THE LAND OF KAZAKHSTAN
THE LAND IN MEASUREMENTS AND FIGURES
Ranking nine in the world in terms of size, Kazakhstan with its 2.7 million square kilometre occupies a surface larger than all Central-Asian former USSR member states together. With an east-west distance of 2,800 kilometre and an north-south distance stretching over 1,600 kilometre, the territory would be large enough to include Spain, Portugal, France, the BeNeLux states, Italy, Austria, Switzerland, Germany, Sweden, Denmark and the United Kingdom within its territorial boundaries.
Kazakhstan borders Russia (6,467km), Uzbekistan (2,300km) China (1,460km), Kyrgyzstan (980km), and Turkmenistan (380km). Its maritime border on the Caspian shelf stretches over 600 kilometre, thereby adding up to a total border length around Kazakhstan of 12,187 kilometre.
Whereas in 1990 nearly 17 million people lived in Kazakhstan, all that was left according to the census in 1999 consisted of hardly more than 15 million, 52 percent of which consisted of Kazakhs, 31 percent Russians, 4 percent Ukrainians, with Tatars and Germans making up for 2 percent each. The remaining 9 percent consisted of the other 121 nationalities. Today, Kazakhstan`s inhabitants amount to 15.7 million souls, the ethnic breakdown of which is roughly equal to that of 1999.
THE LANDSCAPES OF KAZAKHSTAN
Between the lowlands and plains in the west and the north, and the high mountains in the southeast and the south, Kazakhstan’s profile shows a difference of more than 7,000 metre in height. Kazakhstan’s surface features an exceptional variety of landscapes. The most impressive ones among them are definitely the high mountain ranges.
The Tien-Shan, the northern branch of which - Zailiysky Alatau - separates Kazakhstan from Kyrgyzstan over a distance of 300 kilometre, is a carbon-based massive which was formed during the neo-paleozoic and tertiary eras and later subsisted as an anticline fault line ridge. This mighty mountain chain stretches along a 2,500 kilometre-long distance from Kazakhstan across Kyrgyzstan into China. The Chinese used to dub it Mountains of Heaven, and at a height of 7,010 metre at the highest summit of Kazakhstan, on top of Mt. Khan Tengri, one gets close to Heaven indeed - and due to the high seismic activity of the mountain range each year up to five millimetre closer. The northern Tien-Shan distinguishes itself by its forbidding roughness: while within a relatively short period of time following the mountain range’s formation the strong erosive forces of ice and water have pierced deep, steep valleys and filled them with rock debris, they failed to flatten the mountain tops and edges. Towards the north, the Tien-Shan massive extents to the Zhongar (Dzhungar) Alatau, which occupies a vast area along the border with China, and reaches heights of up to 4622 metre. Further to the north rises the wild, rocky Tarbagatay mountain chain, the highest peak of which reaches 2992 metre.
The second major mountain range of Kazakhstan, the Altay, is also a young one in terms of the Earth’s history. The Altay’s main chains consists of limestone formations, which were folded in the Earth’s earlier history, and were pushed up from the surrounding steppe lands and the grand plateau until the Quaternary Epoch. Since in the last Ice Age the mountain range’s major part was frozen and its snow level lay about 1,000 metre below its present-day level, today here the riches in formations left behind by the masses of ice are found: broad, tub-shaped valleys, steps, pebble fields, an numerous lakes. Particularly on its western, Kazakh slopes, the Altay is rich in polymetallic resources.
Characteristic for Kazakhstan’s landscape are the Kazakh Hills (Melkosopochnik) which occupy the entire eastern territory of Kazakhstan from the feet of the high mountains to the Syr-Daria plains and the Torgay depression, whereas towards the west they stretch over 1,500 kilometre till the Turan lowlands.
In the west of the country, there is the Caspian depression, which has its lowest point in the neighbourhood of Aktau with 132 under zero-level. Here one finds the bare steppe soils and the vast and rich oil deposits of the Caspian shelf.
