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In 2021, Kazakh President Tokayev suddenly published an article in the newspaper introducing the history of Kazakhstan, emphasizing its territorial sovereignty.
(Tokayev)
Mr. President has every opportunity, why did he suddenly come to popular science history?
Looking for the antecedents, it turned out that some Russian State Duma deputies began to turn over old accounts, claiming that many of Kazakhstan's territories were transferred to Kazakhstan by the Soviet Union from Russia during the Soviet Union, and demanded that Kazakhstan return the territory or be incorporated into Russia.
After this article was issued, the Russian side did not speak out again, but there were people on the Internet who did not care about the excitement and said that the Soviet Union's original actions were cocooned and self-binding.
Why is there such a statement? Was it really worth the loss of the USSR to transfer the territory of Russia to Kazakhstan?
The territory of Russia is transferred to Kazakhstan
First, let's see how the Russian parliamentarian said that the Soviet Union transferred Russian territory to Kazakhstan.
In fact, let alone part of Kazakhstan, the entire five Central Asian countries were Russian "territory" before the Soviet Union redrew its borders in 1924.
The Russian nation is called a "fighting nation" by the outside world, not only because of their combat effectiveness, but also because the nation itself is actually full of the desire for aggression.
From the Grand Duchy of Moscow at the end of the 13th century, which only had a small area near Moscow in Europe, to today's largest country in the world, the country has been on the road of foreign expansion for a long time.
(Grand Duchy of Moscow)
In the 19th century, after completing its conquest of Siberia, the country officially extended its tentacles of expansion into Central Asia.
In fact, this country's covetousness for Central Asia began under Peter the Great.
In 1717, Peter the Great sent men to attack the Khiva Khanate, but returned with a great defeat, when he pointed out that Central Asia was the key gateway and demanded that the region must be conquered, or at least controlled.
From the beginning of the 19th century, Russia launched a great game in Central Asia with Persia, Britain and other countries, and gradually annexed the Kazakh Khanate, Bukhara Khanate, Khiva Khanate, Kokonde Khanate and other Central Asian countries through war, diplomacy and colonization.
(Russian conquest of Central Asia)
Of course, the Central Asian countries also put up resolute resistance, and the Central Asian people in Turkmenistan once inflicted a serious blow on Tsarist Russia, and the army did not want to attack again, or the Tsar forced the encouragement to continue the action.
However, under the dual superiority of Tsarist Russia in terms of troops and heavy weapons, the peoples of Central Asia were unable to resist, and Tsarist Russia successfully completed their conquest of Central Asia in 1895.
So how did this region of Central Asia become independent later, which brings us to the national demarcation of the Soviet Union in 1924.
We must first understand that Tsarist Russia has a limited population and cannot control these areas by its own people, so although these Central Asian countries are included in the territory, they are not all directly classified as a province of Tsarist Russia.
There were some lords who were more "acquainted", such as the Emir of Bukhara, which joined in the form of vassal states.
After the October Revolution in the Soviet Union, Soviet Russia became a workers' and peasants' regime, but the lords of these places did not want to buy the accounts of socialism, after all, how comfortable I was to be a privileged class.
(October Revolution)
Therefore, the lords and nobles of these places were in conflict with the local soviets.
After Soviet Russia got the news, it sent the Red Army south to assist the local Soviet power, and after 2 years of struggle, the power in these places was returned to the local Soviet.
Due to the many ethnic contradictions in Central Asia at that time, in order to stabilize the situation, the Red Army stationed in Soviet Russia instigated the "March Incident" in 1921 and reorganized the Khorezm government, which caused chaos among other Central Asian communist groups.
People on the left purged the pro-nationalist right, while some on the right defected and formed an anti-Soviet regime.
After the Central Committee of Soviet Russia learned about it, the Soviet government also believed that measures were needed, so in 1922 these regions were absorbed into Soviet Russia in the form of states.
Not long after this happened, at the end of the year, Soviet Russia formed the Soviet Union along with Ukraine, Belarus and the Transcaucasian Federation.
(Founding of the Soviet Union)
Now that the Soviet Union has become an allied state, the Central Asian region, which was already dissatisfied with the aggression of Tsarist Russia, is a little bit anxious, can we establish an independent state?
