the cultivation of improved agricultural crops, and even attempted to emancipate women from Muslim patriarchal control. Kaufman’s means to achieve these ambitious goals were meager, because of the lack of sufficient funds and the paucity of Russian colonial officials. Also, he feared that radical reforms would stir up discontent among his subjects. His fourteen-year period as governor-general brought few substantial changes to social and economic conditions in Turkestan. However, it ended the era of rule by Turkish khans and left Russia firmly in control of its new colony. See also: TURKESTAN
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Barooshian, Voohan. (1993). V. V. Vereshchagin: Artist at War. Gainsville: University Press of Florida. Brower, Daniel. (2002). Turkestan and the Fate of the Russian Empire. Richmond, UK: Curzon Press. MacKenzie, David. (1967). “Kaufman of Turkestan: An Assessment of His Administration (1867-1881).” Slavic Review 25 (2): 265- 285.
Kazakhstan, a Eurasian region inhabited since the mid-1400s by the Kazakh people, comprises an immense stretch of steppe that runs for almost 3,200 kilometers (2,000 miles) from the Lower Volga and Caspian Sea in the west to the Altai and Tien Shan mountain ranges in the east and southeast. In the early twenty-first century, the Kazakh republic serves as a bridge between Russian Siberia in the north and the Central Asian republics of Kirghizia/Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkme-nia/Turkmenistan in the south. To the east it is bounded by the region of the People’s Republic of China that is known as Xinjiang (Sinkiang) or Chinese Turkestan. With an area of some 2,71,500 square kilometers (1,050,000 square miles), Kazakhstan is almost twice the size of Alaska. As the Kazakh SSR it was the largest republic in the USSR next to the Russian Federation and was sometimes known as the Soviet Texas. The climate is severely continental, with January’s mean temperatures varying from -18 degrees Celsius (0 degrees Fahrenheit) in the north to -3 degrees C (27 degrees F) in the south, and July’s from 19 degrees C (66 degrees F) in the north to 28-30 degrees C (83-86 degrees F) in the south. Annual precipitation in the north averages 300 millimeters (11.7 inches), in the mountains 1,600 millimeters (62 inches), and in the desert regions less than 100 millimeters (3.9 inches). Fortunately, the region is one of inland drainage with a number of rivers, the Irtysh, Ili, Chu, and Syr Darya included, that flow into the Aral Sea and Lake Balkhash. This permits the extensive irrigation that now threatens the Aral Sea with extinction.
Originally peopled by the Sacae or Scythians, by the end of the first century B.C.E. the area of Kazakhstan was populated by nomadic Turkic and Mongol tribes. Known to the Chinese as the Usun, they were the ancestors of the later Kazakhs. First, however, these tribes formed a succession of loose, tribal-based confederations known as khaganates (later khanates). Of these the most powerful was the Turgesh (or Tiurkic) of the sixth century C.E. Other nomadic empires followed its collapse in the 700s, beginning with the Karakhanids who ruled southern Kazakhstan or Semireche from the 900s to the 1100s. They were replaced by the Karakitai (Kara Khitai), who succumbed to the Mongols during 1219-1221. Subsequently these tribes were included in the semiautonomous White Horde, which was established by Orda, the eldest son of Genghis
KAZAKHSTAN AND KAZAKHS
Public square in Astana, the new post-Soviet capital of Kazakhstan. © LIBA TAYLOR/CORBIS Khan’s eldest son Dzhuchi, as a component of the more extensive Mongol Golden Horde. Having established itself between the Altai Mountains and Syr Darya River, the White Horde quickly gained control of Semireche and East Turkestan as well. But if its rulers were descendants of the Mongol royal line, most of its populace were ethnically Turkic.