CLIMATE AND WEATHER
Kazakhstan ranks number one on Earth in terms of its remoteness from the world’s oceans. As a result, its climate has an outspoken continental character: extreme fluctuations in seasonal temperatures and poor precipitation. Hot and dry summers turn almost without autumn into cold, mostly not very snowy winters, followed, once more all but overnight, by the warm season.
In the north, the average summer temperature stands at plus 18 degrees Celsius, and winter temperature at minus 20 degrees. These rates, however, indicating nothing about the extremes. Especially in the northeast and in the central steppe and desert areas, winter temperatures of minus 40 degrees are no exception. Also summer temperatures in these regions reach record-highs, 40 degrees being far from rare. In the south, aloof under the Tien-Shan mountain chain, the climate is somewhat milder with less contrast.
In the regions bordering Uzbekistan, winters are relatively mild, with January temperatures averaging minus-one degree, whereas spring comes in a timely manner and summers are hot, with temperatures in July averaging at 30 degrees. As a result, vegetable and fruit cultivation yields several harvests per annum.
The total annual sunshine duration in some areas reaches 3,000 hours, which is more than on the Crimea. Average precipitation reaches 1,500 millimetre in the Altay, 580 in Almaty, whereas in the central steppes to the east of Lake Aral it only reaches 100 to 200 millimetre. By comparison: in Germany, average annual precipitation stands at 800 millimetre.
KAZAKHSTAN - OR THE SHAPING OF A NATION-STATE AND PRESENT-DAY STATE POLICIES
ORIGINS OF THE LAND AND ITS PEOPLE
The land Kazakhstan is situated on is very ancient indeed. As long back in time as 1.2 billion years, it formed part of the mega-continent of Rodinia according to the geological time table of the earth`s history. And it was "only" 543 million years ago that most of it drowned in the Panthalassic Ocean. From there, history took a somewhat faster speed, and what remains as the Central Plateau of Kazakhstan became the western outskirt of a new continent, dubbed Pangea. To its west, there was the Paleo-Thetys Ocean, of which today`s Caspian Sea is a remainder.
When 180 million years back in time the western ocean retreated, fell dry and later reemerged in the much smaller Thetys Ocean, which was open sea but the outlets of which were much narrower, most of the land of Kazakhstan remained intact. When at the end of the Devonian era some terrible cataclysm hit the earth, the cause of which remains veiled in mystery up to this day, and most of life under water perished, Kazakhstan was one of the places where living creatures crawled on land in order to survive in the open air.
Its solid geological structure allowed Kazakhstan`s soil to harbour both dead and living resources during the burst of life during the Jurassic and Cretaceous eras. The former resulted in today`s immensely rich metal and ceramic natural resources, the latter in today`s commercial and political fever named oil and gas.
The ones who were eventually to turn nature into trade first appeared on Kazakh soil about two million years ago. For hundreds of thousands of years, man trotted, hunted, and survived in the region while watching how the climate changed, rivers changed their course, volcanoes erupted and died out, forests turned into deserts and the other way round.
Civilisation in its early form was a latecomer in Kazakhstan. The oldest traces of community formation including cattle-breeding, crop-growing and dwelling-building dates from the IInd Millennium BC, thousands of years after China and Mesopotamia had developed highly sophisticated societies.
The Scythians were gradually eliminated by the Huns, through which early history repeated itself: eastern peoples (possibly exploited by the Chinese Empire) reclaiming land from their souther-Asian rivals. On whose part the Usun, known as the first community to have provided Kazakhstan with an organised state, were remains subject to historians` discussion.
The formation of the tectonic structure comprehending today`s Kazakhstan was part of an overall re-approach of the remainders of Rodinia of old, which took place in the late Paleozoic and early Mesozoic Age, from the late Carboniferous to halfway the Triassic Period. This was the continent of Pangea, which lasted until the Jurassic Period when from around 200 million years ago it started to disintegrate. In the middle of the Devonian Period around, 300 million years back in time, a depression started to develop stretching from today`s location of the Aral Sea ever further to the west, leading to the formation of the Paleo-Tethys Ocean to the west with the Central-Kazakh plateau on its eastern shore, Baltica to its north and reaching as far as Gondwana towards the southwest. When in the Jurassic Period around 180 million years ago Pangea started to disintegrate, the Paleo-Tethys Ocean retreated to the west, which in turn led to the formation of the Tethys trench and the ocean of the same name. Both the Paleo-Tethys Ocean and the Tethys Ocean that succeeded it have been the source of sediments trapped in the process of Pangea`s formation and fragmentation, and the tectonic collision and subsequent stabilisation process that accompanied the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods that followed, resulting in the "first generation" oil and gas deposits for which the northwest of Kazakhstan, southwestern Siberia and the Lower Volga provinces have won name, fame and wealth in due time.
