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Kazakstan
Forming the Modern Nation
The present-day Kazaks became a recognizable group in the mid-fifteenth
century, when clan leaders broke away from Abul Khayr, leader
of the Uzbeks, to seek their own territory in the lands of Semirech'ye,
between the Chu and Talas rivers in present-day southeastern Kazakstan.
The first Kazak leader was Khan Kasym (r. 1511-23), who united
the Kazak tribes into one people. In the sixteenth century, when
the Nogai Horde and Siberian khanates broke up, clans from each
jurisdiction joined the Kazaks. The Kazaks subsequently separated
into three new hordes: the Great Horde, which controlled Semirech'ye
and southern Kazakstan; the Middle Horde, which occupied north-central
Kazakstan; and the Lesser Horde, which occupied western Kazakstan.
Russian traders and soldiers began to appear on the northwestern
edge of Kazak territory in the seventeenth century, when Cossacks
established the forts that later became the cities of Oral (Ural'sk)
and Atyrau (Gur'yev). Russians were able to seize Kazak territory
because the khanates were preoccupied by Kalmyk invaders of Mongol
origin, who in the late sixteenth century had begun to move into
Kazak territory from the east. Forced westward in what they call
their Great Retreat, the Kazaks were increasingly caught between
the Kalmyks and the Russians. In 1730 Abul Khayr, one of the khans
of the Lesser Horde, sought Russian assistance. Although Abul
Khayr's intent had been to form a temporary alliance against the
stronger Kalmyks, the Russians gained permanent control of the
Lesser Horde as a result of his decision. The Russians conquered
the Middle Horde by 1798, but the Great Horde managed to remain
independent until the 1820s, when the expanding Quqon (Kokand)
Khanate to the south forced the Great Horde khans to choose Russian
protection, which seemed to them the lesser of two evils.
The Kazaks began to resist Russian control almost as soon as
it became complete. The first mass uprising was led by Khan Kene
(Kenisary Kasimov) of the Middle Horde, whose followers fought
the Russians between 1836 and 1847. Khan Kene is now considered
a Kazak national hero.
Data as of March 1996
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