PSCRP-BESA Reports No 225 (August 14, 2026)
Kazakhstan is the second-largest state by area (after the Russian Federation) to have emerged as a result of the collapse of the USSR. At the time it gained independence, it was also the only post-Soviet state in which the titular nation constituted a minority. As a result of the large-scale colonization of its territory by non-indigenous populations, predominantly Russians, under the Russian Empire and subsequently the USSR, the share of Kazakhs declined from 81.8% to 30% between the censuses of 1897 and 1959. Thereafter, the proportion of Kazakhs in the population of the Kazakh SSR began to increase slowly, primarily due to higher birth rates among the indigenous population. However, according to the last Soviet census of 1989, Kazakhs still accounted for only 39.7% of the population, while Russians constituted 37.8%. Together with other European, predominantly Russian-speaking ethnic groups—above all Germans (5.82%), Ukrainians (5.4%), Belarusians (1.8%), and Poles (0.36%)—Russians formed a numerical majority. In urban areas, Russians alone, even without counting other Russian-speaking groups, constituted an absolute majority (50.8%), while Kazakhs—who had to a significant extent been Russified linguistically and culturally—accounted for only 21.1%. This ethnic situation contributed to the marginalization of the Kazakh language, which the Russian-speaking population generally did not know, while for the overwhelming majority of Kazakhs Russian was a second language and, in many cases, even their first language. In a number of northern and eastern regions of Kazakhstan, Russians and Russian speakers formed a numerical majority, giving Russian nationalists grounds to advance ideas about incorporating these territories into the Russian Federation.
Nevertheless, the Kazakh elites chose the path of building a Kazakh nation-state and rapidly transforming the country’s ethnic composition. Against this background, Russian nationalists have, not without reason, accused the Kazakh authorities of regarding ethnic Russians as a potential Russian “fifth column” and of building an “ethnocracy”. After three decades of independence, according to the 2021 census, Kazakhs already accounted for 70.35% of the country’s population and, together with related Turkic peoples—Uzbeks (3.2%), Uyghurs (1.51%), Tatars (1.14%), and others—made up more than three-quarters of the population. The share of Russians had fallen to 15.54%, and together with Ukrainians, Germans, Belarusians, and Poles, to no more than 20%. At the same time, the status of the Kazakh language rose significantly, although Russian remains widely spoken in Kazakhstan.
Three main factors contributed to this radical transformation of the ethnic situation:
- Higher birth rates among Kazakhs and other indigenous ethnic groups.
- The emigration of a significant proportion of the Russian-speaking population to the Russian Federation, and of Kazakhstan’s Germans to Germany.
- The arrival of substantial numbers of ethnic Kazakh repatriates from abroad.
The last factor merits particular attention because the repatriation of Kazakhs from abroad was carried out as part of a deliberate state policy and served as an instrument for changing both the ethnic and linguistic situation, since Kazakhs arriving from outside the former USSR generally did not speak Russian. According to official data, from the time Kazakhstan gained independence in 1991 through June 1, 2024, 1,135,700 repatriates arrived in the country (as of July 1, 2026, Kazakhstan’s population was 20,590,589). In addition to post-Soviet states such as Uzbekistan, the Russian Federation, and Turkmenistan, Kazakh repatriates also arrive from China, Mongolia, and elsewhere. At the same time, the Kazakh authorities deliberately resettle repatriates in the country’s northern and eastern regions, where the proportion of the Russian-speaking population is high.
The relocation of the country’s capital in 1997 from Almaty to Tselinograd, renamed Astana (it was called Akmola from 1992 to 1998), can be regarded as a measure aimed at de-Russifying northern Kazakhstan and preventing pro-Russian separatism in the region. According to the 1989 census, Kazakhs accounted for only 25.7% of the population of Tselinograd Region, while Russians accounted for 43.16%, Germans for 13.06%, Ukrainians for 8.75%, Belarusians for 2.66%, and Poles for 1.32% (68.95% combined). According to 2025 data, the share of Kazakhs in the region, now called Akmola Region, had risen to 56.77%, while the Russian share had fallen to 26.31% (37.55% together with Germans, Ukrainians, Belarusians, and Poles). As for Kazakhstan’s capital itself, which is now administratively separate from the region, Kazakhs accounted for only 17.71% of its population in 1989, while Russians made up 54.1% (73.98% together with Ukrainians, Germans, Belarusians, and Poles). By 2025, the city’s ethnic composition had changed fundamentally: Kazakhs accounted for 82.3%, while Russians made up only 8.61% (11.56% together with Ukrainians, Germans, Belarusians, and Poles).
At the same time, Kazakhstan’s elites have not remained silent in response to territorial claims voiced against their country by Russian politicians. Moreover, from time to time they make statements that can be interpreted as counterclaims against the Russian Federation. Particularly indicative in this regard was Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev’s public reminder that Orenburg, now a Russian regional capital, once served as the capital of the Kazakh autonomy within the RSFSR from 1919 to 1925.
