TheKazakh Soviet Socialist Republic, also known asSoviet Kazakhstan, theKazakh SSR,KSSR, or simplyKazakhstan, was one of thetranscontinentalconstituent republics of theSoviet Union (USSR) from 1936 to 1991. Located in northernCentral Asia, it was created on 5 December 1936 from theKazakh ASSR, anautonomous republic of theRussian SFSR.

Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic[1] Қазақ Советтік Социалистік Республикасы (Kazakh) Казахская Советская Социалистическая Республика (Russian)
1936–1991
Flag (1953–1991) State emblem (1978–1991)
Motto: "Барлық елдердің пролетарлары, бірігіңдер!" "Barlyq elderdıñ proletarlary, bırıgıñder!"(transliteration) "Proletarians of all countries, unite!"
Anthem: "Қазақ Советтік Социалистік Республикасының мемлекеттік гимны" "State Anthem of the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic"
Location of Kazakhstan (red) within theSoviet Union
Status	Soviet socialist republic
Capital	Alma-Ata
Largest cities	Karaganda Pavlodar Shymkent Semipalatinsk Nikolsk
Official languages	Kazakh ·Russian
Minority languages	Uzbek ·Uyghur ·Tatar ·Kyrgyz ·Azerbaijani ·Korean
Religion	State atheism
Demonym(s)	Kazakh Soviet
Government	UnitaryMarxist-Leninistone-partySovietsocialist republic (1936–1990) Unitarypresidential republic (1990–1991)
First Secretary
• 1936–1938 (first)	Levon Mirzoyan
• 1991 (last)[2]	Nursultan Nazarbayev
Head of state
• 1936–1937 (first)	Uzakbai Kulymbetov
• 1990 (last)	Nursultan Nazarbayev
Head of government
• 1936–1937 (first)	Uraz Isayev
• 1991(Last)	Sergey Tereshchenko
Legislature	Supreme Soviet
History
• Elevation to a Union Republic	5 December 1936
• Jeltoqsan riots	16 December 1986
• Sovereignty declared	25 October 1990
• RenamedRepublic of Kazakhstan	10 December 1991
• Independence declared	16 December 1991
• Independence recognised	26 December 1991
HDI (1991)	0.684 medium
Currency	Soviet rouble (Rbl) (SUR)
Time zone	(UTC+4 to +6)
Calling code	+7 31/32/330/33622
ISO 3166 code	SU
Internet TLD	.su
Preceded by Succeeded by Kazakh ASSR Kazakhstan
Today part of	Kazakhstan

At 2,717,300 square kilometres (1,049,200 sq mi) in area, it was the second-largest republic in the USSR, after theRussian SFSR. Its capital wasAlma-Ata (today known as Almaty). During its existence as a Soviet Socialist Republic, it was ruled by theCommunist Party of the Kazakh SSR (QKP).

On 25 October 1990, the Supreme Soviet of the Kazakh SSR declared its sovereignty on its soil.QKP first secretaryNursultan Nazarbayev waselectedpresident in April of that year – a role he remained in until 2019.

The Kazakh SSR was renamed theRepublic of Kazakhstan on 10 December 1991, which declared its independence six days later, as the last republic to secede from the USSR on 16 December 1991. The Soviet Union was officiallydissolved on 26 December 1991 by theSoviet of the Republics. The Republic of Kazakhstan, the legal successor to theKazakh SSR, was admitted to theUnited Nations on 2 March 1992.

The republic was named after theKazakh people,Turkic-speaking formernomads who sustained a powerfulkhanate in the region beforeRussian and later Soviet domination.

Established on 26 August 1920, it was initially calledKirghiz ASSR (Kirghiz Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic) and was a part of theRussian SFSR. On 15–19 April 1925, it was renamedKazak ASSR (subsequentlyKazakh ASSR) and on 5 December 1936 it was elevated to the status of a Union-level republic,Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic.

In September 1920, the Ninth Soviet Congress of Turkestan called for the deportation of illegal settler colonists in the Northern parts of the country.^[3] The proposed land reform began in 1921 and lasted until 1927,targeting Russian settlers, Ukrainians and Cossacks in the region and from 1920 to 1922, Kazakhstan's Russian population dropped from approximately 2.7 to 2.2 million.^[3] A further 15,000 Cossack settler colonists were deported between 1920 and 1921 as part of the process of returning control and sovereignty of land to the Kazakhs.^[4]

On 19 February 1925Filipp Goloshchyokin was appointed First Secretary of the Communist Party in the newly created Kazakh Autonomous Socialist Soviet Republic. From 1925 to 1933 he ran the Kazakh ASSR with virtually no outside interference. He played a prominent part in the construction of the Turkestan-Siberia railway, which was constructed to open up Kazakhstan's mineral wealth.

