Kazakhstan

Place and Environment

Top of the Belukha Mountain, Atlay Mountains
Kazakhstan has borders with Russia, the People's Republic of China, and the Central Asian countries Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, and has a coastline on the Caspian Sea. With an area of 1.05 million square miles (2.7 million square kilometres), Kazakhstan is the ninth largest country in the world by area, and is the largest landlocked country in the world. It is equivalent to the size of Western Europe. Syrdarya river in Kyzylorda province. The terrain extends west to east from the Caspian Sea to the Altay Mountains and north to south from the Western Siberia plains to the oases and deserts of Central Asia. The Kazakh Steppe, with an area of around 310,600 square miles (804,500 square kilometres) occupies onethird of the country, and is the world's largest dry steppe characterized by large grassland and sandy regions. There is considerable topographical variation within Kazakhstan. The highest elevation, Khan Tengri

in the Caspian Depression in the west, is 430 feet (132 meters)

below sea level. Only 12.4 percent of Kazakhstan is mountainous, mostly in the Altay and Tian Shan ranges of the east and northeast, although the Ural Mountains extend south from Russia. Many Altay and Tian Shan peaks are snow covered year-round, and their run-off is the source for Kazakhstan's rivers and streams. Important rivers and lakes include: the Aral Sea, Ili River, Irtysh River, Ishim River, Ural River, Lake Balkhash, and Lake Zaysan.

Culture and Heritage

Religion
Arabs brought Islam in the ninth century, and 1000 years later Russian settlers introduced Russian Orthodoxy. During the 70 years of Soviet rule, religious participation was banned, and many churches and mosques were destroyed. In 2007, the main religious groups were Muslim (mainly Sunni) 47 percent, Russian Orthodox 44 percent, Protestant 2 percent, and other 7 percent. Although Islam was introduced in the ninth century, the religion was not fully assimilated until much later. As a result, it coexisted with earlier animist elements of Tengriism, which is a traditional Kazak belief that held that separate spirits inhabited and animated the earth, sky, water, and fire, as well as domestic animals. Honored guests in rural settings are still treated to a feast of freshly killed lamb, and are sometimes asked to bless the lamb and to ask its spirit for permission to partake of its flesh. While formal religious observance is limited, many Kazakhs say a short prayer when they pass by where someone they know is buried, and say

Mountain, on the Kyrgyz border in the Tian Shan range, is 23,000 feet (7010 meters). The lowest point, at Karagiye,

prayers after meals. Mosques are staffed by a mullah, who conducts services as well as funerals, weddings, and blessings, as do priests in Russian Orthodox churches.

Time Continuity and Change

Architecture
The traditional Kazak dwelling is the yurt, a tent consisting of a flexible framework of willow wood covered with varying thicknesses of felt. The open top permits smoke from the central hearth to escape. Temperature and draft can be controlled by a flap that increases or decreases the size of the opening. A properly constructed yurt can be cooled in summer and warmed in winter, and it can be disassembled or set up in less than an hour. The right side of the yurt's interior is reserved for men and the left for women. Although yurts are used less, they remain a potent symbol. Demonstrators and hunger strikers erected yurts in front of the government building in Almaty in the spring of 1992. Yurts are frequently used as a decorative motif in restaurants and other public buildings. Buildings from the Soviet era were big and utilitarian, and often the same shape, size, and color throughout the Soviet empire. Large Soviet-designed apartment blocks were five or six stories high and had three to four apartments of one, two, or three bedrooms each per floor. Villages and collectives consisted of small two- to three-room, one-story houses, painted white and light blue (to keep away evil spirits), all built by the government. The territory of Kazakhstan has come to be mastered by man nearly a million years ago. As early as the age of Lower Paleolithic the ancient man settled down on these Karatau lands fit for normal life, rich with game and wild fruit. It is there that they have found ancient settlements of Stone Age. By and by, in the centuries of Middle and Upper Paleolithic the man came to master Central and Eastern Kazakhstan and Mangyshlak area. As early as the Bronze Age, some four millennia ago, the territory of Kazakhstan was inhabited by tribes of the so called Andron and Begazy-Dandybay culture. They were engaged in farming and cattle-breeding, they were fine warriors who handled combat chariots marvelously. To this day we can see images of chariots drawn on rocks where ancient people would arrange their tribal temples and sanctuaries with the firmament as their natural cover. On the surfaces of black cliffs burnt with the sun people would chisel out scenes of dances, images of sun-headed deities, mighty camels and bulls as impersonations of ancient gods. Burial mounds of noble warriors scattered all throughout Kazakh steppes are known for magnificent size of mounds and burial vaults proper. Particularly famous are such necropolis in the steppes of Sary-Arka and Tagiskent in the Transaral area. People of that epoch were not only fine warriors, shepherds and farmers but also skilled metallurgists. They would take bronze and manufacture axes, knives, daggers and various decorations thereof.

Social Organization
The politics of Kazakhstan take place in the framework of a presidential republic, whereby the President of Kazakhstan is head of state and nominates the head of government. The nature of government is authoritarian presidential rule, with little power outside the executive branch. The president is elected by popular vote for a seven-year term, and constitutionally had a two-term limit. An election was last held in December 2005. The president appoints a council of ministers (cabinet). The president also is the commander in chief of the armed forces and may veto legislation that has been passed by the Parliament. The president appoints the prime minister and first deputy prime minister. The prime minister chairs the Cabinet of Ministers and serves as Kazakhstan's head of government. There are three deputy prime ministers and 16 ministers in the Cabinet. Daniyal K. Akhmetov became the Prime Minister in June 2003 but resigned 8 January, 2007. The president appoints a Council of Ministers.

machine-building sector specializing in construction equipment, tractors, agricultural machinery, and some defense items. Agriculture accounted for 13.6 percent of Kazakhstan's GDP in 2003. Grain (Kazakhstan is the sixth-largest producer in the world) and livestock are the most important agricultural commodities. Agricultural land occupies more than 327,000 square miles (846,000 square kilometres). Chief livestock products are dairy products, leather, meat, and wool. The country's major crops include wheat, barley, cotton, and rice.

Economic Activities and Natural Resources

Kazakhstan, the largest of the former Soviet republics in territory, excluding Russia, possesses enormous fossil fuel reserves and plentiful supplies of other minerals and metals. It also has a large agricultural sector featuring livestock and grain. Kazakhstan's industrial sector rests on the extraction and processing of these natural resources and also on a growing