Kazakhstan is a country in Asia, known for vast steppes and the Tian Shan mountains. It has a population of nearly 21 million, making it the 65th largest country in the world. Its capital is Astana. Kazakhstan has a resource-rich economy with strong oil and mining sectors.
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Kazakhstan is a nation in Central Asia and the world’s biggest landlocked area in terms of land area. Kazakhstan is bordered by Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, China, Russia, and the Caspian Sea.
The ethnic majority of the country is the ethnic Kazakhs (63.1%), although there are a large number of other ethnicities present as well, such as ethnic Russians (23.7%), Uzbeks (2.9%), Ukrainians (2.1%), Uygurs (1.4%), Tatars (1.3%) and Germans (1.1%).
Some minority groups in Kazakhstan, including Germans, Ukrainians, Chechens, Koreans, and Meskhetian Turks were deported to Kazakhstan in the 1930s and 1940s by Stalin as Russian political opponents.
At the end of the 1980s, ethnic Russians were at almost 38% of the population while Kazakhstanis were in a majority in just 7 of the country’s 20 regions. There were also 1 million Germans in Kazakhstan prior to 1991. After the Soviet Union dissolved, most emigrated to Germany. Emigration of Russians and Germans returned indigenous Kazakhs to a majority in the country.
Islam is the most prominent religion in Kazakhstan, with just over 70% of the population practicing it. Within the Muslim population, Sunni and Hanafi, are the most practiced schools of thought, although there are also small communities of Shia and Ahmadi. An additional 26% of the population practices some form of Christianity (mostly Eastern Orthodox or Roman Catholic), and the remaining 4% either practice a religion aside from Islam or Christianity or have no religion at all.
The economy in Kazakhstan has been doing extremely well since around the turn of the century, going from a low-middle to upper-middle economy in just 20 years, and the GDP per capita has been multiplied by 6 during the same time period. All of this has lead to Kazakhstan currently being the largest and strongest economy in central Asia. The strongest sectors of their economy are energy, industry, and services such as technology, retail, and tourism.
In the late 1800s, thousands of people from both Ukraine and Russia were brought into to settle the land that is modern-day Kazakhstan. By 1916 the people wanted to break out from Soviet rule and began a rebellion that killed 150,000 and displaced another 300,000. Ultimately they were unsuccessful in achieving autonomy at this point and the nation was an autonomous republic of the USSR for many years to come. Throughout the 1920s and 30s, a program was begun to begin industrializing and setting the nation up to collectivize agriculture, but the plan was ill-formed and more than one million people died of starvation.
Still under Russian rule, hundreds of thousand were forcibly moved to Kazakhstan from Korea, Germany, and Uzbekistan. Between 1954-1962 an additional 2 million Russians were moved into the area in an attempt to further develop the land. At this point, only 30% of the population were ethnic Kazakhs. After many years of unrest, Kazakhstan gained full independence from Russia in 1991.
