Nearly Half of All Ethnic Kazakhs who have Returned to Kazakhstan Since 1991 Come from China

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 22 – Since Kazakhstan gained independence in 1991, 1,144,900 ethnic Kazakhs who had been living abroad have returned to that country. Nearly half of them (45.9 percent) come from China, another 39.2 percent from Uzbekistan, and the remainder from other former Central Asian republics and the Russian Federation.  
    More than half are of working age, and only 9.4 percent are pensioners, according to the Kazakhstan Ministry of Labor and Social Defense of the Population. A fifth have higher educations, but three percent have no education at all (zakon.kz/obshestvo/6457606-kazakhstan-prinyal-11-mln-etnicheskikh-kazakhov-s-1991-goda.html).    
    Most came in the 1990s when they were known as oralmany, and the influx has slowed to about 10,000 annually in recent years; but discussions about them remain lively because the history of their departure from Kazakh lands and their role in both those countries and the Kazakhstan to which they have returned is enormous.
    Many of those who had been living abroad are descendants of those who fled during the troubled early years of Soviet power and especially during the sedentarization and collectivization campaigns at the end of the 1920s and the early 1930s that most Kazakhs now count as an act of Muscovite genocide against their nation.
    Kazakhstan has an extensive program of support for such people, who are referred to as kandasy, including providing them with the funds to purchase property and adapt to conditions there (zakon.kz/pravo/6455073-prisvoenie-statusa-bezhentsa-v-kazakhstane-obnovleny-pravila.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2019/09/whats-in-name-kazakhstans-oralman.html).