Kazakhstan

Foreign statesman 1940–

Kazakhstan's thirty-year ruler, defender of the union to its last day

On 8 December 1991 Yeltsin's side telephoned from the Belovezha forest urging him to join; he did not turn his plane. Eight days later his Kazakhstan became the last republic to declare independence, and the union's formal death certificate, the Alma-Ata Protocol, was signed in his capital.

Starting as a blast-furnace worker, Nazarbayev rose through the Kazakh premiership and party first secretaryship to become president of Kazakhstan in 1990, and at Novo-Ogaryovo was the strongest advocate of the new union treaty. Absent from the Belovezha Accords, his Kazakhstan became the last republic to declare independence from the USSR. Ruling for nearly thirty years thereafter, he laid the foundations of the new state through nuclear renunciation, the transfer of the capital and pragmatic multi-vector diplomacy, while leaving behind the charges of authoritarian rule, a personality cult and dynastic corruption. He kept real power after leaving the presidency in 2019, until the unrest of January 2022 ended his era completely.

Imperial establishment and White movement 1870–1918 ✕ Killed in action

The general who offered Russia a “strong hand”

November 1914, a night assault at Takosány: Kornilov leads the charge, captures 1,200 prisoners — and the Austrian general Raft, who says, "Kornilov is not a man, he is a force of nature."

A Cossack soldier’s son risen to commander-in-chief. In August 1917 he sent a cavalry corps against the Soviet, and railwaymen and agitators dissolved it before it arrived. Leading the White Volunteer Army in the early civil war, he was killed by a shell before Yekaterinodar in 1918.

Non-Soviet revolutionary 1890–1941 ○ Suspicious death

Kazakh nationalist who led the Kokand Autonomy and dreamed of an independent Turkestan

"I cannot accept the offer to lead the Turkestan Legion and refuse further cooperation. All the consequences of my decision, I realize." — Letter to Ribbentrop, 1941

Mustafa Shokay was a Kazakh nationalist political leader who headed the Kokand (Turkestan) Autonomy, the first modern autonomous government in Central Asia after the collapse of the Russian Empire. A graduate of Petrograd University's law faculty, he served as secretary of the Muslim faction in the State Duma and opposed the Tsarist colonial administration's policies in Central Asia. When the Bolsheviks crushed Kokand by force in 1918, he fled to France and spent two decades in exile, propagating the idea of Turkestan independence internationally through journals such as Yash Turkestan. In 1941, the Nazis offered him leadership of the Turkestan Legion, but after witnessing the conditions of Soviet POWs, he refused, and died in Berlin shortly afterward under suspicious circumstances.

Nationalities and federal management 1894–1938 ✕ Executed

The Kazakh Bolshevik strategist who argued for a unified Turkestan against Stalin's national delimitation

In June 1923, Stalin accused Ryskulov of 'pan-Turkism.' From the floor, Ryskulov retorted: "Just months ago, Comrade Stalin, you praised Sultan-Galiev as a devoted communist. Reversing that now is sheer political convenience."

Kazakh Bolshevik revolutionary and a pivotal leader of the Turkestan ASSR. He argued that the Turkic-speaking peoples of Central Asia constituted a single historical nation and opposed Stalin's national delimitation; at the June 1923 IV Conference he openly rebutted Stalin's accusation of 'pan-Turkism.' As RSFSR deputy Sovnarkom chairman (1926–1937), he drove the Turkestan–Siberian Railway and Karaganda industrial complex. During the 1932–1933 Kazakh famine, he wrote directly to Stalin documenting the mass starvation from forced collectivisation and secured food relief. Executed 1938, rehabilitated 1956.

Nationalities and federal management 1902–1966 ↓ Removed 1954

Kazakh SSR figure who chaired the Soviet of Nationalities

At the 1946 summer air parade in Tushino, Stalin introduced him to the assembled officials: "Comrades, this is Zhumabay Shayakhmetov — the first national secretary of Kazakhstan," and took to calling him "Eagle of the East."

Rising from the Kazakh party leadership, he chaired the Soviet of Nationalities. His career shows the republic-representation line from late Stalinism into early Khrushchev.