republic · Central Asia and the Steppe

Kazakh SSR

1936 CE – 1991 CE · capital Alma-Ata

The vast Soviet republic of the Kazakhs, scene of the Virgin Lands campaign, nuclear testing at Semipalatinsk and the Baikonur space launches.

Origins

The Kazakh ASSR became a union republic, the Kazakh SSR, under the Soviet constitution of December 1936, with its capital at Alma-Ata. It emerged from the famine of the early 1930s with Kazakhs a minority in their own land.

Rule and society

The republic received deported peoples, including Koreans, Volga Germans and Chechens, and many Gulag camps such as Karlag. From 1954 Nikita Khrushchev's Virgin Lands campaign ploughed millions of hectares of steppe for wheat, bringing in Russian and Ukrainian settlers. The Soviet nuclear test site near Semipalatinsk carried out over 450 tests from 1949 to 1989, and Baikonur launched Sputnik and Yuri Gagarin. Dinmukhamed Kunaev led the republic from 1964 to 1986.

Decline and legacy

Kunaev's replacement by a Russian sparked the Jeltoqsan protests of December 1986. Nursultan Nazarbayev became leader in 1989, and on 16 December 1991 the republic, the last to leave the Soviet Union, declared independence as Kazakhstan.

Lineage

Kazakh ASSR 1920 CE – 1936 CEKazakh SSRKazakhstan 1991 CE – present

Connections (1)

More states of Central Asia and the Steppe →

Cite this page
APA
The Epoch Institute. (2026). Kazakh SSR. In The Epoch Institute States Register. https://the-epoch-institute.org/state/kazakh-ssr
MLA
“Kazakh SSR.” The Epoch Institute States Register, The Epoch Institute, 2026, https://the-epoch-institute.org/state/kazakh-ssr. Accessed .
Chicago
The Epoch Institute. “Kazakh SSR.” The Epoch Institute States Register. 2026. https://the-epoch-institute.org/state/kazakh-ssr.
Harvard
The Epoch Institute (2026) ‘Kazakh SSR’, The Epoch Institute States Register. Available at: https://the-epoch-institute.org/state/kazakh-ssr (Accessed: ).

Last reviewed October 2026Random state ↻