ABSTRACT
Kazakhstan is the largest landlocked state in the world and territorially the second largest republic of the former Soviet Union. It stretches across an area of approximately 2.7 million square kilometers, larger than the size of Western Europe. Countries that border Kazakhstan are Russia, China, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan (clockwise beginning from the north), and the Western border of the republic has a signifi cant shoreline on the Caspian Sea. Since time immemorial, this vast territory with diverse climate and topography was populated by ethnic Kazakhs leading a nomadic way of life and adhering to a system of clan and tribal grouping. The area became a part of tsarist Russia in the eighteenth century after the Kazakh hordes-political formations of the Kazakh tribes-suffered devastating attacks from the Kalmyks and sought protection from the Russian crown. With the incorporation of hordes into the Russian empire, the contact between the Russians and Kazakhs intensifi ed through rapidly expanding immigration of Slavs into the steppe territory, conquest, and other aspects of colonial rule (Akiner 2000; Cummings 2005; Olcott 2002: 59-60).
