Kazakhstan

Kazakhstan is a country in the Caucasus region of Eastern Europe, situated on the coast of the Black Sea. It borders Russia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and China. In the past it was a part of the Russian Empire and later Soviet Union between 1921 and 1991. The capital city of Kazakhstan is Astana. Ethnic Kazakhs constitute a majority, while ethnic Russians form a significant minority. 
==History==
Kazakhs emerged as a nation around the 15th or 16th century, when they possessed their own Khanate. In 1868, the Russian Empire conquered Kazakhstan and absorbed it into it's borders.
===20th Century===
After the Soviet Union was formed, it formed the Kirghiz Autonomous Socialist Soviet Republic, established in 1920, which was renamed the Kazakh Autonomous Socialist Soviet Republic five years later when the Kazakhs were officially distinguished from the Kyrgyz by the Soviet government. 
thumb|250px|Soviet KazakhstanFrom 1929 to 1934, Kazakhstan suffered it's own famine - known as the Asharshylyk - which was not unlike Holodomor in Ukraine, when Joseph Stalin was trying to collectivize agriculture in the Soviet Union. During that period, over one million residents and 80 percent of the republic's livestock died, while thousands more tried to escape to China, but most starved while trying.
During World War II, much of Soviet economy was moved to the Kazakh SSR to protect it from the German invasion, and alongside them, many Soviet citizens including Crimean Tatars, Germans, and Muslims from the North Caucasus were deported as well, as the Kremlin feared that they would collaborate with the invaders.
As the Cold War begun, Kazakhstan became pernamently changed by the Soviet Union. Huge tracts of Kazakh SSR grazing land got turned into large farms of wheat and other cereal grains; as the 1970's rolled around, Kazakhs became a minority in their own homeland as workers from all over the Soviet Union immigrated to it. To add insult to injury, the Soviet Union used Kazakhstan as a perfect place for nuclear tests, causing over a 1.5 million people of the people living in the Kazakh SSR to suffer the effects of nuclear fallout. The famous Baikonur Cosmodrome was built in the Kazakh SSR, and sometimes space junk falling from it would hurt or kill livestock and entire lakes of fish.
Kazakhstan supplied potassium to Vladimir Demikhov's Zamrazharka laboratory in Khoyat Syakhl. During the first days of the Third World War, Kazakh SSR manufactured propaganda hard toffee candy, featuring Aleksander Vitalevich Rukov on the wrappers. After the war, Kazakhstan was declared independent under the president Nursultan Nazarbayev. Nazarbayev's government still allowed Russia to use the Baikonur Cosmodrome for their space missions.
Category:Countries Category:Former Communist Countries