With a territory of 2,724,900 square kilometers, the Republic of Kazakhstan is the largest landlocked country in the world today and the ninth largest territorial power in the world after Russia, Canada, China, the United States, Brazil, Australia, India and Argentina. The unique geographical location has made the land where the Kazakhs live since ancient times a place of geopolitical power game: more than 500 BC it was the place where the Persian Empire and the Masaghtai played, and later Alexander the Great of Macedonia also came here; after B.C. it was the place where the Han Dynasty and the Huns played; in the 8th century AD it was the place where the Tang Empire and the Arab Empire played; in the 12th century it was the place where the Western Liao and Seljuk Empires played...
In the 13th century, Mongolia and Khwarazm once again fought on the land of present-day Kazakhstan. In 1224, Genghis Khan returned to Hua lazimo in the west and divided the sons: the eldest son, Shu chi, received the qincha homeland north of the Flower Thorn Zi Mohai (present-day Aral Sea) and the Kuantian Jisi Sea (present-day Caspian Sea) as fiefs. In 1243, Shuchi's second son, Batu, established a territory in the volga river in the city of Sarai, stretching from the Irtysh River valley in the east, to the Caspian Sea in the south, to Theurus in the west, and to the Golden Horde in the upper Volga River in the north. Batu's brother Batu's brother, Batu's Horde, was enfeoffed with the creation of the White Horde, which was subordinate to the Golden Horde. Abu Hair, a descendant of Batu's other brother, Shabaan, established the Uzbek Khanate in the eastern part of the White Horde.
After the death of the Eight Thorn Khans of the White Horde, Abu Hair seized the Khanate of the White Horde, and the two sons of the Eight Khans, Janibek Khan and Klie Khan, dissatisfied with the fact that the Khanate had been taken away by Abu Hair, led his own people to break away from the Uzbek Khanate and came to present-day Kazakhstan to establish the Kazakh Khanate. After the establishment of the Kazakh Khanate, the Kazakh tribes gained political independence and rapid economic development, while the territory of the khanate was also expanded: from the 1650s to the early 1670s, the Kazakh khanate had the Chincha steppe and the Central Asian regions of Tantra, Turkistan, and Urgench. In 1500, the Kazakh Khanate occupied the river region again.
By the 1520s the territory of the Kazakh Khanate consisted of the Syr Darya River Basin to the south, the Seven Rivers region to the southeast, the eastern and southern regions of Lake Balkhash to the northeast, and the Yusik River Basin to the west. From 1698 to 1718, many of the Kazakh tribes were divided into Great Yuz, Zhongyuzi, and Xiaoyuzi (also known as Big Tent, Middle Tent, And Small Tent) according to their tribal genealogy: the middle tent was in the central Kazakh highlands, the small tent was in the Ural River to the Caspian Sea, and the large tent was west of Lake Balkhash to Turkestan. During this period, the territory of the Kazakh Khanate stretched from the Irtysh River in the east, to the Isem River, Turgey Oblast, and Omsk in the north, to the Caspian Sea in the west, and to the Syr Darya River in the south.
In 1524, the Wallachians, squeezed by the Tatars of Eastern Mongolia, clashed with the Kazakh Khanate during their westward migration, and this conflict opened up a war between the two sides that lasted for more than two hundred years. Since the Ming Dynasty's Wallachians were known as the Weyrat Mongols in the Qing Dynasty, the war was known as the "Two Hundred Years' War" of Weyrat-Kazakhs. The Weyrat Mongols were not a tribe, but a system of tribal alliances: it consisted mainly of four major tribes of Dzungars, Heshots, Durberts, and Turbats, as well as a number of small tribes. In the mid-17th century, the Dzungars occupied most of the Great Yuzi Minor Khanate in the southeastern Kazakh Khanate. In 1723 Dayuzi and Zhongyuzi surrendered to the Dzungar Khanate.
At the same time, under strategic pressure from the Dzungar Khanate, Little Yuz requested its incorporation into Russia and was approved. After the Dzungar Khanate was conquered by the Qing Dynasty in 1757, Dayuzi and Zhongyuzi became vassals of the Qing Empire. In 1864, Tsarist Russia invaded the area south of Lake Balkhash through the Sino-Russian Survey of the Northwest Boundary, and most of today's Kazakhstan has been incorporated into the territory of Tsarist Russia. After the Occupation of Kazakhstan, the Russians divided the territory of Zhongyuzi into 8 districts, which were under the jurisdiction of Omsk Oblast, which belonged to West Siberia, and Xiaoyuzi was divided into three districts: Western, Central and Eastern. After the October Revolution of 1917, the various nationalities in Russia established their own independent states or autonomous republics.
In the war against the White Army and foreign intervention forces, the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic fought side by side with the Soviet regimes in Ukraine, Belarus, the Caucasus and other places. After the victory of the civil war, the Soviet regime needed to coordinate relations with the Soviet power in these minority areas. On December 30, 1922, the Russian Federation, Ukraine, Belarus, and the South Caucasus Federation formed the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). From 1924 onwards, the Soviet Union re-demarcated the region according to ethnic groups: kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan were born in this process.
