Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic

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Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic[1] Қазақ Советтік Социалистік Республикасы (Kazakh) Казахская Советская Социалистическая Республика (Russian)
1936–1991
Flag (1953–1991) State emblem (1978–1991)
Motto: "Барлық елдердің пролетарлары, бірігіңдер!" "Barlyq elderdıñ proletarlary, bırıgıñder!"(transliteration) "Proletarians of all countries, unite!"
Anthem: "Қазақ Советтік Социалистік Республикасының мемлекеттік гимны" "State Anthem of the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic"
Location of Kazakhstan (red) within the Soviet Union
Status	Soviet socialist republic
Capital	Alma-Ata
Largest cities	Karaganda Pavlodar Shymkent Semipalatinsk Nikolsk
Official languages	Kazakh · Russian
Minority languages	Uzbek · Uyghur · Tatar · Kyrgyz · Azerbaijani · Korean
Religion	State atheism
Demonym(s)	Kazakh Soviet
Government	Unitary Marxist-Leninist one-party soviet republic (1936–1990) Unitary presidential republic (1990–1991)
First Secretary
• 1936–1938 (first)	Levon Mirzoyan
• 1991 (last)[2]	Nursultan Nazarbayev
Head of state
• 1936–1937 (first)	Ukakbai Zeldirbayuly K.
• 1990 (last)	Nursultan Nazarbayev
Head of government
• 1936–1937 (first)	Uraz Isayev
• 1991 (Last)	Sergey Tereshchenko
Legislature	Supreme Soviet
History
• Elevation to a Union Republic	5 December 1936
• Jeltoqsan riots	16 December 1986
• Sovereignty declared	25 October 1990
• Renamed Republic of Kazakhstan	10 December 1991
• Independence declared	16 December 1991
• Independence recognised	26 December 1991
HDI (1991)	0.684 medium
Currency	Soviet rouble (Rbl) (SUR)
Time zone	(UTC+4 to +6)
Calling code	+7 31/32/330/33622
ISO 3166 code	SU
Internet TLD	.su
Preceded by Succeeded by Kazakh ASSR Kazakhstan
Today part of	Kazakhstan

Eastern Bloc
Republics of the USSR Armenia Azerbaijan Byelorussia Estonia Georgia Kazakhstan Kirghizia Latvia Lithuania Moldavia Russia Tajikistan Turkmenia Ukraine Uzbekistan
Allied and satellite states Afghanistan Albania (until 1961) Angola Benin Bulgaria China (until 1961) Congo Cuba Czechoslovakia East Germany Ethiopia Grenada Hungary Kampuchea Laos Mongolia Mozambique North Korea Poland (until 1989) Romania Somalia (until 1977) South Yemen Vietnam (North Vietnam, PRG) Yugoslavia (until 1948)
Related organizations Warsaw Pact Comecon Cominform World Federation of Trade Unions World Federation of Democratic Youth
Opposition Anti-Soviet partisans Albania Bulgaria Croatia Poland Romania Serbia Ukraine Guerrilla war in the Baltic states Soviet occupation Estonia Latvia Lithuania Operation Jungle Protests and uprisings Poland 1944–1989 Poznań 1956 1980–89 Plzeň 1953 East Germany 1953 Georgia 1956 Hungary 1956 Novocherkassk 1962 Prague 1968 Invasion Moscow Czechoslovakia 1976–1990 Romania 1977 Kazakhstan 1986 Brașov 1987 Tbilisi 1989 Ukraine 1989–1991 Baku 1990 Lithuania 1991 Riga 1991 Dissent Soviet Poland East Germany to Hong Kong North Korea
Cold War events Marshall Plan Czechoslovak coup Tito–Stalin split Berlin Blockade Korean War Secret Speech Sino-Soviet split Albanian–Soviet split De-satellization of the Socialist Republic of Romania Berlin Wall Cuban Missile Crisis Vietnam War Cuban intervention in Angola Afghan War 1980 Moscow Olympics 1984 Los Angeles Olympics Gulf War
Fall Singing Revolution Polish Round Table Agreement Revolutions of 1989 Fall of the Berlin Wall January Events Barricades in Latvia Breakup of Yugoslavia Yugoslav Wars End of the Soviet Union Post-Soviet conflicts Fall of communism in Albania Dissolution of Czechoslovakia
v t e

