of December 1991 as the very last republic to secede from the Soviet Union. That single fact tells you something about Kazakhstan's place in the Soviet order. For fifty-five years, from its formal elevation on the 5th of December 1936 until those final days of 1991, it was the second-largest republic in the entire USSR, covering more than 2.7 million square kilometres of steppe, mountain, and desert.

  It sat at a remarkable crossroads. Its western and northern edges pressed against Russia. Its southern borders ran alongside Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. To the east, it shared an international boundary with the People's Republic of China. This geography made it a place that could not be ignored by Moscow, and Moscow did not ignore it.

  What drove the transformation of a land of nomadic herders into a nuclear test site and space launch facility? Who shaped the republic's character, and at what cost to its people? The answers stretch across famines that killed between one and two million people, deportations that reshaped the ethnic map of Central Asia, and a political career that would outlast the Soviet Union itself.

• 2. From Kirghiz ASSR to Kazakh SSR

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  On the 26th of August 1920, the territory that would become the Kazakh SSR was first organised as the Kirghiz Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, a part of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. The name itself points to the confusion of the early Soviet era over the distinct identities of Turkic peoples. By the 15th to the 19th of April 1925, the republic was renamed the Kazak ASSR, later standardised as the Kazakh ASSR, before being elevated to full union-republic status on the 5th of December 1936.

  The Kazakh people themselves were a Turkic ethnic group native to Central Asia. Historically they had been nomads who built a powerful khanate in the region before the Russian Empire defeated and absorbed them. In the census of 1897, the earliest taken in the region, Kazakhs constituted 81.7% of the population within the territory of contemporary Kazakhstan, numbering roughly 3.3 million people.

  The earliest Soviet years brought a sharp reversal of Russian colonial settlement. The Ninth Soviet Congress of Turkestan, meeting in September 1920, called for the deportation of illegal settler colonists from the northern parts of the country. Land reform began in 1921 and continued until 1927, targeting Russian settlers, Ukrainians, and Cossacks. Between 1920 and 1922, Kazakhstan's Russian population dropped from approximately 2.7 to 2.2 million. A further 15,000 Cossack settler colonists were deported between 1920 and 1921.

  On the 19th of February 1925, Filipp Goloshchyokin was appointed First Secretary of the Communist Party of the newly formed Kazakh Autonomous Socialist Soviet Republic. He would run the territory from 1925 to 1933, reportedly with virtually no interference from Moscow. One of his tangible achievements was his part in constructing the Turkestan-Siberia railway, designed to open up Kazakhstan's considerable mineral wealth.

• 3. Famine and the Cost of Collectivisation

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  Joseph Stalin's order for the forced collectivisation of agriculture across the Soviet Union reached Kazakhstan with devastating results. Goloshchyokin directed the republic's largely nomadic population to abandon their way of life and settle in collectivised farms. Combined with the disastrous agricultural and scientific policies associated with Trofim Lysenko, this produced the Kazakh famine of 1930-1933, which killed between one and two million people.

  Official census data make the scale visible in numbers. The Kazakh population stood at 3.6 million in 1926. By 1939 it had contracted to 2.3 million. Different estimates suggest that up to 40% of ethnic Kazakhs either died of starvation or fled the territory during the famine years. Historian Kim points to the labour shortage that resulted, noting that approximately 1.7 million people perished while a further million fled the republic.

  Stalin used that labour shortage as a rationale for a programme of forced deportations of other ethnicities into Kazakhstan. In 1937, the first major deportation of an ethnic group in the Soviet Union began, when the Korean population was removed from the Russian Far East. Over 170,000 people were forcibly relocated to the Kazakh and Uzbek SSRs. Kazakhstani Korean scholar German Kim suggests Stalin's motives may have included suppressing minorities seen as threats and using border populations as political leverage with China and Japan.

  The forced deportations continued beyond 1937, eventually bringing Soviet Koreans, Volga Germans, and various other minorities to the Kazakh SSR. That programme did not end until Stalin's death in 1953. The Great Purge compounded all of this, affecting many Kazakh families and sometimes decimating entire lineages. Over one million political prisoners from across the Soviet Union passed through the Karaganda Corrective Labor Camp between 1931 and 1959, with an unknown number of deaths recorded there.

  The memory of the famine has not faded in independent Kazakhstan. National remembrance events and solidarity campaigns have gained momentum in the years since the republic gained independence.

• 4. Industry, Space, and the Virgin Lands

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  Before Soviet rule, there was barely any large-scale industry in the territory, and most residents lived as steppe nomads or pastoralists. Stalin's industrialisation drives changed that rapidly, if chaotically. Major investments flowed into Kazakhstan during the 1930s and 1940s to build transportation networks and manufacturing plants for metallurgy, oil and gas, chemical processing, defense equipment, and wheat processing.