In 1936, the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic, one of the Republics of the Soviet Union, was officially born. Kazakh is the largest of the five Central Asian republics of the Soviet Union. Part of the reason why the Soviet Union allocated such a large area of territory to Kazakhstan was that the Kazakh settlement was as much as possible in the territory of the Kazakh Republic according to the principle of national autonomy, so that the homeland of the Kazakh Khanate was historically assigned to the Kazakh Republic under the principle of national autonomy. At that time, the Soviet Union even deliberately assigned several former Russian oblasts to Kazakhstan, thus forming such a vast area of Kazakhstan today.
So why did the Soviet Union assign several states that were originally Part of Russia to Kazakhstan? In fact, the Soviet Union did this in part because it wanted to change the demographic structure of Kazakhstan – gradually increasing the Ethnic Russian population of Kazakhstan to reduce the centrifugal tendencies of Kazakhstan. After years of operation in the Soviet Union, the proportion of the Population of Kazakhstan became 40% each of Kazakhs and Ethnic Russians, with other ethnic minorities accounting for the remaining 20%. By the time the Soviet Union collapsed and Kazakhstan became independent, Kazakhstan was no longer actually an absolute majority of Ethnic Kazakhs. In fact, this is not just a problem faced by Kazakhstan alone – the republics of the former Soviet Union have different degrees of problems after independence how to deal with their relations with their own Russia.
Ukraine has divided its country by failing to resolve its relations with ethnic Russians in the eastern region. If Kazakhstan does not properly manage ethnic relations, it may erupt into intra-ethnic conflicts such as those in Ukraine. After independence, Kazakhstan made Kazakh the official language of the country: kazakh is used in all official documents of the Kazakh government. At the same time, in daily life, Russian is used in parallel with Kazakh, and Nazarbayev himself has set an example for his countrymen - he speaks Kazakh first and then repeats it in Russian every time he speaks. Bilingual signs and advertisements can be seen everywhere on Kazakh streets, and kazakh tv channels are also widely bilingual.
The main position of Kazakh is achieved by establishing the official language status of Kazakh, and the national sentiment of ethnic Russians in the country is appeased by combining Russian and Kazakh languages. Since Kazakh independence, Kazakhstan has been committed to strengthening the dominant position of the Kazakh community and protecting the interests of ethnic minorities at the same time: after the long rule of Tsarist Russia and the Soviet Union, more than 60% of the country's population at the beginning of independence spoke only Russian, less than 1% of the residents of major major cities were proficient in Kazakh, and only 30% of Kazakhs were fluent in their mother tongue. Traditionally Kazakh is spelled in the Arabic alphabet, the Soviet era switched to Cyrillic spelling, and in 2017 Kazakhstan began Latinizing the Kazakh alphabet.
In 1992 Kazakhstan introduced the Immigration Act. Kazakhstan has promoted Kazakhstan as the homeland of ethnic Kazakhs all over the world, drawing on Israel's method of attracting naturalization of Jews from all over the world, and has called on ethnic Kazakhs who were previously exiled abroad to return to their homeland. After years of hard work, Hassachs has made significant achievements in increasing the proportion of Ethnic Kazakhs in the state. By the beginning of the 21st century, more than 200,000 ethnic Kazakhs had returned to Kazakhstan. By 2013, the proportion of Kazakhs in the country had reached 64.6%, while the Russian population had dropped to 22.3%, and the Kazakhs had become a veritable majority ethnic group in Kazakhstan.
While strengthening the dominant position of the Kazakhs, the Kazakh government also attaches great importance to the protection of the interests of ethnic minorities, so the Russians in Kazakhstan are not as alienated from the government as the Ukrainian Russians. The three northern kazakh oblasts, as ethnic Russian settlements, have weak centripetal forces towards the central government of Kazakhstan. At the beginning of independence, the capital of Kazakhstan, Almaty, was almost separated from the three oblasts by the entire north-south distance of Kazakhstan, which made the central government of Kazakhstan feel overwhelmed by the governance of the three northern oblasts. In 1997 Kazakhstan moved its capital from Almaty, which had a warm climate in the south, to Akmora (later renamed Astana), then known as the "White Grave".
After the relocation of the capital, the local population quickly increased from 300,000 to 600,000, which greatly strengthened Kazakhstan's control over the northern region. At the same time, Kazakhstan has adjusted the administrative divisions of the country: the original 9 oblasts have been increased to 14 oblasts. After this administrative adjustment, kazakhs account for a relative majority of the population in almost all administrative regions of Kazakhstan. Although Kazakhstan has never incited Kazakh nationalism and has never excluded ethnic Russians in the country, it has made it convenient for The Russian residents who have voluntarily returned to Russia and provided them with various kinds of assistance, such as travel expenses, so Kazakhstan has subtly established the main position of the Kazakhs in the country.