With the collapse of that empire, these tribes at first were subject to the Nogai Tatars, formerly of the Golden Horde, and then of the Uzbeks. By 1447 the latter had conquered the territory between the Syr Darya and Irtysh Rivers, the inhabitants of whom became known as the Uzbek Kazakhs. Yet the White Horde lingered, civil strife and fights for power were constant, and in 1465 two of its princes, the brothers Janibek (Dzhanibek) and Gerei, led a number of Turkic tribes in a migration southeast to Mogulstan (Mogolistan), which once was part of the domain of Genghis Khan’s second son Chagatai, and which now was an independent state. They were welcomed by its ruler and given lands on the Chu and Talas Rivers, where they formed a powerful Kazakh khanate. By the late 1400s this had extended its power over much of the formerly Uzbek-controlled Desht-i Kipchak, or Kipchak Steppe. Over the next few decades most of the Kazakh tribes-the Kipchaks, Usuns, Dulats, and Naimans included-were united briefly under Kasym Khan (1511-1518). He extended their power southward while giving his subjects a period of relative calm. Internal strife then reemerged after his death, and the Kazakh state began disintegrating as its components joined with other tribes arriving from the collapsing Nogai Horde. Having merged during the 1600s they formed themselves into three nomadic confederations known as “hordes” or zhuzy (dzhuzy): the Ulu (Large, Great, or Senior) in Semireche, the Kishiu (Small, Lesser, or Junior) between the Aral and Caspian Seas, and the Orta (Middle) in the central steppe. But taken together, they were now an ethnically distinct people, known to the Russians since the latter 1500s as the Kir-giz-Kazakhs, with a social system based on the families and clans that continued to influence Kazakh politics into the twenty-first century.
KAZAKHSTAN AND KAZAKHS
A woman lights candles during a Russian Orthodox ceremony in northern Kazakhstan, a region heavily populated by ethnic Russians. © AFP/CORBIS
By the mid-1600s the Kazakhs were again under pressure, this time from the Jungarian (Dzhun-garian) Oriots or Kalmyks who attacked westward from Mongolia. Divided as they were, the Kazakhs at first had difficulty in opposing the invaders, and the conflict dragged on into the 1700s. Although the Kazakhs then did unite briefly to win some major victories, the menace only lifted after the Manchus decisively vanquished the Oriot-Kalmyks in 1758. In the interim, the Kazakhs had drifted gradually but steadily into the orbit of Imperial Russia. Consequently, some leaders began seeking support from the Russians in their struggles. Thus the khans and other leaders of the Small Horde in 1731, of the Middle Horde in 1740, and of part of the Great Horde in 1742, agreed to accept Russian suzerainty. But matters were not that straightforward, and while Russian scholars generally regard such treaties as evidence of the Kazakhs’ “voluntary union” with their empire, subsequent Kazakh historians disagree. They argue that this was a mere tactic in a larger game of playing Russia off against Manchu China, maintain that the khans lacked the requisite authority to make such concessions, and as evidence point to the frequent cases of resistance to and uprisings against the Russian colonizers. A textbook appearing in the new Republic of Kazakhstan charges that the tsarist authorities even encouraged the Oriot-Kalmyk attacks as a means of driving the Kazakhs into Russian arms. So, as elsewhere, history has become a major weapon in modern Kazakhstan’s bitter ethnic and nationalist debates.
From 1730 to 1840 St. Petersburg’s rule was exercised through the governor-general of Orenburg. As Russian expansion southward became progressively more organized and effective, the authorities were able to abolish the traditional Kazakh
KAZAKHSTAN AND KAZAKHS
N
* RUSy.SIA Omsk W ~?щ? ? E
Petropavl (Petropavlovsky)C
^Qostanay -T*Rudnyy Torghay Plateau Orenburg Aqt?be^ 9 K?shetau ^^
Pavlodarf ibas ftAstana
Oral? (Ural sk) Aksay Furmanovo
Khromtau
Rubtsovsk ^?. Semey ~Oskemen •Qaraghandy (Karaganda) Kazak Uplands Alga Emba Ozero4 Zaysan
V..
Zaysan Casp'an Depression Ayaguz Chelkar- Karsakpay Zhezqazghan • • _ (Dzhezkazgan ~ lAtyrau (Guryev) _ (Dzhezkazgan) Kul'sary Aral'sk _Novokazalinsk Saryshagan Betpak Dala Balqash K?l~r~) ^ { Ozero Alakol' Taldyqorghan CHINA ^* Ft. Shevchenko Aral Leninsk^yj ^,. Ustyurt ( (Л (Tyurataml -Burylbaytal «* Qyzylorda I ( J) Sea \'У^'''-'')