Along with China, Africa and India, Kazakhstan is one of the places where traces of Mankind`s first-born have been found in abundance, dating from two- to two-and-a-half million years back in time. The richest finds of human remains, tools and funeral sites from the earliest inhabitants` times have been spotted by archeologists in the mountains of Karatau in the central south of the country. Archeological sites have delivered axes, spearheads, firestone equipment and other traces of early civilisation in an area believed to have had a warm, wet subtropical climate and abundant vegetation and wildlife, supplying people with hunting and fishing resources and a comfortable natural environment to live in. The Tethys Ocean of old was not entirely dead yet, and the Caspian Sea, which included the Aral Sea and the lands between them and still had open waterways to the north and the west, was still "oceanic" enough to allow large areas to its east and its south to sustain subtropical conditions. This pleasant climate and abundant natural resources appears to have dominated a large area stretching over a large part of Kazakhstan and even well into the Tarim Basin to the east. Newer forms of human civilisation have most of all been dug up in the central parts of Kazakhstan, notably in the area of the upper Irtysh river. Some of them go back to the fifth millennium BC, but others vary in periods up to the Bronze Age, indicating that there was a stable community in the area that survived for a long time, developing handicraft, agriculture, technology including the use of charcoal as fuel, a spiritual life and some level of communal organisation as time advanced.
Early cultures in Kazakhstan have been dubbed Andronovo and Afanevskaya by XIXth and XXth Century Russian archaeologists. They are said to be or Indo-Germanic origin, thereby leaving the origin of the earlier human populations of Kazakhstan unknown. Their settlements around Lake Balkash and from there upstream the river Yenisei have been excavated and analysed by Soviet archaeologists.
HOW HISTORY TOOK ITS COURSE
Around 1800 BC, the first Indogermanic communities moved into present-day Kazakhstan. They are known as Cimmerians, even though they are also referred to as Scyths, which is the proper name for the main wave of migration from the south which was to take place almost a millennium later. How far the Cimmerians` authority stretched over the territory remains uncertain, and whether their hegemony took the shape of proper statehood remains doubtful. In all, it is likely that they managed to cohabitate in one form or another with the indigenous population of the immense territory of Kazakhstan and southern Siberia.
That balance seems to have been disrupted around 1200 BC, when the populations in the north and the east of Kazakhstan were shaken up by invasions of tribes coming from present-day Mongolia and northwestern China. Apart from organised manslaughter evidence of which has been found in weapons clearly designed for battle rather than hunting and other equipment in the graves of those who apparently belonged to a military elite, the newcomers, usually referred to as the Karasuk Culture, also introduced large-scale stock-breeding in the area. Mining and manufacturing started playing a major role in social development, and the introduction of the notion of the "tripartite society" as described by Georges Dumézil with its roots in the Aryan Indogermanic civilisation, the division of cultivation, security and spirituality between separate "professional" classes, started taking shape.
The Cimmerians and their successors the Massagetes, who in the Vth and IVth Centuries BC dominated present-day Kazakhstan, have gone into history under the collective name Scythians. They were driven out of the lands to the south of Kazakhstan by Alexander of Macedonia in the 320s BC, but maintained their dominance in the steppes until they were driven out by the Huns who pushed towards the west from Eastern Siberia. Only from the VIIth Century AD the Turkic tribes, known as Kypchaks, believed to have been descendants of the pre-Scythian original population of Kazakhstan, returned from their refuge in the Altai mountains and imposed themselves on the country. Among them is the legendary Alash Horde, a tribe believed to have stood at the cradle of the Kazakh ethnic identity. The Turks established one realm after the other in the region for more than 500 years, until they were finally massacred and their remains subdued by the Mongol hordes of Dzhengiz Khan in the XIIIth Century.