The success of Kazakhstan’s nation-building policy is evident. It is no coincidence that the country has become a model for the national movements of the Turkic peoples of the Russian Federation, as clearly demonstrated by the programmatic document of the Bashkir national movement drawn up by one of its leaders, Ruslan Gabbasov, who was forced to leave Russia because of persecution by the authorities. The particular interest that Kazakhstan attracts among activists of the Bashkir national movement is due not only to the ethnic affinity between Bashkirs and Kazakhs, but also to the fact that Kazakhstan is the foreign state closest to the Republic of Bashkortostan. The two are separated only by the so-called “Kuvandyk Corridor,” several dozen kilometers wide, which forms part of Russia’s Orenburg Region but is populated almost half by Turkic peoples—Bashkirs, Kazakhs, and Tatars.
In this context, it is appropriate to recall that this is far from the only part of the Russian Federation with a substantial Kazakh population. According to the 2021 census, the number of ethnic Kazakhs in Russia stands at 591,970. They are the tenth-largest ethnic group in the Russian Federation, yet they have no territorial autonomy of their own and are generally regarded by the Russian authorities as a “diaspora.” However, these are not migrants, but a long-established population of regions bordering the Republic of Kazakhstan. It is therefore appropriate to speak of a Kazakh irredenta in the Russian Federation—not yet in the political sense of the term, but rather in the sense of the continuation of the Kazakh ethnic territory beyond the borders of the Kazakh nation-state. According to the same census, the overwhelming majority of Russia’s Kazakhs live precisely in regions bordering Kazakhstan: 149,415 in Astrakhan Region, 120,262 in Orenburg Region, 78,303 in Omsk Region, 76,007 in Saratov Region, 39,000 in Tyumen Region, 37,576 in Volgograd Region, 27,057 in Chelyabinsk Region, and so on.
At the same time, a more detailed analysis of the data at the district level reveals the presence of territories directly bordering the Republic of Kazakhstan in which Kazakhs, either alone or together with other closely related Turkic peoples, constitute an absolute or relative majority. Several examples may be cited: Volodarsky District of Astrakhan Region—68.05% Kazakh + 1.54% Tatar (here and below, figures are from the 2010 census); Yasnensky District of Orenburg Region—56.1% Kazakh + 2.5% Tatar; Alexandrov-Gaysky District of Saratov Region—54.1% Kazakh + 2.2% Tatar; Krasnoyarsky District of Astrakhan Region—47.65% Kazakh + 5.6% closely related Nogais + 4.16% Tatar; Dombarovsky District of Orenburg Region—43.4% Kazakh + 2.3% Tatar; Pallasovsky District of Volgograd Region—43.9% Kazakh + 2% Tatar.
Linguistically, the assimilation of Russia’s Kazakhs has progressed quite far. According to the 2002 census, virtually all of them (98.3%) were fluent in Russian, while only 72% spoke Kazakh. Since then, the linguistic situation of Russia’s Kazakhs has only deteriorated, because even in districts where Kazakhs form a majority, school instruction is conducted in Russian, while Kazakh is taught, at best, as an optional subject. At the same time, there are two factors that impede the complete assimilation of Kazakhs into the Russian ethnic environment even when they lose their ethnic language:
- The practice of Islam, even if only at a symbolic level, which is reflected, among other things, in the giving of children names that sound foreign to Russians.
- Racial differences. Belonging to the South Siberian racial type, transitional between Caucasoid and Mongoloid populations, Kazakhs constitute a “visible minority” in the Russian Federation, where citizens with a “non-Slavic appearance” also frequently become victims of xenophobia.
Thousands of Russian Kazakhs have repatriated to the Republic of Kazakhstan during the years of independence. In the early years, there was also migration of Kazakhs from Kazakhstan to the Russian Federation, albeit on a smaller scale. This phenomenon was particularly noticeable in the early 2000s, when the economic situation in Russia was better than in Kazakhstan. In recent years, however, this is no longer relevant. Kazakhstan’s economy has been developing successfully, while Russia’s full-scale aggression against Ukraine has led to a sharp deterioration in the economic situation in the Russian Federation and the elimination of even the appearance of democracy. Under these circumstances, the possibility of relocating from Russia to Kazakhstan has become attractive not only to ethnic Kazakhs but also to Russians of other ethnic backgrounds who cannot qualify for repatriate status. In the autumn of 2022, up to half a million Russians arrived in Kazakhstan, several tens of thousands of whom settled there.
Today, the Republic of Kazakhstan is an established nation-state that maintains ties with Kazakhs abroad. Until now, these ties have primarily taken the form of repatriation programs for overseas Kazakhs, which have helped alter the country’s ethnic composition in favor of the titular nation. Russia’s Kazakhs remain a significant potential source of repatriation. As the economic and political crisis in the Russian Federation is expected to deepen, an increase in the flow of repatriates to Kazakhstan appears likely, and the Russian authorities—already considering the introduction of exit visas for the country’s citizens—will probably attempt to obstruct it. However, another trajectory is also possible: against the backdrop of a dramatic weakening of Russia’s federal center and the de facto disintegration of the Russian Federation, the Republic of Kazakhstan may, in one form or another, have to take under its protection the Russian Kazakhs compactly settled along its borders. In that event, the expression “Kazakh irredenta” in the Russian Federation would acquire a different meaning.