THE HISTORY OF KAZAKHSTAN
Modern Kazakhstan is built on 3000 years of extraordinary history. Kazakhstan has been inhabited since the Stone Age, generally as nomads practising pastoralism, for which the region's climate and terrain are best suited. Historians believe the vast steppes of Kazakhstan were where humans first domesticated the horse.
The country has experienced epic moments and has been influenced by such legends as Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan. For centuries, the Silk Road provided a route through Kazakhstan for international traders and merchants carrying exotic merchandise. All this has contributed to the richness of Kazakh culture and its capacity to adapt and develop.
Kazakhstan has found itself at the crossroads of the world’s most ancient civilizations and trade routes. It has been a land of social, economic, and cultural exchange between East and West, North and South, and major Eurasian nations. At different stages of its history, various states emerged, developed, and contributed to the land that became today’s Kazakhstan.
A thousand years before the Christian era, the nomadic Skythian-Saka civilization prospered on the Central Asian steppes. Many of their cultural monuments have survived, including impressive tools and everyday items made in gold and bronze, extracted from ancient burial mounds. Another worthy extraction, the royal tomb of the Golden Warrior Prince of the Saka civilization, was found in the ancient town of Issyk and is famous for its integrity, beauty, elegance, and craftsmanship. This cultural treasure’s motifs have become the basis of the modern Monument of Independence, erected in Almaty in the early 1990s.
In later centuries, the steppes were home to a powerful state formed by the Huns, whose empire greatly influenced the geopolitical map of that time. In fact, the Great Roman Empire was eventually destroyed by the blows of Attila the Hun’s daring warriors.
Later, the Huns were replaced by Turkic tribes who founded several large states known as kaganats, stretching from the Yellow Sea in the East to the Black Sea in the West. These states were distinguished by a progressive culture, not only based on a nomadic economy but also on an oasis urban culture with rich trade and handicraft traditions. During this time, cities and caravanserais (roadside inns) were founded in the oases of Central Asia, the territory of South Kazakhstan, and Central Asia, and stood along the famous trade route known as the Great Silk Road which connected Europe and China. The route along the Syr Dariya River to the Aral Sea and the South Urals, as well the Sable Road from South Western regions of Siberia through Central Kazakhstan and the Altai region, were also very important. It was through trade on the Sable Road that the Middle East and Europe were supplied with expensive furs. Major cities and trade centers founded on these routes included: Otrar (Farab), Taraz, Kulan, Yassy (Turkestan), Sauran, Balasagun.
The Great Silk Road not only stimulated the development of trade, it also became a conduit for new scientific and cultural ideas. For example, the great philosopher Al-Farabi (870-950) was largely influenced by the culture of the trade routes. Born in the Farab district, Al-Farabi was dubbed “the Second Teacher,” after Aristotle, for his profound findings in the following fields: Philosophy, Astronomy, Musical theory, Mathematics.
Part of the cultural legacy of the 11th century is the elegant urban architecture. Apart from this, the most ancient nomads of the region invented the yurt, a dome-shaped portable house made from wood and felt, ideal for an itinerant life.
Years later, in 1221, Mongolian tribes of Genghis Khan conquered Central Asia and added their own culture and values to the increasingly complex society of the region. Following the Mongolian invasion administrative districts were established under the Mongol Empire, which eventually became the territories of the Kazakh Khanate (Ak Horde). The major medieval cities of Aulie-Ata and Turkestan were founded along the northern route of the Great Silk Road during this period.
By the second half of the 15th century a process of consolidation had begun among the peoples of the Central Asian steppe. Derived from the various ethnic and cultural identities, this process was drawn together by a common world view and lifestyle. The first Kazakh khanates emerged at this time, and by the first half of the 16th century, the formation of a single Kazakh nation was completed. The word “Kazakh” in the old Turkic language meant “free” or “independent,” perfectly defining the people who had been yearning for their own independent state. Traditional nomadic life on the vast steppe and semi-desert lands was characterized by a constant search for new pasture to support the livestock-based economy. The Kazakhs emerged from a mixture of tribes living in the region in about the fifteenth century and by the middle of the sixteenth century had developed a common language, culture, and economy.
In the early 1600s, the Kazakh Khanate separated into the Great, Middle and Small Hordes-confederations based on extended family networks. Political disunion, competition among the hordes, and a lack of an internal market weakened the Kazakh Khanate. The beginning of the eighteenth century marked the zenith of the Kazakh Khanate. The area was a bone of contention between the Kazak emirs and the Persian Kings for many centuries.
In the 17th and 18th centuries, the nomadic Jungar tribes, directed by the Chinese Bogdykhans, started a large scale war against the Kazakh khanate. Fortunately, the people escaped total capture and physical annihilation, due to a variety of factors:
The courage of the “batyrs” (knights)
The decisiveness of the Kazakh leader, Ablai Khan
The diplomatic skills of the Kazakh ‘biys’ (sages), Tole Bi, Kazdausty Kazybek Bi, and Aiteke Bi
The self sacrifice of the people.
