Short Essay on Kazakhstan: Alma-Ata

The most northerly among the Central Asian republics, Kazakhstan has a long bor­der with Russia on the west and north, and was the first to be annexed to the Soviet Union. To the south are the republics of Turkmenistan and Kyrgyzstan and in the southwest is the Caspian Sea. China lies to the east.

Farming occupies some 40 per­cent of the population consisting largely of the Kazaks and the Slavic settlers. The Vir­gin and the “Idle Lands” program launched by the Soviet Union in 1953 opened up the vast grasslands of northern Kazakhstan to wheat farming by the Slavic settlers. Livestock breeding is also impor­tant. The Kazakhs raise goats, sheep, cattle and poultry as their traditional occupa­tion.

Kazakhstan is a significant producer of Karakul and Astrakhan wools. The principal crops produced are wheat, bar­ley, potatoes, vegetables, sugar beets, melons and other fruits, grown primarily in the southern part of the country.

The republic possesses abundant min­eral wealth, and several mining and processing industries have been developed. There are major coal fields in the Kara­ganda, Turgay, and Ekibastuz basins and important deposits of iron-ore, lead, tung­sten, manganese, copper, silver, nickel, and antimony exist.

The Caspian Depression and the Mangyshlak Peninsula contain large reserves of oil and gas, and are consid­ered among the world’s largest unexploited oil-bearing areas. In 1992, Kazakstan con­tracted with Chevron Corporation to exploit these potential fuel resources. Cur­rently country’s fuel production is mainly derived from coal of the Karaganda field.

Manufacturing industry employs nearly one-fifth of the nation’s labor force, composed primarily of Russian and Ukrainian settlers. It represents a signifi­cant sector of the economy, contributing a respectable 45 percent to the nation’s do­mestic product. Parts of the country are highly industrialized.

Major manufactur­ing industries include metal-processing, the production of such items as cement, chemical fertilizers, machines, synthetic fi­bers, canned vegetables and fruits, sugar, meats, and pharmaceuticals. Railroads carry most of the freight; the two trunk lines, the Trans-Siberian, and the Kazak (Turk-Sib) traverse the country east to west. Given the country’s large size, and relatively less developed roadways, air transport is employed to cover most of the passenger traffic. The republic has an ex­tensive network of oil pipelines.

The settlements have distinct regional patterns reflecting the varied ethnic makeup of the population. The Russians, Ukrainians, and Belorussians that collec­tively account for close to one-half the population are settled on large collective and state farms in villages of the northern plains.

These populated areas are separated by the arid area to the south where the no­madic Kazak sheep breeders live in temporary quarters, known as yurts (the round tents with sturdy pole frames cov­ered by heavy felt). This extremely wide dispersion of population is reflected in a large number of small settlements.

The density of population is the lowest in Cen­tral Asia—nearly 6 persons to a kilometer. Fewer than 100 settlements are designated as cities or towns in a population of over 17 million. By the late 1980s Slavic population outnumbered the indigenous Central Asian ethnic groups, although they were concentrated mostly in the urban areas.

The Kazakhs and other non-Slavic groups make up for less than a quarter of the ur­ban population. Kazakhstan contains only a few large urban centers. Fewer than two dozen cities have populations over 1,000,000. Chief among these are: Alma Ata (1.1 million), Karaganda (608,680), Chimkent (438,800), and Semey (344,700). With the exception of Karaganda which was founded by the Russians as a mining and manufacturing town in 1857, these urban centers are lo­cated at the ancient sites, and contain “old” sections to which were added newer and planned areas during the Soviet period.

Alma-Ata:

Alma-Ata (Almaty) is the former capi­tal, located in the east and close to China’s Junggar province at the foothills of the Tien Shan Mountains. One of the most beautiful places in Central Asia, the pre­sent city was founded by the Russians in 1855 and experienced phenomenal growth during the 1930s and 1940s, primarily on account of the location of metallurgical and machine building industry near the city.

Besides containing heavy industry, the city is a center of food-processing and light industries as well. Alma-Ata lies on the Turk-Sib railroad that connects it with Russia and the other republics of Central Asia. The new capital replaced Almaty in November, 1997, and was renamed Astana in 1998.

Karaganda, the major industrial cen­ter and the second largest city of Kazakhstan, lies in the major coal-mining area. It specializes in iron and steel indus­try, and a few other industries such as food-processing, cement, and footwear. Chimkent, the third largest city is located in the south in the Syr River basin, on the site of ancient caravan routes that con­nected medieval China with Central Asia.

An important industrial, and railroad junc­tion, its major industries are: food processing, and manufacture of chemicals, cement and automobile parts. Semey (for­merly called Semipalatinsk) was founded as a Russian frontier fortress in 1718 near the site of medieval caravan routes from Mon­golia to Russia. The city grew enormously after the completion of this Turk-Sib rail­road in 1931, and became an important manufacturing center of textiles, food- processing and footwear.

As the largest and most influential of the five Central Asian republics of the for­mer USSR, Kazakstan is likely to play an important role in Central Asia. However, the issue of the former Soviet, and cur­rently Russian-controlled, nuclear warheads deployed in the vicinity of the Aral Sea, making the country one of the four largest nuclear powers in the world, has been the focus of international con­cern.

The country has joined NATO’s “Partnership for Peace,” and the U.S. has offered military assistance in case of need. It signed the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons with the USSR and the U.S.A. in 1993 and pledged to re­move all nuclear weapons by 1999.