Kazakhstan

Kazakhstan is the world’s largest landlocked country and the world’s ninth-largest country in terms of land area. It is located between Central Asia and Eastern Europe and borders Russia, China, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan. Kazakhs, organized in three juz, ancestor-defined groups occupying particular territories, emerged as a distinct entity during the 16th century. Russians, unwilling to tolerate the border encroachments of nomads, began advancing on the Kazakh steppe during the 18th century, and by the mid-19th century, all the area became part of the Russian Empire.

After the 1917 revolution, the territory became Soviet, and in 1936 it was declared the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic. After the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Kazakhstan declared its independence. In 1998, a newly built city, Astana, replaced the largest ...