It was at this time that nationalist currents arose in various parts of the world, especially in Eurasia, and in 1923 the parliamentarians of the former Soviets of the People of Turkestan, Bukhara and Khorezm raised the question of the demarcation of the Central Asian border.
The Soviet government at the time agreed, because the constant contradictions in Central Asia were not a happy situation, and if the demarcation could resolve the contradictions, it would also help consolidate the regime, which was a good thing.
The Russian Federation also does not have much opinion, although these places were divided from Russia, but isn't that still Soviet land? Russia had a dominant position in the USSR, so that's okay.
(Member of the Soviet Union)
After all, the Soviet Union at that time was full of confidence in its future, and it certainly could not have imagined that the Soviet Union would disintegrate in the future.
Then the work on the demarcation of ethnic borders began in the USSR.
In this demarcation work, they not only divided all the Kazakh regions that were originally annexed several times, but also assigned several oblasts that originally belonged to Russia to Kazakhstan, making Kazakhstan the largest country in Central Asia.
The intention of the USSR
The USSR would have been so generous to Kazakhstan, of course, not because of a preference for Kazakhs - just kidding, if the USSR really preferred which member state, it would definitely have to be Russia.
They do this with their own agenda.
The first to be decided to go to Kazakhstan were not the Russian oblasts, but large swathes of territory that originally belonged to Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan.
These two people once dominated Central Asia, and the Soviet Union definitely wanted to suppress it, in addition to transferring part of the territory to Kazakhstan, the Soviet Union also separated Tajik from Uzbekistan.
(Map of Central Asia)
In this way, these two peoples were successfully weakened, but when I turned around, Kazakhstan suddenly became the largest country in Central Asia because of this round of division of the Soviet Union.
But at this time, it is not appropriate to break up, it is easy to cause dissatisfaction among the Kazakhs, the strategic position of Kazakhstan is very important, and the Soviet Union is absolutely unwilling to let this place have a little turmoil.
So, first of all, the Soviet Union had to find a way to cut off Kazakhs from the outside world.
The Kazakh nation and Mongolia are fraternal peoples, originally bordered, but Mongolia is not a member of the Soviet Union, so the Soviet Union thought about it and could not let the two be next to each other.
As a result, the Soviet Union took over a piece of land bordering Kazakhstan and Mongolia to Russia.
(Russia separates Kazakhstan from Mongolia)
But just to take away the territory from others, people must not want ah, so the Soviet Union divided the five Kazakh oblasts adjacent to Russia to Kazakhstan.
In this way, I exchange a large piece of land with you for a small piece of land, and you take advantage of it, and my reputation will be good.
At the same time, the transfer of these five Russian-majority oblasts to Kazakhstan will also increase the proportion of ethnic Russians in the territory of the member state.
The so-called "lost land saves people, and people and land survive; Lose the land, everyone dies", the root of the country is actually still people, you have more Russians there, naturally you are not willing to secede from the USSR.
Did the Kazakhs see it? The probability can be seen, but should the benefits of this free gift be launched?
(ethnic Russians in Kazakhstan)
In this way, the territory of Kazakhstan received another round of expansion.
Not only that, when the Soviet Union engaged in ethnic migration, it did not move people of other nationalities here, in short, it was to find ways to reduce the proportion of Kazakhs in the population of the allied country.
Then, in education, the USSR educated only in Russian, hoping to speed up the pace of national assimilation.
However, in addition to calculating a little more in the matter of assimilation, the Soviet Union did not lose money to Kazakhstan in other aspects, after all, as mentioned earlier, the geographical location of Kazakhstan is very important, and the Soviet Union regards it as its own large rear.
The Soviet Union focused on helping Kazakhstan develop industry and agriculture, and deployed a large number of advanced weapons here to ensure regional security and stability.
The help of the Soviet Union was also seen by the Kazakhs, and they were also grateful and supportive of the Soviet Union.
(Soviet Red Army during the Great Patriotic War)
During the Great Patriotic War of the USSR, Kazakhstan formed 14 infantry and cavalry divisions, 7 separate brigades, 1 anti-aircraft artillery regiment, 12 engineering battalions to the front line to defend the USSR, including many well-known heroic units.
People are not as good as days?
