Orenburg Corridor Arose Because Kazakhs Wanted a More Ethnically Kazakh Capital City, Kazakh Journalist Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Sept. 9 – Orenburg was the capital of the Kazakhstan Autonomy between 1920 and 1924 because Moscow viewed this predominantly Russian city as a way to maintain central control there, but it was handed over to the RSFSR largely as at the insistence Kazakhs that their republic have a more ethnically Kazakh capital, Bakyt Zhanabergen says.

            The Kazakh journalist who specializes in historical questions says that the archives show that Kazakh communists repeatedly asked Moscow to move the capital of their autonomy from Orenburg to more Kazakh cities because they believed that would improve the administration of their autonomy (spik.kz/2002-kak-orenburg-perestal-byt-stolicej-kazahstana-i-vernulsja-v-sostav-rossii.html).

            Zhanabergen’s findings are part of an ongoing debate about what has come to be known as the Orenburg Corridor, the Russian oblast separating Kazakhstan from the Middle Volga. Some Kazakhs now want it back (jamestown.org/program/kazakh-nationalists-call-for-astana-to-absorb-orenburg-outraging-moscow/), and  many in the Middle Volga want it joined either to them or to Kazakhstan to open way for the independence of that republic and others (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/02/tatars-and-bashkirs-must-recover.html).

            Moscow has been alarmed by such calls and by the suggestions of Ukrainian analysts that the Orenburg Corridor threatens Russia’s territorial integrity more than almost any other issue (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2022/01/ukrainian-interest-in-orenburg-corridor.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2018/11/orenburg-corridor-threatens-russia-more.html).

            Zhanabergen’s article appears to be an effort to damp down Kazakh interest in the corridor by pointing out that the Kazakhs had good reason to give up Orenburg; but however that may be, it will do little or nothing to limit interest in the corridor in the Middle Volga (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/02/tatars-and-bashkirs-must-recover.html and jamestown.org/program/the-orenburg-corridor-and-the-future-of-the-middle-volga/).

            And it certainly challenges the view, held by many in the Middle Volga that Moscow created the Orenburg corridor to block the republics of that region from achieving independence, something they say would have happened in 1991 had that Russian corridor not existed (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/05/if-tatarstan-had-bordered-foreign.html).

            But the result of the appearance of this article is likely to have the unintended consequence of boosting attention to the Orenburg Corridor given that activists in all three places, Kazakhstan, the Middle Volga and Ukraine see it as increasingly fateful for the future (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/03/tatars-stress-turkic-and-muslim.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/10/bashkir-activist-ready-to-give-up.html).