Evgeni Nabokov / Homeland

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Republic of Kazakhstan

President: Nursultan A. Nazarbayev (1990)
Prime Minister: Kasymzhomart Tokayev (1999)
Area: 1,049,000 sq. mi. (2,717,300 sq. km)
Population (2000 est.): 16,733,227.
Capital (1995 est.): Astana, 280,200 (formerly Aqmola; capital since 1997)

Over the centuries, different parts of Kazakstan were part of various Central Asian empires, including those of the Mongols. In the mid-15th century.

In the late 15th and early 16th centuries, the Kazaks consolidated a nomadic empire, and from 1488 to 1518 they controlled virtually the entire steppe region.

17th century the Kazak khanate was further weakened by wars with the Oyrat. Russian advances from the north, at first believed to be an aid against the Oyrats, eventually led to Russian domination and the abolition of the Kazak hordes (complete in 1848). Russians and other Europeans flooded into Kazakstan under Russian rule.

The Kazaks were not major participants in the civil wars that followed the fall of the Russian monarchy in 1917, and in 1919-20 the Red Army occupied Kazakstan. It became part of the Kirgiz Autonomous Republic formed by the Soviet authorities in 1920, and in 1925 this entity's name was changed to the Kazakh Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (Kazakh A.S.S.R.).

The Virgin and Idle Lands program of the 1950s, which called for a dramatic expansion of agriculture in the Kazakh A.S.S.R.'s vast grasslands, led to an especially large influx of Russians. Owing to the region's intensive agricultural development and its use as a testing ground for nuclear weapons, serious environmental problems developed by the late 20th century. Along with the other Central Asian republics, Kazakstan obtained its independence from the collapsing Soviet Union in 1991