Part of a series on the
History of Kazakhstan
Ancient Scythia Saka Wusun Kangju Kingdom Huns
Khanates Rouran 330–555 Turkic (Göktürks) 552–745 Karluk 665–744 Kimek 743–1220 Oghuz 750–1055 Kara-Khanid 840–1212 Qara Khitai 1124–1218 Mongol Empire 1206–1368 Golden Horde 1240s–1446 Uzbek Khanate 1428-1465 Kazakh Khanate 1465–1847
Post-nomadic period Russian Turkestan 1867–1918 Governor-Generalship of the Steppes 1882–1918 Alash Autonomy 1918–1920 Kirghiz ASSR 1920–1925 Kazakh ASSR 1925–1936 Kazakh SSR 1936–1991 Republic of Kazakhstan 1991–present
Topics Culture Geography Healthcare Religion Buddhism Eastern Orthodoxy Islam Judaism
Other Outline of Kazak military history Bibliography of Kazak history
v t e

The Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic, also known as Soviet Kazakhstan, the Kazakh SSR, KaSSR, or simply Kazakhstan, was one of the transcontinental constituent republics of the Soviet Union (USSR) from 1936 to 1991. Located in northern Central Asia, it was created on 5 December 1936 from the Kazakh ASSR, an autonomous republic of the Russian SFSR.

At 2,717,300 square kilometres (1,049,200 sq mi) in area, it was the second-largest republic in the USSR, after the Russian SFSR. Its capital was Alma-Ata (today known as Almaty). During its existence as a Soviet Socialist Republic, it was ruled by the Communist Party of the Kazakh SSR (QKP).

On 25 October 1990, the Supreme Soviet of the Kazakh SSR declared its sovereignty on its soil. QKP first secretary Nursultan Nazarbayev was elected president in April of that year – a role he remained in until 2019.

The Kazakh SSR was renamed the Republic of Kazakhstan on 10 December 1991, which declared its independence six days later, as the last republic to secede from the USSR on 16 December 1991. The Soviet Union was officially dissolved on 26 December 1991 by the Soviet of the Republics. The Republic of Kazakhstan, the legal successor to the Kazakh SSR, was admitted to the United Nations on 2 March 1992.

The republic was named after the Kazakh people, Turkic-speaking former nomads who sustained a powerful khanate in the region before Russian and later Soviet domination.

Established on 26 August 1920, it was initially called Kirghiz ASSR (Kirghiz Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic) and was a part of the Russian SFSR. On 15–19 April 1925, it was renamed Kazak ASSR (subsequently Kazakh ASSR) and on 5 December 1936 it was elevated to the status of a Union-level republic, Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic.

In September 1920, the Ninth Soviet Congress of Turkestan called for the deportation of illegal settler colonists in the Northern parts of the country.^[3] The proposed land reform began in 1921 and lasted until 1927,targeting Russian settlers, Ukrainians and Cossacks in the region and from 1920 to 1922, Kazakhstan's Russian population dropped from approximately 2.7 to 2.2 million.^[3] A further 15,000 Cossack settler colonists were deported between 1920 and 1921 as part of the process of returning control and sovereignty of land to the Kazakhs.^[4]

On 19 February 1925 Filipp Goloshchyokin was appointed First Secretary of the Communist Party in the newly created Kazakh Autonomous Socialist Soviet Republic. From 1925 to 1933 he ran the Kazakh ASSR with virtually no outside interference. He played a prominent part in the construction of the Turkestan-Siberia railway, which was constructed to open up Kazakhstan's mineral wealth.

After Joseph Stalin ordered the forced collectivization of agriculture throughout the Soviet Union, Goloshchyokin ordered that Kazakhstan's largely nomadic population was to be forced to settle in collective farms. This caused the deadly Kazakh famine of 1930–1933 in Kazakhstan which killed between 1 and 2 million people.^[5]

In 1937 the first major deportation of an ethnic group in the Soviet Union began, the removal of the Korean population from the Russian Far East to Kazakhstan. Over 170,000 people were forcibly relocated to the Kazakh and Uzbek SSRs.^[6]

Kazakhstani Korean scholar German Kim assumes that one of the reasons for this deportation may have been Stalin's intent to oppress ethnic minorities that could have posed a threat to his socialist system or he may have intended to consolidate the border regions with China and Japan by using them as political bargaining chips.^[7] Additionally, historian Kim points out that 1.7 million people perished in the Kazakh famine of 1931–33, while an additional one million people fled from the Republic, causing a labour shortage in that area, which Stalin sought to compensate for by deporting other ethnicities there.^[7]

Over one million political prisoners from various parts of the Soviet Union passed through the Karaganda Corrective Labor Camp (KarLag) between 1931 and 1959, with an unknown number of deaths.^[8]