In the nineteenth century, the Russian Empire began to expand, and spread into Central Asia. The Russian Empire introduced a system of administration and built military garrisons and barracks in its effort to establish a presence in Central Asia in the so-called "Great Game" between it and the United Kingdom. Russia enforced the Russian language in all schools and governmental organizations. Russian efforts to impose its system aroused the resentment of the Kazakh people, and by the 1860s, most Kazakhs resisted Russia's annexation largely because of the disruption it wrought upon the traditional nomadic lifestyle and livestock-based economy. The "Great Game" period is generally regarded as running from approximately 1813 to the Anglo-Russian Convention of 1907. Following the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 a second less intensive phase followed. The tsars effectively ruled over most of the territory belonging to what is now the Republic of Kazakhstan.
The Kazakhs were never able to fully recover from the war or establish themselves as a powerful military force; therefore, they sought the protection of the Russian Empire and lost sovereignty in 1871. For a time, the fate of Kazakhstan was tied to that of the Russian State and its peoples, as well as the European model of social development.
The Kazakh national movement, which began in the late 1800s, sought to preserve the Kazakh language and identity. From the 1890s onwards ever-larger numbers of Slavic settlers began colonising the territory of present-day Kazakhstan, in particular the province of Semirechie. The number of settlers rose still further once the Trans-Aral Railway from Orenburg to Tashkent Central Asian Revolt, occurring in 1916. was completed in 1906, and the movement was overseen and encouraged by a specially created Migration Department in St. Petersburg.
The competition for land and water which ensued between the Kazakhs and the incomers caused great resentment against colonial rule during the final years of tsarist Russia, with the most serious uprising.
After the 1917 revolution, Soviet power was established in Kazakhstan. Soviet repression of the traditional elite, along with forced collectivization in late 1920s–1930s, brought mass hunger and led to unrest. Between 1926 and 1939, the Kazakh population declined by 22%, due to starvation, violence and mass emigration. During the 1930s, many renowned Kazakh writers, thinkers, poets, politicians and historians were slaughtered on Stalin‘s orders, both as part of the repression and as a methodical pattern of suppressing Kazakh identity and culture. Soviet rule took hold, and a Communist apparatus steadily worked to fully integrate Kazakhstan into the Soviet system. In 1936 Kazakhstan became a Soviet republic.
Although there was a brief period of autonomy during the tumultuous period following the collapse of the Russian Empire, the Kazakhs eventually succumbed to Soviet rule. In 1920, the area of present-day Kazakhstan became an autonomous republic within Russia and, in 1936, a Soviet republic.
Soviet repression of the traditional elite, along with forced collectivization in late 1920s-1930s, brought mass hunger and led to unrest. Soviet rule, however, took hold, and a communist apparatus steadily worked to fully integrate Kazakhstan into the Soviet system. Kazakhstan experienced population inflows of thousands exiled from other parts of the Soviet Union during the 1930s and later became home for hundreds of thousands evacuated from the Second World War Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic World War II effort.
The period of World War II marked an increase in industrialization and increased mineral extraction in support of the war effort. At the time of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin's death, however, Kazakhstan still had an overwhelmingly agricultural-based economy. In 1953, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev initiated the ambitious "Virgin Lands" program to turn the traditional pasturelands of Kazakhstan into a major grain-producing region for the Soviet Union.
In 1947, two years after the end of the war, the Semipalatinsk Test Site, the USSR's main nuclear weapon test site was founded near the city of Semey. battlefields. Some of these evacuees were deported to Siberia or Kazakhstan merely due to their ethnic heritage or beliefs, and were in many cases interned in some of the biggest Soviet labor camps. The (SSR) contributed five national divisions to the Soviet Union's.
The Virgin Lands policy, along with later modernizations under Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, sped up the development of the agricultural sector, which to this day remains the source of livelihood for a large percentage of Kazakhstan's population.
Growing tensions within Soviet society led to a demand for political and economic reforms, which came to a head in the 1980s. In December 1986, mass demonstrations by young ethnic Kazakhs took place in Almaty to protest the methods of the communist system. Soviet troops suppressed the unrest, and dozens of demonstrators were jailed or killed.
In the waning days of Soviet rule, discontent continued to grow and find expression under Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's policy of glasnost. Caught up in the groundswell of Soviet republics seeking greater autonomy, Kazakhstan declared its sovereignty as a republic within the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in October 1990. Following the August 1991 abortive coup attempt in Moscow and the subsequent dissolution of the Soviet Union, under the lidership of the first President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev Kazakhstan proclaimed its independence on December 16, 1991. The years following independence have been marked by significant reforms to the Soviet-style economy and political monopoly on power. Kazakhstan has made significant progress toward developing a market economy. The country has enjoyed significant economic growth since 2000.
