On August 26, 1920, the territory of Kazakhstan was proclaimed the Kyrgyz ASSR within the RSFSR. The border determinations made in Central Asia in 1924/25 brought the areas of Syrdarya and Siebenstromland, which v. a. were inhabited by Kazakhs and until then belonged to the Turkestan ASSR, to the Kyrgyz ASSR, which was renamed the Kazakh ASSR in 1925 and received the status of a Union republic on December 5, 1936. The collectivization of agriculture, which was initiated in Kazakhstan in 1929, which was associated with the compulsory sedentarization of the nomadic Kazakh people, met with stiff resistance and (after many Kazakhs with their herds fled to China and slaughtered cattle) caused years of severe famine, which killed many people fell.
Between 1926 and 1939 the number of Kazakhs fell by a fifth; Between 1929 and 1936 alone, according to beautypically, the number of households in Kazakhstan halved from 1.2 million to 565,000. During the time of Stalinist reprisals there were around 100,000 Kazakhs in the GULAG ; many of them were shot. There were major cuts in the population structure in 1941 through the forced settlement of deported peoples, including v. a. Russian Germans and Chechens, and in the course of the new territory campaign under N. S. Khrushchev from 1954. At the same time, the relocation of 2,593 industrial companies and the associated specialist staff from the western regions of the Soviet Union to the east during the Second World War was associated with an enormous surge in industrialization. Alma-Ata (today Almaty) became an industrial center like Semipalatinsk (Semei), Astana (Nursultan), Kustanai (Qostanai), Tschimkent (Shymkent), Karaganda (Karagandy).
As part of M. S. Gorbachev’s social reform policy in the Soviet Union, demonstrations against the Russian-dominated personnel policy in the highest party and state bodies took place in Alma-Ata in December 1986, prompted by the dismissal of the Kazakh Communist Party Secretary, who was in office in 1960-62 and 1964-86 Dinmuchamed Achmedowitsch Kunajew (* 1912, † 1993) by the Russian Gennadi Wassiljewitsch Kolbin (* 1927, † 1998 ; party leader of Kazakhstan until 1989); the protests were suppressed by force. Since then, a number of citizens’ movements have formed. The numerically strongest, the Nevada-Semipalatinsk movement under the direction of the writer Olschas Suleymenow (* 1936), called for the closure of the Semipalatinsk nuclear test site on August 29, 1991. In addition, there was a general demand for “clarification of the ‘white spots’ in history”.
Foreign policy development: In November 1991 Kazakhstan (as the successor to the USSR) was admitted to the NATO Cooperation Council (NACC; from 1997 Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council, EAPC). Kazakhstan joined the CSCE on January 30, 1992 (OSCE from 1995) and the UN on March 2, 1992. The friendship and security treaty of October 10, 1992 with the assurance of sovereignty, territorial integrity and protection of minorities, as well as a treaty passed on March 28, 1994 regulating economic relations and the status of citizens of the respective neighbor, brought tensions in the Russian-Kazakh relationship as well as to fix important aspects of the military-technical-strategic, scientific and cultural cooperation. The Baikonur space center was leased for the next 20 years (2004 extension of the lease agreement with Russia until 2050), and compensation for the environmental damage in Semei (formerly Semipalatinsk) was agreed. A joint decision-making right for the Russian and Kazakh presidents was initially established about the nuclear weapons stored in Kazakhstan, after Kazakhstan had already placed them under the joint command of the CIS in December 1991, signed the START Treaty in 1992 and ratified the Non-Proliferation Treaty in December 1993. Following security declarations by Great Britain, Russia and the USA in the NATO Cooperation Council, all nuclear weapons stored in Kazakhstan were withdrawn to Russia in 1995. After 9/11 In 2001, Kazakhstan joined the “Alliance against Terror” and offered the USA overflight, landing and stationing rights, although the latter were not used. As part of its UN membership, it made a battalion of troops available for international peace operations (“KazBat”, first mission from August 2003 in Iraq).
Relations with neighboring countries (with the exception of Russia) turned out to be problematic in some cases. Territorial tensions with Kyrgyzstan have been defused since the “Community of Integrated States” agreed between the latter, Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan on March 29, 1996 (from 1999 also with Tajikistan). Despite the border issues with Uzbekistan finally settled in 2002, the relationship remained tense: on the one hand, due to the competition for leadership in Central Asia, on the other hand, the border closings by the Uzbek government for the movement of goods and people (since 2003) to Kazakhstan caused irritation. Uzbekistan also accused Kazakhstan that radical Islamic groups from Kazakhstan were responsible for the attacks on the US and Israeli embassies on July 30, 2004. Existing border problems with China were resolved by a contract dated April 26, 1994; Tensions resulted from the unsatisfactory situation of the v. a. in the Chinese Autonomous Region Xinjiang (Sinkiang) living Kazakhs. Business contacts with the People’s Republic of China developed well (including investments in the oil sector, in May 2004 the signing of a contract for the construction of an oil pipeline from central Kazakhstan to the Chinese-Kazakh border). A treaty on a common state border (7591 km) signed between Russia and Kazakhstan on February 18, 2005 was ratified by the parliaments of both countries at the beginning of December 2005. In 2010 Kazakhstan held the OSCE Chairmanship. In Astana (Nursultan since 2019 ), Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus signed the treaty establishing the Eurasian Economic Union on May 29, 2014, which came into force on January 1, 2015.