  When the Second World War began, the strategic shift of key industries away from the Eastern Front brought large factories to Kazakhstan. Protecting these industrial capacities would prove vital to the Soviet war effort. Three Kazakh soldiers, Bauyrzhan Momyshuly, Manshuk Mametova, and Sadyk Abdujabbarov, served with such distinction in the Great Patriotic War that they became household names.

  By 1949, the Turkestan-Siberia Railway was complete, linking Kazakhstan to Russia by rail. The Semipalatinsk Nuclear Test Site was also built on Kazakh soil, as was the Baikonur Cosmodrome, constructed during the 1950s. Baikonur served as the launch site for Sputnik 1, for Yuri Gagarin's historic flight, for Valentina Tereshkova's mission, and for the mission of Toktar Aubakirov.

  Nikita Khrushchev launched the Virgin Lands Campaign in 1953, aiming to develop previously uncultivated land in the republic and lift Soviet agricultural output. Soviet citizens were urged to settle these new territories. The campaign was eventually abandoned in the 1960s after it failed to deliver as promised, but Kazakhstan did become a meaningful regional producer of wheat, beet, and cotton.

  By the 1960s, nearly 97% of the country's population was literate, with minimal difference in rates between men and women. From the 1960s onward, manufacturing units for chemicals, defense equipment, and alloys spread across the country. The republic had become the most economically advanced of the Central Asian Soviet republics, with a significant foundation in mineral extraction and agriculture.

• 5. Kunaev and the Republic's Best Days

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  Dinmukhamed Kunaev's 22-year tenure as the leading figure of the Kazakh SSR is widely regarded as the period when the republic reached its peak. Under his leadership, the territory saw advances in economic prosperity, energy production, and industrialisation. He cultivated a strong working relationship with Soviet General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev, which enabled him to rise to prominence within the Soviet Politburo.

  Kunaev pursued growth-oriented policies that improved living standards, and he remained deeply popular among ordinary Kazakhs. He fostered a degree of political autonomy from Moscow and promoted indigenous culture alongside the growth of industry. Under his stewardship, the Kazakh SSR became an efficient exporter of raw and processed goods, eventually rising to become the third-largest economy in the USSR.

  The ethnic composition of the republic had been shifting dramatically throughout the Soviet period. By 1959, census data showed that Kazakhs represented only 30% of the population, while Russians had risen to 42.7%. The Kazakh SSR had the highest concentration of Germans in the entire country. Kunaev navigated these demographic pressures, and Kazakhstan was often portrayed in official Soviet imagery as a model of multi-ethnic cooperation.

  During these decades, the Kazakh language declined as immigration from Russia and other republics grew. Russian became the dominant lingua franca. Kunaev's promotion of indigenous culture offered a partial counterweight, and his era is recalled with nostalgia by many people in modern Kazakhstan.

• 6. Jeltoqsan and the Road to Independence

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  Mikhail Gorbachev's 1986 decision to dismiss Dinmukhamed Kunaev as First Secretary of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan triggered one of the most significant uprisings in late Soviet history. Kunaev was replaced by Gennady Kolbin, an ethnic Russian with no ties to Kazakhstan. Between the 16th and the 19th of December 1986, student demonstrators filled Brezhnev Square in the capital Alma-Ata and rioted for four days. The events became known as Jeltoqsan. Between 168 and 200 civilians were killed. The unrest spread to other cities, including Shymkent, Pavlodar, Karaganda, and Taldykorgan.

  On the 25th of March 1990, Kazakhstan held its first elections. Nursultan Nazarbayev, chairman of the Supreme Soviet, was elected as the republic's first president. On the 25th of October 1990, the Supreme Soviet declared the republic's sovereignty. The republic then participated in a referendum on preserving the Soviet Union in a reformed structure, with 94.1% of participants voting in favour. That path closed when hardline communists in Moscow seized control of the government in August 1991. Nazarbayev condemned the failed coup and turned toward independence.

  The Kazakh SSR was renamed the Republic of Kazakhstan on the 10th of December 1991. Independence was declared on the 16th of December, the fifth anniversary of Jeltoqsan, making Kazakhstan the last Soviet constituency to secede. Six days later, the republic's capital hosted the Alma-Ata Protocol on the 21st of December 1991, which dissolved the Soviet Union and created the Commonwealth of Independent States. Kazakhstan joined immediately. The Soviet Union officially ceased to exist as a sovereign state on the 26th of December 1991. On the 2nd of March 1992, the Republic of Kazakhstan was admitted to the United Nations. On the 28th of January 1993, Kazakhstan adopted its new constitution. Nazarbayev remained in the presidency until 2019.