Qazaqstan (Russia)

Қазақстан Республикасы
Республика Казахстан
Republic of Qazaqstan

Subdivision of:	Russian Federation
Cities:
Capital:	Qarağanda
Other:	Atyrau, Oral, Aqtöbe, Qostanay, Astana, Pavlodar, Semey, Öskemen
Languages:
Official:	Qazaq, Russian
Others:	Czech
President:	Arjan Qazigeldin
Prime minister:	...
Area:	...
Population:	...
Established:	1991, after the fall of the SNOR regime
Location of Qazaqstan (Russia) in the Russian Federation

During Turkestan's war for independence that followed the Russian Civil War (1917-), the Qazaq people also revolted and threw off imperial Russian rule. The White forces did all they could to keep as much territory in Central Asia while the Red forces courted dissatisfied religious & ethnic minorities around the empire. After winning the civil war and defeating the Red Army once and for all, the White Army turned its attention toward Central Asia (also known merely as "the -Stan's" from the Persian suffix "-stan" meaning "land of") and successfully brought this northern stretch of Qazaqstan back into the fold and preventing it from becoming part of the new state to the south. The new so-called "White Russia and Turkestan signed a peace treaty in 19whatever that drew border through the Kazakh semi-desert, between the Aral Sea and Lake Balkash. Thus, the Qazaqs became a nation divided between two states, an all too common occurrence under colonial rule.

Nearly 60 years later after the collapse of the SNOR regime, this part of Qazaqstan tried to secede from Russia again. As a compromise, the post-fascist government offered Qazaqstan the chance to become a constituent member of the Russian Federation like many other states that also tried to secede. Qazaqstan is officially an autonomous republic within the greater Ruddisn Federation. Despite these generous terms, there is still a strong tendency toward reunification with Turkestan amongst the indigenous, Turkic populace. Turkestan has periodically made overtures towards reunification (the last of these was an offer of condominium in 2008), but these have been scoffed at by the much larger Russian population of the autonomous republic. Ethnic-Russians are the plurality of Qazaqstan after 400 years of Russian rule and they have no desire to join a Turkic nationalist state and be cut off the metropole and its funding.

Qazaqstan is an incredibly diverse place after centuries of social-engineering on the part of the Russian state. Unwilling colonists came from all over the Empire and the SNORist republic. Germans, Lithuanians, Veneds, Czechs, Uzbeks and Kyrgyz, Ashkenazi Jews, Pontian Greeks, Koreans, Meshketian Turks, Azeris and Tajiks, even Kurdish refugees resettled here after the Turkish Civil War all live in this autonomous republic. Of these many disparate ethnic groups, only one other besides the eponymous Qazaqs has any autonmous administrative subdivision to call their own. Near the of city Aktyubinsk (Aktobe in Kazakh) is the Czech Autonomous Okrug (Че́шский Автоно́мный О́круг) with its capital in Gedevanishviligrad ("Гедеванишвилиград" in Russian & Gedevanišvilihrad). Ironically enough, the capital of the Czech Autonomous Okrug is named after a Russian scientist and playwright of paternal Georgian descent, Aleksandr Lukavich Gedenashvili (real-life Alexander Porfiryevich Borodin). The Czech capital is relatively small, a town of only 75,000 people, as the descendants of Czech settlers are primarily farmers and spread out across the whole autonomous republic. It's possible that more of the 665,736 people who claim Czech ancestry even under the most tenuous of claims live outside their designated okrug than inside. This is no doubt by design and not by accident at the hands of SNORist statesmen who wanted citizens to blend together and ultimately russify. Russification or not, the Czechs as fellow Slavs were trusted by and friendly to Russian settlers and administrators over their approximately 150 years of settlement out on the frozen steppes. About three-fourths of Czechs are Orthodox Christians, 8.5% are atheists, 12% are Lutheran, and the remaining 4.5% are still members of the Hussite Church founded by the Germanized Jan Hus in about 1400.

The capital of (North) Qazaqstan is Qarağanda (Караганда). The republic is also a member of the Mazandaran/Caspian Ecotopic Association.

Religion

Russian proselytization efforts over the past 300 centuries have transformed the religious landscape of Qazaqstan. Eastern Orthodox Christians are in the majority as it is both the faith of the Russian colonists and plenty of native converts who came over from Tengriism, Assyrian Christianity, and even Islam. Thanks to the heroic efforts of both Russian, Greek, Finnish, & native missionaries, most Qazaqs in Russia are Orthodox Christians. Colonists formerly from Germany, the Republic of the Two Crowns, and Bohemia also brought numerous Christian sects such as Latin Rite Catholicism, Calvinism, Lutheranism, Anabaptism, and Hussitism as well as Ashkenazi Judaism. There are plenty of other missionary faiths represented amongst the Turco-Mongol (Qazaq) populace, such as Assyrian Christianity, Islam (Sunni or nondenominational), Vajrayana Buddhism, Manichaeism—even Zoroastrianism, although this Iranic faith had extreme difficulty penetrating this far north so far away from its last outpost in Khorasan. The indigenous belief system is called "Tengriism" after its chief deity, Tanrı, the Eternal Blue Sky, a personification of the heavens. This shamanistic animism pervades every faith in the Turkic world, even if worshippers might not realize what they believe is highly syncretic. Qazaqstan is also home to a new faith, Burkhanism (also known as 'Ak Jang'). This millenarian movement started as a wave of anticlerical, anti-shamanic, and charismatic feeling amongst the indigenous but the movement mellowed out and made peace with the animistic milieu of the local people. Since its inception in the dawning of the Twentieth Century, this revival movement has itself undergone several revival movements. The religion itself has copped concepts from Orthodox Christianity, Vajrayana (Tibetan-Mongol) Buddhism, Tengriism, and Manchu shamanism. It did not begin in Qazaqstan. The Alta Mountains are the base of Burkhanism.