Soviet Kazakhstan

The Kirghiz Autonomous Socialist Soviet Republic, founded in 1920, was renamed the Kazakh Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic in 1925, when the Soviet government officially distinguished the Kazakhs from the Kyrgyz. Although the Russian Empire recognised the ethnic difference between the two groups, it called them both "Kyrgyz" to avoid confusion between the terms "Kazakhs" and "Cossacks". At the end of the 1920s, the Soviet dictator Josef Stalin had the Kazakh ruling class executed or deported to gulags. The Soviets launched a programme of forced sedentarisation and expropriation of the nomadic population as part of dekulakisation and deprived the nomads of the livestock they needed to survive.The resulting famine cost around 1.3 to 1.5 million lives between 1929 and 1933.^[10] In the 21st century, this catastrophe led to discussions in Kazakhstan as to whether the famine constituted genocide. The famine and the fact that Stalin had numerous groups classified as politically unreliable deported to Kazakhstan (such as the Kazakhstan Germans) changed the demographic composition of the country permanently. The proportion of ethnic Kazakhs fell from 58.5% in 1926 to 37.8% in 1939.^[11] Another demographic shock came with the Second World War, when another tenth of the population died.

After the end of the war, nuclear weapons tests were carried out at the Semipalatinsk test site from 1949 onwards.^[12] The Kazakh SSR was the second largest union republic within the USSR and had a comparably high level of economic development thanks to its large deposits of raw materials (including oil, coal, natural gas and uranium). Kazakhstan also played an important role in the Soviet space program thanks to the Baikonur Cosmodrome. However, most of the profits from the raw material deposits flowed to other republics of the Union. The Kazakhs remained a minority in Kazakhstan and most of the higher economic and technical positions were held by Russians. When Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in 1985, Kazakh nationalism increased and the Sheltoksan protests broke out in 1986. In March 1991, 95% of the population voted in the 1991 Soviet Union referendum in favour of the Kazakh SSR remaining part of the USSR and the adoption of a new union constitution, which would have granted autonomy to the Soviet republics. After the failed August coup in Moscow, the Soviet Union collapsed and the Kazakh SSR was the last union republic to declare its independence in December 1991.^[13]

When the USSR dissolved in 1991, it left a Soviet biological weapons program and a Soviet nuclear weapons program, Semipalatinsk Test Site, in Russia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Ukraine. Seeing a large peace dividend, the Bush administration passed such legislation as the Soviet Nuclear Threat Reduction Act of 1991 and over the next 15 years spent more than $400 million on the Nunn–Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction and Biological Threat Reduction program,^{[14][page needed]} of which the Stepnogorsk Scientific and Technical Institute for Microbiology was a large recipient.

Putin's 2013 comments on Kazakh statehood

In 2013, President Vladimir Putin raised controversy when he claimed that “Kazakhs had never had statehood”, in what seemed to be an apparent response to growing nationalism among Kazakhstanis.^{[16][17][18][19][20][21]} Putin's remarks on the matter led to a severe response from President Nazarbayev, who announced that the country would celebrate the 550th anniversary of the Kazakh Khanate, which effectively refutes Putin's claim that a Kazakh nation has never existed. He also threatened to withdraw from the Eurasian Economic Union, saying that the independence of the country is his "most precious treasure" and that Kazakhs "will never surrender" their independence.^[22][23][24]

In December 2020, Putin's derogatory comments were repeated by at least two Russian lawmakers.^[25]

2022 anti-government protests

At the request of Tokayev government, Russia participated in the CSTO Peacekeeping Force effort to quell the anti-government protests on 6 January 2022.^[26][27][28] The Russian forces included units of the Airborne Troops and the air transport of the Russian Aerospace Forces.^[27] On 13 January the CSTO forces began to withdraw.^[29] On 19 January the withdrawal was complete.^[30][31] There are roughly 1,000 Russian troops in Kazakhstan according to Ukraine's Main Directorate of Intelligence of Ukraine's Ministry of Defense.^[32]

2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine

Kazakhstan–Russia relations deteriorated greatly upon the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Kazakh leadership including Kazakh Foreign Minister Mukhtar Tleuberdi did not condemn the Russian invasion and abstained on the UN vote to condemn it, but at the same time they refused to recognize the Russian states of Donetsk People's Republic and Luhansk People's Republic.^[33]

In addition to sending humanitarian aid to Ukraine, the Kazakh military increased spending and training.^[34] Although Russia never showed any particular interest for Northern Kazakhstan, a region with a sizeable Russian minority, there is still the fear the same arguments used in Ukraine can be used to bolster Russian irredentism in the North.

Russia suspended shipments of Kazakh oil after Tokayev’s statements at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, where he stated that Kazakhstan considered the DPR and LPR as “quasi-state entities” and would not recognize them.^[35] On the other hand, in spite of some tensions, Kazakhstan's relations with Russia remain strong and mostly friendly, as shown by Tokayev's visit to Moscow in November 2022.^[36]

Following the 2022 Russian mobilization, Kazakhstan received a large influx of Russians leaving to avoid being conscripted to fight in Ukraine. President Tokayev promised that his government would help Russians who were leaving "because of the current hopeless situation", and that it was "a political and a humanitarian issue."^[37]

In 2022, Kazakhstan agreed to share the personal data of exiled anti-war Russians with the Russian government. In September 2022, Kazakh authorities detained a Russian journalist who was wanted on charges of "discrediting" the Russian military.^[38] In December 2022, Kazakhstan deported a Russian citizen who fled mobilization.^[39] In January 2023, Kazakhstan announced they were tightening visa rules, a move that is expected to make it more difficult for Russians to remain in the country.^[40][41]

In September 2023, Kazakhstani President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev stated that Kazakhstan would follow the sanctions regime against Russia.^[42]

In January 2024, the head of the Kazakh diaspora in Moscow, Polat Dzhamalov, was charged by Russian authorities with spreading "false information" about the Russian armed forces after he shared a senior Russian official's alleged estimate of Russian military deaths in a Facebook post.^[43]