After Joseph Stalin ordered the forced collectivization of agriculture throughout the Soviet Union, Goloshchyokin ordered that Kazakhstan's largely nomadic population was to be forced to settle in collective farms. This caused the deadlyKazakh famine of 1930–1933 in Kazakhstan which killed between 1 and 2 million people.^[5]

In 1937 the first majordeportation of an ethnic group in the Soviet Union began, theremoval of the Korean population from theRussian Far East to Kazakhstan. Over 170,000 people were forcibly relocated to the Kazakh andUzbek SSRs.^[6]

Kazakhstani Korean scholarGerman Kim assumes that one of the reasons for this deportation may have been Stalin's intent to oppress ethnic minorities that could have posed a threat to his socialist system or he may have intended to consolidate the border regions withChina and Japan by using them as political bargaining chips.^[7] Additionally, historian Kim points out that 1.7 million people perished in theKazakh famine of 1931–33, while an additional one million people fled from the Republic, causing a labour shortage in that area, which Stalin sought to compensate for by deporting other ethnicities there.^[7]

Over one million political prisoners from various parts of the Soviet Union passed through theKaraganda Corrective Labor Camp (KarLag) between 1931 and 1959, with an unknown number of deaths.^[8]

During the 1950s and 1960s, Soviet citizens were urged to settle in theVirgin Lands of the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic. The influx ofimmigrants, mostlyRussians, skewed the ethnic mixture and enabled non-Kazakhs to outnumber natives. As a result, the use of the Kazakh language declined but has started to experience a revival since independence, both as a result of its resurging popularity in law and business and the growing proportion of Kazakhs. The other nationalities includedUkrainians,Germans,Jews,Belarusians,Koreans and others; Germans at the time of independence formed about 8% of the population, the largest concentration ofGermans in the entire Soviet Union. Kazakh independence has caused many of these newcomers to emigrate.

Following the dismissal ofDinmukhamed Konayev, the First Secretary of theCommunist Party of Kazakhstan by the lastSoviet general secretary,Mikhail Gorbachev, riots broke out for four days between 16 and 19 December 1986 known asJeltoqsan by student demonstrators in Brezhnev Square in the capital city,Alma-Ata. Approximately 168–200 civilians were killed in the uprising. The events then spilled over toShymkent,Pavlodar,Karaganda andTaldykorgan.

On 25 March 1990, Kazakhstan held its first elections withNursultan Nazarbayev, the chairman of the Supreme Sovietelected as its first president. Later that year on 25 October, it then declared sovereignty. The republic participated in areferendum to preserve theunion in a different entity with 94.1% voted in favour. It did not happen when hardline communists inMoscow tookcontrol of the government in August. Nazarbayev then condemned the failed coup.

As a result of those events, the Kazakh SSR was renamed to theRepublic of Kazakhstan on 10 December 1991. It declared independence on 16 December^[9] (the fifth anniversary ofJeltoqsan), becoming the last Soviet constituency to secede. Its capital was the site of theAlma-Ata Protocol on 21 December 1991 that dissolved the Soviet Union and formed theCommonwealth of Independent States in its place which Kazakhstan joined. The Soviet Union officially ceased to exist as a sovereign state on 26 December 1991 and Kazakhstan became an internationally recognized independent state.

On 28 January 1993, the newConstitution of Kazakhstan was officially adopted.

According to the 1897 census, the earliest census taken in the region,Kazakhs constituted 81.7% of the total population (3,392,751 people) within the territory of contemporary Kazakhstan. TheRussian population in Kazakhstan was 454,402, or 10.95% of total population; there were 79,573Ukrainians (1.91%); 55,984Tatars (1.34%); 55,815Uyghurs (1.34%); 29,564Uzbeks (0.7%); 11,911Moldovans (0.28%); 4,888Dungans (0.11%); 2,883Turkmens; 2,613Germans; 2,528Bashkirs; 1,651Jews; and 1,254Poles.

The most significant factors that shaped the ethnic composition of the population of Kazakhstan were the 1920s and 1930sfamines. According to different estimates of the effects of theKazakh famine of 1930–1933, up to 40% of Kazakhs (indigenous ethnic group) either died of starvation or fled the territory.^[11] Official government census data report the contraction of Kazakh population from 3.6 million in 1926, to 2.3 million in 1939.^[12][13]

Upon the start of theSecond World War, many large factories were relocated to the Kazakh SSR.

TheSemipalatinsk Nuclear Test Site andBaikonur Cosmodrome were also built here.

After the war, theVirgin Lands Campaign was started in 1953. This was led byNikita Khrushchev, with the goal of developing the vast lands of the republic and helping to boost Soviet agricultural yields. However it did not work as promised, the campaign was eventually abandoned in the 1960s.^[14]

In the early days of the Soviet Union,Kazakh culture was both developed and restrained, and later many Kazakh cultural figures were imprisoned, exiled, or killed inJoseph Stalin's purges. However, after theStalinist era,Nikita Khrushchev's efforts to reinvigorateinternationalism and furtherly weaken Kazakh culture were controversial in the Kazakh SSR.^[15] Kazakhs viewed his internationalist goals as a call for "Russification".^[15]

Beginning in 1937, the Soviet Government began a series of forced deportations of ethnic minorities, such as Soviet Koreans, the Volga Germans and various other minorities to the Kazakh SSR, a programme that ended only with Stalin's death in 1953.

• Cameron, Sarah (2018).The Hungry Steppe: Famine, Violence, and the Making of Soviet Kazakhstan. Cornell University Press.ISBN 978-1501730436online review.

• Kazakhstan: Seven Year Plan for Prosperity byDinmukhamed Konayev, a 1958 Soviet propaganda booklet

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