An ethnic melting pot
The intermingling of populations, with the births and declines of empires in the region, and centuries of incessant traffic along the Silk Road, have resulted in Kazakhstan, as in other Central Asian countries, having a heterogeneous population, made up of numerous minorities, located in one part of the country or spread across its entire surface. Thus, at the time of independence, Russians accounted for almost 30% of the population of Kazakhstan, while Uzbeks, who share a long border with Kazakhstan, constituted a minority equivalent to 3% of the population, or almost 4 million individuals. Ukrainians, Koreans, Uyghurs, Tatars and Volga Germans are other minorities among Kazakhstan's hundred or so ethnic groups. At the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries, minorities still accounted for 46.5% of Kazakhstan's total population.
Reflections of administrative divisions
As in neighboring republics, Kazakhstan has retained the administrative divisions drawn up by Moscow since independence. The country is thus divided into 14 oblasts, or regions, the largest of which is Karaganda, in the center of the country. But the imbalance between the surface area covered by these oblasts and the weight of the population living there is flagrant. The Karaganda oblast alone covers an area of 428,000 km2 (the size of Iraq!), but has a population of just 1.3 million: a density of 3 inhabitants per km2, one of the lowest in the world, and half the national average.
In addition, three cities have special status and are managed as regions in their own right: Almaty, the capital of the Soviet era, Astana, the new capital since 1998, and Baikonur, home to the cosmodrome built by the Soviets during the conquest of space. Astana and Almaty alone are home to 3.2 million people, or 16% of the country's population. The distribution of the population also reveals a certain north-south divide. The population of Russian origin is concentrated in the north of the country, while the Kazakhs occupy the south. It was for this reason that President Nazarbayev, very soon after independence, decided to leave Almaty, in the extreme south of the country, to set up the capital in Astana and avoid the emergence of separatist currents that might have claimed a link with Russia. The highest population density is found in the south of the country, in the Chymkent and Almaty regions, and in the north-east, in the Pavlodar region. The least densely populated areas are logically located in the steppe, in the Aktobe region, and around Aktau, towards the Caspian.
A trend towards uniformity
In the years following independence, much of the Russian population in the north of the country returned to Russia. This is one of the reasons why President Nazarbayev moved his capital to Astana, closer to the regions where Russians were in the majority. Nevertheless, Russians, who accounted for over 50% of the country's population in the mid-20th century and still numbered 9.5 million at the time of independence in 1991, represent only 30% of Kazakhstan's population at the end of the 20th century, and less than 20% in 2023, compared with 68% Kazakhs. This is the result of a standardization of Kazakh culture and identity, even though the country officially advocates diversity and respect for all ethnic groups. In fact, a national preference has always operated since independence, and is now reflected in the composition of the population. In the public sphere, in administrations and in positions of responsibility, non-Kazakhs know that they have little chance of advancing or finding a place. This situation is particularly difficult for Russians who, although in the minority, are still numerous but feel unrepresented in society.
Two official languages
Kazakhstan, like its neighbor Kyrgyzstan, has retained Russian as its official language, and is content to confer the same status on Kazakh. The country thus has two official languages, but in practice, until the 2010s, Russian remained largely over-represented in all spheres of the country: economic, political, media... The linguistic variants of Kazakh, resulting in different pronunciations across the country, are largely erased when Russian is spoken: a convenience which explains why Russian comprehension remained for a long time superior to that of Kazakh throughout the country. In the 2010s, the situation is reversing: most school teaching is now in Kazakh, and both television channels and the Internet make extensive use of the national language. In the south and east of the country, many minorities communicate with each other in their own language (Uzbek, Korean, German, etc.). While some of these languages, belonging to the Turkic language family, make it possible to get along with Kazakhs to a greater or lesser extent, it is still often easier to communicate in Russian.
Since the end of the 2010s, considerable efforts have been made, particularly in school education, to ensure that as many people as possible learn English as early as possible.
Respect for diversity
Despite this unofficial rule of national preference, some minorities find Kazakhstan a welcoming land. Such is the case of the Uyghurs, who number around 200,000 in Kazakhstan, or 1% of the country's population. Mainly concentrated in the south-east of the country, close to their native Xinjiang, the Uyghurs have a special status, as the very existence of their language and culture is threatened by the Sinicization of their homeland. In Almaty, there is even a Uyghur theater. The exiled representatives of this Muslim minority in China are now the custodians of its cultural heritage. As a result, Kazakhstan's foreign policy and its relations with China are sometimes closely scrutinized by this minority.