THE RISE OF KAZAKHSTAN AS A NATION-STATE
Mongol rule was by and large a succession of family feuds leading to the formation of various "Hordes" of which the Golden Horde and the White Horde are the most renowned. Whereas the White Horde was predominant in the south, the Golden Horde ruled from the Siberian heartland to the river Don. The tribes of Kazakhstan who had survived the Mongol scourge were caught in the middle between them, until a Mongol dissenter of the Dzhengizid line revolted against the White Horde with the aid of the Golden Horde in the XVIth Century. His name was Zhanibek and he has gone into history as the founder of the Kazakh khanate. However, the new state was not only threatened by China from the east and Persia from the southwest. From the very beginning, the Kazakh khans, who in contrast to their peers of the White Horde and the Golden Horde were elected by tribal chiefs though any candidate by tradition had to be a scion, however remote, of Dzhengiz Khan, were divided by bitter rivalry. This led to a split-up of the khanate into the Senior Horde which ruled over the south of Kazakhstan, the Middle Horde who dominated the northeast and the Junior Horde who controlled the west of the country.
By the end of the XVI Century AD, the situation became pressing as the Zhungars, a Mongolian Kalmuk nation of Buddhist creed, started to invade Kazakhstan from the east and the north, by and large acting as China`s proxy. It almost led to the sheer annihilation of the Kazakh nation and its tripartite leadership. In despair, the Khans turned to Russia for help, which eventually came though most of the time slowly and half-heartedly. Under Peter the Great in the early XVIIIth Century, the construction of a defense line in the north of Kazakhstan took off, resulting in the present-day cities of Petropavlov, Pavlodar, Ust-Kamenogorsk and others. It took until the 1860s, however, to incorporate all of present-day Kazakhstan into the Russian Empire. Revolts, mostly over land control, frequently occurred during the XIXth Century, with the last one breaking out in 1916, in the middle of the First World War, over a government war industry recruitment campaign.
KAZAKHSTAN IN MODERN TIMES
The end of the Russian Imperial structure was not the end of Kazakhstan`s integration into its inheritor the Soviet Union. With the Revolution of February 1917, a short-lived independence movement had seen the light. Most of its leaders enhanced the idea of an autonomous republic of Kazakhstan within a democratic Russian Federation. The October Revolution put an end to that outlook and most independence propagators submitted to Stalin`s order. The economic and most of all the agricultural reforms that started in the late 1920s hit Kazakhstan hard and caused widespread famine in which at least a million perished. The purges of the 1930s only added to the ordeal, and it was only in the run-up of the Second World War, when Stalin replaced the USSR`s heavy industry and mining activity to the north of Central Asia, that jobs were created, agriculture revived and some prosperity came back to Kazakhstan. The overall trend continued through the 1940s, as ethnic Koreans, Germans and other suspected fifth-columnists who had been deported to Kazakhstan stayed on and used their skills for the country`s further development.
The peaceful end of the USSR drove Kazakhstan into the status of a fully sovereign state - even though the Kazakhs were the very last to give up the idea of a revival of the Soviet Union almost half a year after the latter had fallen apart. Complicating factors included a multi-ethnic composition of the population, with Kazakhs proper making up for hardly more than half of it, a thinly populated and at the same time immensely vast territory with an incomplete infrastructure. Major clashes, however, did not take place. After a laborious process, a new Constitution was adopted and a new head of state and the two Houses of Parliament were elected under it. Kazakhstan by and large survived the severe economic and industrial crisis following its independence thanks to petroleum exports. Metal exportations came next to it as in the late 1990s most of the mines, abandoned in the wake of independence, were reactivated. From 2000 on, agriculture witnessed a modest revival which nevertheless brought Kazakhstan into the world`s top-10 of grain exporters.
