Editing Demographics of Kazakhstan (section)

== Ethnic groups ==
{{bar box
|title=Ethnic groups in Kazakhstan (2025)<ref name="EthnicGroupSpreadsheet">{{cite web|title=Қазақстан Республикасы халқының жекелеген этностары бойынша саны|language=Kazakh|trans-title=Population of Kazakhstan by ethnic group|url=https://stat.gov.kz/api/iblock/element/336996/file/en/}}</ref>
|titlebar=#ddd
|left1=Ethnic groups
|float=left
|bars=
{{bar percent|[[Kazakhs|Kazakh]]|blue|71.3}}
{{bar percent|[[Russians in Kazakhstan|Russian]]|yellow| 14.6}}
{{bar percent|[[Uzbeks|Uzbek]] |brown|3.3}}
{{bar percent|[[Ukrainians in Kazakhstan|Ukrainian]]|green|1.8}}
{{bar percent|[[Uyghurs in Kazakhstan|Uyghur]]|orange|1.5}}
{{bar percent|[[Germans of Kazakhstan|German]]|cyan|1.1}}
{{bar percent|[[Tatars|Tatar]]|pink|1.1}}
{{bar percent|Other |silver|5.3}}
}}
{{main|Ethnic demography of Kazakhstan}}
[[File:Казахи в Казахстане.png|thumb|250 px|The share of Kazakhs in Kazakhstan by districts at the beginning of 2022]]
[[File:Russians in Kazakhstan Rus.png|thumb|250 px|The share Russians by districts and cities of regional and republican subordination Kazakhstan in 2021]]
[[File:Kazakhstan demographics 1897-1970 en.png|right|thumb|250 px|Kazakhstan demographics 1897–1970. Major ethnic groups. Famines marked in grey.]]

Kazakhstan's dominant ethnic group, the [[Kazakhs]], traces its origins to the 15th century, when after the disintegration of [[Golden Horde]], numbers of [[Turkic peoples|Turkic]] and [[Turco-Mongol tradition|Turco-Mongol]] tribes united to establish the [[Kazakh Khanate]]. With a cohesive culture and national identity, they constituted an absolute majority on the land until colonization by the Russian empire.<br />

Russian advances into the territory of Kazakhstan began in the late 18th century, when the Kazakhs nominally accepted Russian rule in exchange for protection against repeated attacks by the western Mongolian Kalmyks. In the 1890s, Russian peasants began to settle on the fertile lands of northern Kazakhstan, causing many Kazakhs to move eastwards into Chinese territory in search of new grazing grounds. The 1906 completion of the Trans-Aral Railway between Orenburg and Tashkent further facilitated Russian colonization.<ref name="Olcott, M. B. 1995">Olcott, M. B. (1995). The Kazakhs. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press.</ref><ref>Pierce, A. R. (1960) Russian Central Asia, 1867–1917: A study in colonial rule. Berkeley: University of California Press.</ref>

The first collective farms were formed in Kazakhstan in 1921, populated primarily by Russians and Soviet deportees. In 1930, as part of the first Five Year Plan, the Soviet Government decreed measures of force sedentarization of nomads and their incorporation into collectivized farms. This movement resulted in devastating [[Kazakh famine of 1919–1922|famines of the 1920s]] and [[Kazakhstan famine of 1932-1933|of the 1930s]], claiming the lives of an estimated 40% of ethnic Kazakhs (1.5 million), between 1930 and 1933.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Pianciola |first=Niccolò |date=2001 |title=The Collectivization Famine in Kazakhstan, 1931–1933 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/41036834 |journal=Harvard Ukrainian Studies |volume=25 |issue=3/4 |pages=237–251 |jstor=41036834 |issn=0363-5570}}</ref> Hundreds of thousands also fled to China, Iran and Afghanistan. The famine made  Kazakhs a minority of the population of Kazakhstan, and only after the republic gained independence in 1991 did Kazakhs have a slim demographic majority within Kazakhstan.<ref name="Olcott, M. B. 1995"/>

Demographics did shift in the 1950s and 1960s, when, as part of Nikita Khrushchev's [[Virgin Lands Campaign]], hundreds of thousands of Soviet citizens relocated to the Kazakh steppes in order to farm. As recognized in the 1959 census, the Kazaks became the second-largest ethnic group in Kazakhstan for the first time in recorded history, comprising just 30% of the total population of Kazakhstan. Russians numbered 42.7%.<ref>Zardykhan, Z. (2004). Russians in Kazakhstan and demographic change: Imperial legacy and the Kazakh way of nation building. Asian Ethnicity, 5(1), 61–79.</ref>

Since the Soviet Union's collapse, the numbers of members of European ethnic groups has been falling and Asian groups have been continuously rising. According to 2024 estimates, the ethnic composition of Kazakhstan was approximately: 71% Kazakh, 14.9% Russian, 3.3% Uzbek, 1.9% Ukrainian, 1.5% Uyghur, 1.1% Tatar, 1.1% German, and <1% Korean, Turkish, Azerbaijani, Belarusian, Dungan, Kurdish, Tajik, Polish, Kyrgyz, Chechen.<ref>https://stat.gov.kz/api/iblock/element/178068/file/en/ {{Bare URL inline|date=August 2024}}</ref> According to  2021 Census, composition of child population was 79% Kazakh and 9.1% Russian.<ref>https://stat.gov.kz/upload/iblock/004/3kx97rnvyipmtdmbhj9cydnnl5do232t/%D0%A1-18-%D0%93-2018-2022%20(%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%B3%D0%BB).pdf {{Bare URL PDF|date=August 2024}}</ref>

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