During the 1950s and 1960s, Soviet citizens were urged to settle in the Virgin Lands of the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic. The influx of immigrants, mostly Russians, skewed the ethnic mixture and enabled non-Kazakhs to outnumber natives. As a result, the use of the Kazakh language declined but has started to experience a revival since independence, both as a result of its resurging popularity in law and business and the growing proportion of Kazakhs. The other nationalities included Ukrainians, Germans, Jews, Belarusians, Koreans and others; Germans at the time of independence formed about 8% of the population, the largest concentration of Germans in the entire Soviet Union. Kazakh independence has caused many of these newcomers to emigrate.

Following the dismissal of Dinmukhamed Konayev, the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan by the last Soviet general secretary, Mikhail Gorbachev, riots broke out for four days between 16 and 19 December 1986 known as Jeltoqsan by student demonstrators in Brezhnev Square in the capital city, Alma-Ata. Approximately 168–200 civilians were killed in the uprising. The events then spilled over to Shymkent, Pavlodar, Karaganda and Taldykorgan.

On 25 March 1990, Kazakhstan held its first elections with Nursultan Nazarbayev, the chairman of the Supreme Soviet elected as its first president. Later that year on 25 October, it then declared sovereignty. The republic participated in a referendum to preserve the union in a different entity with 94.1% voted in favour. It did not happen when hardline communists in Moscow took control of the government in August. Nazarbayev then condemned the failed coup.

As a result of those events, the Kazakh SSR was renamed to the Republic of Kazakhstan on 10 December 1991. It declared independence on 16 December^[9] (the fifth anniversary of Jeltoqsan), becoming the last Soviet constituency to secede. Its capital was the site of the Alma-Ata Protocol on 21 December 1991 that dissolved the Soviet Union and formed the Commonwealth of Independent States in its place which Kazakhstan joined. The Soviet Union officially ceased to exist as a sovereign state on 26 December 1991 and Kazakhstan became an internationally recognized independent state.

On 28 January 1993, the new Constitution of Kazakhstan was officially adopted.

According to the 1897 census, the earliest census taken in the region, Kazakhs constituted 81.7% of the total population (3,392,751 people) within the territory of contemporary Kazakhstan. The Russian population in Kazakhstan was 454,402, or 10.95% of total population; there were 79,573 Ukrainians (1.91%); 55,984 Tatars (1.34%); 55,815 Uyghurs (1.34%); 29,564 Uzbeks (0.7%); 11,911 Moldovans (0.28%); 4,888 Dungans (0.11%); 2,883 Turkmens; 2,613 Germans; 2,528 Bashkirs; 1,651 Jews; and 1,254 Poles.

The most significant factors that shaped the ethnic composition of the population of Kazakhstan were the 1920s and 1930s famines. According to different estimates of the effects of the Kazakh famine of 1930–1933, up to 40% of Kazakhs (indigenous ethnic group) either died of starvation or fled the territory.^[11] Official government census data report the contraction of Kazakh population from 3.6 million in 1926, to 2.3 million in 1939.^[12][13]

Upon the start of the Second World War, many large factories were relocated to the Kazakh SSR.

The Semipalatinsk Nuclear Test Site and Baikonur Cosmodrome were also built here.

After the war, the Virgin Lands Campaign was started in 1953. This was led by Nikita Khrushchev, with the goal of developing the vast lands of the republic and helping to boost Soviet agricultural yields. However it did not work as promised, the campaign was eventually abandoned in the 1960s.^[14]

In the early days of the Soviet Union, Kazakh culture was both developed and restrained, and later many Kazakh cultural figures were imprisoned, exiled, or killed in Joseph Stalin's purges. However, after the Stalinist era, Nikita Khrushchev's efforts to reinvigorate internationalism and furtherly weaken Kazakh culture were controversial in the Kazakh SSR.^[15] Kazakhs viewed his internationalist goals as a call for "Russification".^[15]

Beginning in 1937, the Soviet Government began a series of forced deportations of ethnic minorities, such as Soviet Koreans, the Volga Germans and various other minorities to the Kazakh SSR, a programme that ended only with Stalin's death in 1953.

• Cameron, Sarah (2018). The Hungry Steppe: Famine, Violence, and the Making of Soviet Kazakhstan. Cornell University Press. ISBN 978-1501730436 online review.

• Kazakhstan: Seven Year Plan for Prosperity by Dinmukhamed Konayev, a 1958 Soviet propaganda booklet

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