August 30: Constitution Day in Kazakhstan
Prayer Idea
Pray for the people and government of Kazakhstan.
Map by Peter Hermes Furian / Shutterstock.com.
History Note
Kazakhstan is the largest country in Central Asia, the largest former Soviet republic besides Russia, and the largest landlocked country in the world. It borders China on the southeast and extends to the Caspian Sea in the west.
Arabs brought Islam to the region from the west in the 700s and 800s. Mongols from the east led by Genghis Khan swept over the area in the 1200s. The Uzbeks who came in the 1400s were known as wandering Uzbeks. The word kazakh means to wander, so Kazakhstan means land of the wanderers. The Kazakh people have a mix of Turkic, Mongol, and Persian backgrounds.
Imperial Russia took an interest in Kazakhstan in the 1700s and came to dominate it in the 1800s. Some 400,000 Slavic Russians moved into the land during the nineteenth century. About one million Slavs, Germans, and Jews came in the first part of the 1900s. These movements drove Kazakhs off the best farmlands and frequently into poverty.
Kazakhstan became a Soviet Socialist Republic in 1936 and suffered under the policies of Joseph Stalin. An estimated 1.5 million people died from famine and disease. Many Kazakhs fled to China, Uzbekistan, or Turkmenistan.
After declaring its sovereignty in 1990 and achieving full independence in 1991, the people of Kazakhstan adopted a constitution on August 30, 1995. They celebrate this date as Constitution Day.
Today the country has 20 million people. The majority are ethnic Kazakhs, though there is a sizable minority of Russians and smaller numbers of Uzbeks, Ukranians, Uyghurs, Germans, and Tatars. About 70% of the people are Muslim and 17% are Orthodox Christians.
Gora Bokty is located in the Mangystau region of Kazakhstan. The name of this mountain comes from the Kazakh word for pie. Photo by YueStock / Shutterstock.com.
Learn More
Take a peak inside the national archives of Kazakhstan, where the country’s constitution is item #1.
Find more resources at Homeschool History.
