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NATIONAL FLAG AND ANTHEM |
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FLAG: of Kazakhstan is light blue, symbolizing the blue skies of the country and its hopes for the future. On this field is a stylized eagle beneath a golden sun.Eagle means the top of the flight and the purity of intentions, the might and integrity of the country. The sun mean prosperity and development. At the hoist is a complex pattern called a "national ornamentation" - also in gold which symbolizes rich national traditions of Kazakhstan.
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INTRODUCTION |
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Kazakhstan, country in Central Asia, with a small portion in Europe, south of Russia and west of China. The total area is 2,717,300 sq km (1,049,155 sq mi). Kazakhstan is the second-largest member of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), an organization of republics that once were part of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). The capital and largest city is Almaty. In 1994 the parliament announced that the capital would completely move to Astana by the year 2000.
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LAND & RESOURCES |
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Kazakhstan is a vast, generally low-lying plain, fringed by mountains on the east and southeast. Mountainous areas along the border with Kyrgyzstan in the south reach a height of nearly 5000 meters (nearly 16,400 ft); areas near the Caspian Sea, the lowest point in Europe, lie below sea level. Kazakhstan's climate is characterized by great variations in temperature. Throughout the country precipitation is meager. Deserts and semideserts cover more than two-thirds of the surface area.
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POPULATION |
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Kazakhstan has a population (1994 estimate) of 17,267,564. Although they are the single largest ethnic group in Kazakhstan, Kazaks constitute an overall minority in their own country, with 43.2 percent of the total population.
Until recently, Russians, the next largest group, even outnumbered Kazaks in Kazakhstan. The official state language is Kazak, a Turkic language, although Russian is spoken by more than three-fourths of the people.
Many people in Kazakhstan have been exposed to radiation from Soviet nuclear testing. Since independence, no further tests have occurred on Kazak territory, but the long-term health effects are unknown.
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ECONOMY |
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Industry, particularly mining, constitutes the largest branch of the economy. Kazakhstan contains the largest reserves of chromium, tungsten, copper, lead, and zinc ores in the former USSR. Agricultural yields, formerly the basis of the economy, have fluctuated in the 1990s, but Kazakhstan remains a major producer of wheat. In 1994 Kazakhstan signed an agreement that established economic contacts with the European Union (EU). The country's unit of currency is the tenge (66 tenge equal U.S.$1; 1995).
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GOVERNMENT |
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Under a constitution adopted in 1993, an elected president is head of state. The president appoints a prime minister to head the government. In 1995 voters overwhelmingly approved a revised constitution that extends more powers to the president, including the right to dissolve parliament, and also makes the president the head of the Supreme Court. The 1995 constitution restructured the legislature into two chambers: a 47-member upper house, or Senate; and a 67-member lower house, or Majlis.
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HISTORY |
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Territory of Kazakhstan has come to be mastered by man nearly a million years ago. As early as the age of Lower Paleolithic the ancient man settled down on these Karatau lands fit for normal life, rich with game and wild fruit. It is there that they have found ancient settlements of Stone Age. By and by, in the centuries of Middle and Upper Paleolithic the man came to master Central and Eastern Kazakhstan and Mangyshlak area.
As have been shown by excavations of the neolithic settlement Botay in the North Kazakhstan, Kazakhstan constitutes the area of horse-mastering (breeding) and that of formation of nomad civilizations. Archaeologists revealed dwellings, numerous hand-made articles of stone and ivory which present the ancient history and archeology of Kazakhstan in the Stone epoch in an altogether new way.
As early as the Bronze Age, some four millenia ago, the territory of Kazakhstan was inhabited by tribes of the so called Andron and Begazy-Dandybay culture. They were engaged in farming and cattle-breeding, they were fine warriors who handled combat chariots marvelously. To this day we can see images of chariots drawn on rocks where ancient people would arrange their tribal temples and sanctuaries with the firmament as their natural cover. On the surfaces of black cliffs burnt with the sun people would chisel out scenes of dances, images of sun-headed deities, mighty camels and bulls as impersonations of ancient gods.
The region that is now Kazakhstan was settled by Turkic tribes beginning in
about the 8th century and was incorporated in the Mongol Empire of Genghis
Khan in the 13th century. The Kazaks, a mixture of Mongol and Turkic
peoples, emerged in about the 15th century. By 1866, after almost 200 years of
Russian influence, all of present-day Kazakhstan was under Russian control.
In the early 1900s, ethnic strife resulted in the killing of 80,000 Kazaks by
Russians. In the late 1920s Soviet policy under Communist dictator Joseph
Stalin decimated Kazak culture and lifestyle, and hundreds of thousands of
Kazaks were killed or emigrated to China. In 1936 Kazakhstan was admitted to
the USSR as a constituent republic.
In 1990 Nursultan Nazarbayev became president of the Kazakh Soviet Socialist
Republic. Kazakhstan declared its independence in 1991, shortly before the
USSR broke apart. In 1993 Kazakhstan ratified the Nuclear Nonproliferation
Treaty. Subsequently the United States more than tripled its aid to the country.
Referring to a Constitutional Court decision that proclaimed 1994 elections
illegitimate, in 1995 Nazarbayev disbanded the legislature and called for new
elections by midyear, angering legislators. Nazarbayev effectively began ruling
the country by decree until new elections could be called.
In 1996, one month after agreeing to cooperate in the fields of energy,
electricity, and rail transportation, Russian president Boris Yeltsin and President
Nazarbayev reached a preliminary agreement on redistributing the shares of the
Caspian Pipeline Consortium, which plans to build a $1.5-billion pipeline to
export oil and gas from Kazakhstan through Russia to the Black Sea shipping
lanes.
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