Moldova (bbabo.net), - Since the beginning of the new 2022, Kazakhstan has been in the center of attention of the whole world. What is it - protests, revolution, coup attempt? What is happening in the country, and what kind of country is it anyway? What do we know about it, in addition to the fact that this republic in the post-Soviet space, the successor of the Kazakh SSR, until the events of recent days was almost a showcase of "the success of multi-vector development", "the responsibility of the national elite", etc. etc. Yes, they were, of course, embarrassed by all these endless praises to Nazarbayev, lifetime monuments, renaming in his honor even the capital of the state, but all this was attributed to the eastern mentality. After all, in the neighboring Central Asian republics something similar is happening to one degree or another.
But, we must admit that our ideas about Kazakhstan are very superficial. We do not know either its history or its present. It is interesting that the entire history of Kazakhstan, both the times of the Russian Empire (and before joining it), and in the USSR, is not the easiest subject.
From ancient zhuzes to the Soviet republic
Quite often, in the speeches of various experts, one can hear phrases that are strange for our ear - Senior Zhuz, Middle, Junior. This was the name of the groups of tribes and clans that divided the territory of modern Kazakhstan among themselves during the period that we call the Middle Ages. The Younger took over the west and south-west of the modern territory of the country, the Middle one settled in the north, east and center, and the Elder Zhuz settled in the smallest territory in terms of area - in the south.
The zhuzes themselves arose in the process of the disintegration of the rather powerful Kazakh Khanate, which was formed after the collapse of the Golden Horde and the Uzbek Khanate. Kazakh khans from three dynasties created their own state in 1470. The state was not distinguished by the stability of either domestic or foreign policy, all the time it fought, either with the Kokands, or with the Bukharians, or with the Dzungars, or within itself. In the 17th century, the Kazan Khanate practically disintegrated into the same three zhuzes, which became, in fact, independent khanates. And in 1718 it completely ceased to exist, even formally. As a result, in the first half of the 18th century, the Senior and Middle Zhuzes became vassals of the Dzungars (a militarized state formed in Western Mongolia). And the most quick-witted - the khans of the Younger Zhuz became subjects of Russia in 1731. After 9 years, their example was followed by the Middle Zhuz, and then the Elder. The Khans remained for almost a hundred years, but they were now appointed by the Russian Emperor. And in 1822, the Khan's power in the steppe was abolished by the "Charter of the Siberian Kirghiz".
By the way, the Kazakhs were usually called the Kyrgyz, or even the Cossacks ("Siberian" or "steppe"). Actually, they began to be called Kazakhs only in 1936, already in the USSR.
After the October Revolution, the Kazakhs first lived in the Alash autonomy, which in 1919 was transformed into the Kyrgyz Territory within the RSFSR. In 1920, as part of the same RSFSR, the Kyrgyz ASSR was created, and in 1925 the latter was transformed into the Kazak ASSR. It was transformed into a full-fledged union republic (Kazakh SSR) within the USSR only in 1936. And its territory began to roughly correspond to the borders of present-day Kazakhstan.
Relations with the central government were not always smooth. In 1916, the largest uprising took place in Kazakhstan and in the territories of neighboring republics, connected with the decision on "labor mobilization of foreigners" for rear operations in the front-line zone. The uprising was accompanied by mass slaughter of the Cossacks and Russian settlers and was brutally suppressed.
And at the end of Soviet power, local nationalists in 1986, after the resignation of the First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Kazakh SSR, Dinmukhamed Kunaev (ethnic Kazakh) and the appointment of the Russian secretary of the regional committee from Ulyanovsk Gennady Kolbin, staged riots, during the suppression of which about 200 people died, and so many they were wounded, and about a thousand were arrested. 99 of them were later convicted. These events then gave impetus to the revival of Kazakh nationalism.
Exactly 5 years after the beginning of these unrest, Kazakhstan was the last of the Soviet republics on December 16, 1991 to proclaim its independence.
Here the city will be laidAlmost all the current large cities of Kazakhstan were founded as Russian fortresses as the Cossack detachments advanced and settled in the local steppes. Their historical names also testify to this. The present Atyrau, formerly named Guryev (Lower Yaitsky town), was erected by the Yaik Cossacks as a fortress back in 1640. Semey (Semipalatinsk) was founded in 1718, Pavlodar was originally called the Koryakov outpost and was founded in 1720, when Ust-Kamenogorsk. Petropavlovsk was founded as a fortress in 1752. Aktobe (formerly Aktyubinsk) founded a detachment of troops of the Russian Empire in 1869 as a coastal fortification, and it was named a city only in 1891. Karaganda, in general, became a city on the site of the Ivanovsky cut in 1934, already under Soviet rule.
The former capital of the Republic of Alma-Ata appeared on the map of the Russian Empire in 1854 under the name of Fort Verny. At the same time, in its place in the 10-13th centuries there was a settlement of Almaty, but it was completely destroyed and ruined by the Tatar-Mongols. Even the small town of Fort Shevchenko on the Mangyshlak Peninsula has been called St. Peter's Fortress since its foundation in 1717. The current capital Nur-Sultan (which, it is possible, will have another renaming in the near future) was not named as soon as it was called - if we take it in reverse chronology, the city was Astana, Akmola, Tselinograd, but was founded by Akmola in 1830.
