Every Day Is Special: October 25 – Republic Day in Kazakhstan

October 25 – Republic Day in Kazakhstan

Posted October 25, 2019

Today is the anniversary of Kazakhstan's 1990 declaration of sovereignty, apart from the Soviet Union. A bit more than a year later, when the USSR collapsed, Kazakhstan declared independence.

When this Central Asian nation achieved independence, the Kazakhs were a minority, and many people in the nation did not speak the Kazakh language. There were large numbers of ethnic Russians living in Kazakhstan, and just about everyone in the country spoke Russian; other peoples, such as Ukrainians and Germans, also lived there.

Above and below, Kazakhs in traditional costume.

These Kazakhstani people have Polish
heritage and work hard to maintain
their Polish traditions.

There are more than 130 different
ethnicities living in Kazakhstan.

By the way, people of every ethnicity who live in Kazakhstan are called Kazakhstanis. Only those with a particular genetic and cultural heritage are Kazakhs.

The government set out to change the Kazakh minority status. Many street names were changed to earlier Kazakh names, Kazakh was named the state language, and the alphabet used for Kazakh was changed from Cyrillic script (Russian) to Latin (the alphabet we use). Even though the Russian language remains the co-official language and is used in many places in Kazakhstan, officials hope to use education to achieve the goal that the nation's people are trilingual, fluent in Kazakh, Russian, and English!

Other steps meant to bring Kazakhs into the majority included encouraging people to have large families and inviting Kazakh expats to return "home" and settle. It looks like these techniques have worked at least to some extent, because now Kazakhs make up about 65% of the Kazakhstani population.

Above, Kazakhs who live in Canada but proudly declare their ethnicity.
Below, Kazakh children from around the world who traveled to the
Kazakhstani capital, Nur-Sultan (formerly Astana), for Summer School
and exposure to Kazakh language, history, and culture.