Introduction

At the moment of national independence in 1991, ethnic Russians made up almost 38 per cent of the population of Kazakhstan, with other nationalities such as Germans, Koreans, Ukrainians, Belarussians and others making up a further 2 per cent. Kazakhstan's diverse demographic composition is largely the result of the forced displacement and large-scale managed population movements of the Tsarist and Soviet periods. During communist times, the borders between the fifteen union republics of the Soviet Union were administrative in nature, and often not felt or experienced as a frontier. Thus the division into independent states brought about many changes, with some 20 million Russians across the non-Russian USSR finding themselves transformed from part of the privileged majority to a minority of uncertain future in the new nation-building states. Kazakhstan was home to one of the largest Russian diasporas, and, while the leadership took a more conciliatory approach to nation-building than some of the newly independent states, many Russians responded by emigrating, with the result that by 2016 their number had reduced from 6.23 to 3.64 million; a much reduced 20.62 per cent of the population.

It should be noted that the migratory outflows do not concern only ethnic Russian citizens of Kazakhstan, but also other Russian-speaking nationalities, some of who have traditionally been Orthodox (Ukrainians, Belarussians) and some not (Poles, Germans, Jews).