ONE LAND · 11 ATLASES
History of Kazakhstan in maps
Kazakhstan as it appears in 11 interactive history atlases, from 1206 to 2000: the Qipchaq steppe, Kazakh steppe, Kazakhstan, Russian Turkestan, Soviet Central Asia, Soviet Kazakhstan. Each era below lists who ruled the land and when control changed, linked to the dated map that shows it.
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What was Kazakhstan before it was Kazakhstan? Below, every era of this land in the Maps of History atlases — who ruled it, what it was called, and when control changed — each line linked to the dated map that shows it. Modern borders stand in as an honest approximation; every atlas says so on the map itself.
Kazakhstan · Norse and Aztecs
| Other peoples and states — the opening position |
NORSE AND AZTECS: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
The Qipchaq steppe (mod. Kazakhstan) · Mongol Empire
The Qipchaq steppe — the corridor itself. Its Cuman-Qipchaq confederations were broken by the Great Raid and absorbed wholesale after 1236: the Golden Horde’s armies, language and successor peoples are substantially Qipchaq. The steppe did not so much fall to the Mongols as merge with them — and its boys, sold to Cairo, became the Mamluks who stopped their conquerors.
| Beyond the storm — the opening position | |
| The Mongol Empire |
MONGOL EMPIRE: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
Kazakh steppe (Russian Empire) · Industrial Revolution
| Colony or dependency — the opening position | |
| Colony or dependency |
INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
Kazakhstan · Meiji Japan and post-Soviet Russia
The largest Central Asian republic, where Kazakhs and Russians each made up about two-fifths of the population in 1989. The Alma-Ata protests of December 1986 were the first open national unrest of the glasnost years, yet Kazakhstan was the last republic to declare independence, on 16 December 1991. Its leader Nursultan Nazarbayev, who had wanted a reformed Union, ruled the new state until 2019.
| The USSR, then Russia — the opening position | |
| Independent neighbours |
MEIJI JAPAN AND POST-SOVIET RUSSIA: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
Russian Turkestan (mod. Kazakhstan) · Russian Revolution
The Kazakh steppe came under Russian rule by stages between the 1730s and 1864, when two chains of Russian forts, along the Syr Darya and in Semirechye, finally met, and it became the base for the conquest of Central Asia. It saw its own national movement (Alash Orda) caught between Reds and Whites, and was drawn into Soviet Turkestan by 1920. Shown here as part of Russian Turkestan, its nomadic society would be shattered by the famines of Soviet collectivization a decade later.
| The Tsarist empire — the opening position | |
| Provisional Government, then the Whites | |
| Contested / peasant war | |
| Soviet power |
RUSSIAN REVOLUTION: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
Kazakhstan · WWI
| The Entente & Allies — the opening position | |
| Russia in revolution |
Soviet Central Asia (mod. Kazakhstan) · Chinese Revolution
Soviet Central Asia along Xinjiang’s whole western border: the Turkestan the Tsars took and the Soviets reorganized into republics, collectivized at terrible cost (the Kazakh famine of 1930–33 killed a third of the Kazakh people). For this atlas it is the pressure that made Xinjiang lean Soviet — Sheng Shicai’s 1930s warlord regime ran on Soviet arms, advisers and trade down these roads, complete with purges to match — until Moscow’s wartime distraction let Chungking claw the province back in 1942–44. Empires do not need to cross a border to govern what is behind it.
| Foreign empires — British, French, Russian, American — the opening position |
CHINESE REVOLUTION: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
Kazakhstan (Kazakh SSR from 1936) · Stalin’s Soviet Union
Kazakhstan was an autonomous republic within Russia until it became a union republic in 1936. Collectivisation and the forced settlement of nomads in 1929–33 caused a famine that killed perhaps two-fifths of all Kazakhs. The republic then became a destination for the deported: “kulaks”, Koreans, Volga Germans, Chechens and others, as well as the camps of Karlag and ALZhIR. By 1939 Kazakhs were a minority in their own republic, a legacy that lasted into independence.
| The Soviet Union — the opening position | |
| Famine regions (memorial) | |
| The Soviet Union |
STALIN’S SOVIET UNION: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
Soviet Kazakhstan · Road to WW2
| Neutral & unaligned — the opening position | |
| Aggressor clients & partners | |
| Democracies & powers fighting them | |
| Aggressor clients & partners | |
| Democracies & powers fighting them |
ROAD TO WW2: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
Kazakhstan · Cold War
| USSR & Warsaw Pact — the opening position | |
| Non-aligned & neutral |
COLD WAR: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
Soviet Central Asia (mod. Kazakhstan) · Mao’s China
| Beijing’s allies and friends — the opening position | |
| Beijing’s adversaries |
MAO’S CHINA: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
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