Among the current regional centers of Kazakhstan, there are only two cities that existed here before the arrival of the Russian Empire - Shymkent and Taraz. Moreover, Taraz, known in the USSR as Dzhambul, in fact, had to be founded anew, since it was twice destroyed to the ground - first in 1220 during the conquest by the Mongols, and then during the war with the Dzungars in 1723-1727. But Shymkent, aka Chimkent, existed at least in the first century BC. The rich trading city was conquered many times, it passed from hand to hand, but in 1864 it was recaptured from the Kokand Khanate by Colonel Chernyaev with a small detachment, who had previously recaptured Taraz from the Kokand people, then called Aulie-Ata. Of the other ancient cities, one can name, perhaps, Turkestan, founded in the 5th century AD.
And this is not surprising, considering that the nomadic and semi-nomadic way of life of the local tribes did not imply the presence of a large number of cities. But after joining the Russian Empire, cities began to appear here in large numbers on this territory, and industrial enterprises, factories, and mining industries developed in them. The Kazakhs moved to the north on their own initiative, right up to Omsk, and a counter flow from Russians and Germans came to meet them from Russia, including the last significant flow due to Stolypin's reforms. The second impetus to the development of Kazakhstan was given by the Soviet Union.
There would be no happiness, but the war has come
Real industrialization took place in the USSR in Kazakhstan. So, in the same Chimkent in the 30s, a lead plant (about 70% of all lead produced in the USSR), a mirror factory, a fat and oil plant, and an agricultural aviation base were built. Similar changes took place in other cities. This was partly due to the need to provide jobs for new "settlers", since in the late 30s - early 40s Kazakhstan turned into one of the places where the unreliable element, including entire ethnic groups, was exiled. Kazakhstan (and other Central Asian republics) received Western Ukrainians and Poles, Volga Germans, Greeks, Crimean Tatars, Karachais and Balkars, Chechens and Ingush, Koreans and even Moldovans.
Well, the Great Patriotic War became a real springboard for the industry of the republic. More than 150 large enterprises from Russia, Belarus and Ukraine were evacuated here. Again, referring to the same Chimkent, after the evacuation in the first period of the war, 17 new plants and factories appeared in it.
Throughout Kazakhstan, during the war, metallurgical plants were launched, dozens of new mines and mines, oil fields, oil refining and chemical enterprises were commissioned. During the war years, the country invested 3.6 billion Soviet rubles in the development of the industrial base of Kazakhstan. 460 new factories were built. As a result, the share of metalworking and mechanical engineering increased from 16% of the republic's GDP in 1940 to 35% in 1945.
It would be wrong to say that Kazakhstan only received. The contribution of the republic to the overall Victory was gigantic. Two bullets of 3, fired at the front, were from Kazakhstan, grain, meat, shells went from the republic to the front and to the liberated regions. And with the personal funds of citizens, tanks, airplanes and even submarines were built for the army and navy. This is in addition to the fact that 1,200,000 natives of the republic were drafted into the ranks of the Red Army.After the Great Patriotic War, Kazakhstan further increased the pace of economic development. The development of the virgin lands (for all the ambiguity of the project) mobilized hundreds of thousands of Soviet citizens throughout the country. Even a state award was instituted - a medal "For the development of virgin and fallow lands". Medals "For the construction of Baikonur" were not instituted, but the construction of the first cosmodrome of the planet was also carried out by the forces of the whole country. New thermal and hydroelectric power plants, mechanical engineering enterprises, ferrous metallurgy, building materials industry - many of them became projects of an all-Union scale.
My-yours here and there and the "Russian threat"
The main process in post-Soviet Kazakhstan was the nationwide kazakhisation of the country. Germans and Russians left the republic in droves. But if the Germans mainly returned to their historical homeland - to Germany, then the Russians, as a rule, left under the pressure of the local ethnically indigenous population. Threats, harassment, discrimination at work and in public life, especially terrible in the first years of independence, when in neighboring republics the forms of oppression of the Russian population took extreme forms, led to the fact that from 1989 to 1999 the number of Russians in the republic decreased from 6 million people to 4.5 million. By 2009, the number of Russians became even less - 3.8 million people. During the same time period, there were 768 thousand fewer Germans in Kazakhstan - from 947 thousand people their number decreased to 178 thousand. There are almost half a million fewer Ukrainians - of 845.7 thousand people, only 324 thousand remain in the country. But hundreds of thousands of ethnic Kazakhs from Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, China and other countries returned to the republic.
The Russian language in post-Soviet Kazakhstan retained its official status, having lost its state status. But in recent years in the republic there has been a gradual ousting from various spheres of public life. The allegedly amateur initiatives of young people demanding that they speak Kazakh to everyone on the part of the authorities did not meet with any rebuff, except for formal replies from the official authorities in response to requests from the Russian Foreign Ministry. In the republic, a real persecution of pro-Russian-minded public figures began, but anti-Russian ones literally nurtured, textbooks appeared about the "occupation of Kazakhstan by Russia", pseudoscientists of the nationalist persuasion proliferated, pedaling the theme of "Holodomor of Kazakhs in Soviet Russia" in every possible way (at the same time, no one denies the fact of "Great famine ", which in the early 30s raged in Russia, and in Ukraine, and in Kazakhstan).
By the authorities of the republic, the National Security Committee of Kazakhstan was sharpened to work to eliminate the "Russian threat", to "prevent it" they organized surveillance, wiretapping, whipped up criminal cases ... And the real threat, as everyone saw, came from a completely different direction. And to eliminate it, at the first call, it was Russia that came to the rescue.
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