It should be said that if the normal development continues, the situation will be as expected by the Soviet leadership, and Kazakhstan will be smoothly assimilated by Russia and become the most staunch supporter of the Soviet Union.
After all, by the end of the 80s of the last century, the proportion of ethnic Russians in Kazakhstan had exceeded that of ethnic Kazakhs, and in terms of culture, the identification of the population with Russian culture had exceeded that of Kazakh culture.
According to statistics, at that time, more than 60% of the population in Kazakhstan spoke Russian, even less than a third of ethnic Kazakhs knew their mother tongue, and in large cities, the population was fluent in Kazakh.
(Collapse of the Soviet Union)
However, people are not as good as heavenly calculations, and the people who engaged in demarcation in the Soviet Union certainly did not expect that the Soviet Union, after a communication operation by Gorbachev and Yeltsin, would actually disintegrate in 1991.
Now things have become embarrassing, the Soviet Union collapsed, and the member countries naturally became independent countries, but at this time, the penetration of ethnic Russians into Kazakhstan is a level of incomparation.
Although Kazakhs have been infiltrated more seriously, the national identity of the Kazakh ethnic group is still relatively strong, even if many people no longer speak their mother tongue, but they still consider themselves Kazakhs, and many Russians.
It used to be said that they were Soviets, everyone had no opinion, now that the USSR is gone, it is still not okay for them to recognize themselves as Russians.
Of course, in those lands that were given by the Russians and gathered by the Russians, many Russians still think about Russia, but their right to speak is not enough, and the Kazakh government is mainly in the hands of the Kazakhs.
(First President of Kazakhstan)
However, the fact that there are too many ethnic Russians in the country, even exceeding the proportion of ethnic Kazakhs, does worry the Kazakh government, and if this matter is not handled well, it will be a very serious problem for the stability of the country.
While appeasing ethnic Russians and making both Russian and Kazakh official languages of Kazakhstan, the Kazakh government is trying to increase the proportion of ethnic Kazakhs.
Under the leadership of the government, Kazakhstan followed Israel's example and introduced the Immigration Law, calling on ethnic Kazakhs around the world to return to their homeland and support the construction of the motherland.
At the same time, they introduced a series of policies to encourage the masses of their own ethnic group to have more births in order to increase the number of their own population.
After a certain increase in the Kazakh population, the government also moved the capital from Almaty to Akmola (later renamed Astana), where the Russian population in the north gathered, in order to attract more Kazakhs to settle in the north.
(Kazakh capital moved)
At the same time, for ethnic Russians who want to return to their hometowns, the Kazakh government has provided a lot of help and subsidies, and the group of Russians who are most interested in Russia simply choose to return to Russia with the policy support of the Kazakh government.
By the time Kazakhstan reorganized its administrative divisions in 1997, it was able to make each of the 14 new oblasts the largest Kazakh population.
In this way, the Kazakh government succeeded in stabilizing the status of an independent state, and although there is still a lot of cooperation and deep friendship between Russia and Kazakhstan, it is impossible to integrate Kazakhstan into Russia.
Therefore, when Russian parliamentarians demanded the return of Kazakh territory or annexation to Russia, few people accepted it at all.
When the news of the development came out, some people felt that the Soviet Union's original practice was to cocoon itself and plainly let Russia lose a large part of its territory.
Although this may seem reasonable, it is indeed underestimating the Soviet Union.
(Cold War Pattern)
The adjustments made by the Soviet Union were also in line with the needs of Soviet development: the Soviet Union, a socialist country, had been surrounded by capitalist countries for a long time, and they really needed Kazakhstan as their large rear.
Moreover, the various measures of the Soviet Union have indeed strengthened national unity, and Kazakhstan has a strong identification with the Soviet Union and is the last country to break away from the Soviet Union.
The Soviet Union was born for ideals, once overwhelmed the United States, no one would have thought that the Soviet Union would end up disintegrated, even the United States, which calculated the Soviet Union, once expressed surprise when it heard the news of the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Moreover, their actions, even today, are not completely in vain.
After all, once Tsarist Russia, as an aggressor, was full of hatred in Central Asia, but now Russia and Kazakhstan are close and friendly, and this friendly relationship is also very important for Russia.
The two countries have already reached a consensus on this, and some people cling to the past will not affect the mainstream voice.