Author Description

This complete history of one of the largest non-Slavic ethnic groups charts it from its emergence in the mid-fifteenth century to the present. Martha Brill Olcott details the major events that have shaped the character of the Islamic nation of Kazakhstan, discussing the rise and fall of the Kazakh khanate, the Kazakhs in imperial Russia, revolutionary and Soviet Kazakhstan, and the struggle for autonomy under Soviet rule. Up-to-date material continues the Kazakhs' story from the dismissal of Dinmukhamed Akhmedovich Kunaev, chairman of the Council of Ministers (December 1986) to independence (December 1991) to the present. Outlining changes in Kazakh historiography since the fall of the Soviet Union, this volume identifies areas of contention and ways in which new groups of scholars, using new sources, are approaching them.