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Kazakhstan (also Kazakstan) is a country in Central Asia. It has borders with Russia, China, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan and has a coastline on the Caspian Sea.

Kazakhstan is the ninth largest country in the world by area, but has a population less than that of Australia. At last estimates, the population stood at less than 17 million people.

In part because of the country's enormous deserts, the Soviet government used Kazakstan as its nuclear testing site, and this, along with near-absent pollution controls, has contributed to an alarmingly high rate of disease in many rural areas.

Also, Kazakstan possessed the Soviet equivalent to Cape Canavaral, where they have launched their version of the space shuttle and the well-known space station Mir.

Kazakstan, once colonised by Czarist Russia, was absorbed into the Soviet Union following the Russian Revolution of 1917, led at that time by V.I. Lenin. For the next half-century, Kazakstan suffered under the mismanagement of the soviets, especially in agrarian policy and cattle-raising.

Kazakstan proclaimed its independence in the early 1990's, immediately following the breakdown of the U.S.S.R. Its current President, Nazarbayev, was a former high-ranking communist who currently possesses much of the nation's real power; he is also one of the wealthiest members of the society. His daughter died in 2001 from a likely drug overdose.

Appears, ludicrously, in the movies Air Force One (with Harrison Ford)and and the 2002 flick, Rollerball (with Jean Reno).

See also Communism

From the CIA World Factbook 2000. Not Wikified.

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