The prosperity on a silver plate, thanks to high commodity prices on world markets, caused a financial bubble which resulted in a wave of speculative development, particularly in the real estate sector and the importation of utility and luxury goods. It allowed the rise of tycoons, a Kazakh variant of the Russian "oligarch" phenomenon. It also allowed the government to move the capital from Almaty to Astana in the central north of the country, resulting in yet another building boom. It all contributed to the fact that in the end Kazakhstan was to be hit hard when the global financial setback triggered by the American subprime collapse set in. Over the current year, an economic contraction is expected by most global financial institutions. To recover, it is bound to take another couple of years at best. But it has not prevented the establishment of a solid national econnomy driven by constructive coexistence and collaboration between state and private structures, which is the best option for Kazakhstan to work on a sustainable future for upcoming generations.
The most neutral expression to describe Kazakhstan’s form of state is that of a presidential democracy. The President, re-elected in 1999 following an amendment in the Constitution in October 1998, has been granted far-reaching rights and authority. He is the supreme head of state and first state servant at the same time. He appoints the government, the Prime Minister in accordance with Parliament, and has influence on the composition of the Senate. In case of a vote of no confidence against the government by the legislative power, he can dissolve Parliament. The head of the state auditor’s office is appointed by him. The President has the right to present bills and decrees and decides on whether or not to hold referendums. Besides, he is also the chief commander of the armed forces, has the right to appoint their leadership and suspend it from service, and can proclaim the state of emergency in the country.
After independence was obtained back in 1991, the country for the first time entered the international arena as a self-supporting actor. In its foreign politics, Kazakhstan, which by its geographic location on the Eurasian continent and its wealth in raw materials finds itself in the midst of a domain full of tension, maintains a position of political and military neutrality and non-interference.
The USA is among the many players who try to gain influence in the region. As for Russia, being the largest former Soviet republic, it demands, also under the present conditions, a fair share in Kazakhstan’s wealth in raw materials; besides, Russian influence should also serve to grant protection to the still numerous Russian population in the country.
The European Union concentrates its presence on assistance and training programmes, and therefore due to this discrete attitude enjoys a high level of respect in Kazakhstan.
Grand neighbour China is playing an increasingly important role. The most striking example is the ongoing migration of more than 40 million Chinese into the province of Zhin-Yang, the region bordering Kazakhstan. The Chinese government is most of all concerned with the neutralisation of the Muslim Uygur and exiled Kazakh in this region. Many Kazakhs watch this population concentration on yonder side of their border with discomfort. Within a short time, a mass of people will live here that represents three times the number of Kazakhstan’s entire population. Potential conflict-triggering issues are in place - one should but think of the use of water, which first of all can result in the draining of the Ili and Black Irtysh rivers.
Other Asian and Eurasian countries such as Turkey, Iran, India and South-Korea are mainly active in Kazakhstan on an economic-political level, with shares in investments from those countries increasing by the year.
Within the framework of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), the founding document of which was signed in Almaty on December 21, 1991, the country gives active contributions to the integration of the former USSR member states. Within the CIS there is a number of smaller economic, social, military and ecological associations, of which Kazakhstan is a member, like for instance the Eurasian Economic Community, originating from the common Customs Union between Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.
Kazakhstan is an active member of the United Nations. At the UNO General Assembly in October 1992, President Nazarbayev took the initiative for a conference for cooperation and confidence-building in Asia. Many states followed the call, and are at present members of the conference, the declared goal of which is the prevention of conflicts in Asia.
As a member of the Shanghai Organisation of Cooperation which was founded in 1996 as a result of border negotiations with China, Kazakhstan together with superpowers Russia and China as well as with neighbours Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan is engaged in security and cooperation in the region, an effective platform in the struggle against international terrorism and determination of conflict-free borderlines. The latter, awkward issue can be traced back to the Soviet policy of drawing frontier demarcations based on economic considerations in Middle Asia. Today, as the one-time administrative borders between Soviet republics have become state borders and interests such as access to subsoil water resources determine international politics, much sensitivity is required in the process of defining terms of agreement of border demarcations. Since 2002, the borderline demarcation between Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan respectively can be considered settled, and since 2004 the one between Kazakhstan and Russia has been mutually recognised.