Many Places North of Where Kazakhstan-Russian Border Now Is Once had Kazakh Majorities, but Orenburg Wasn’t One of Them, Kazakh Commentator Points Out.

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 21 – Even before the Soviet Union disintegrated, both Russians and Kazakhs suggested that the borders between the two republics should be changed, the former arguing that predominantly ethnic Russian areas in Kazakhstan should be part of Russia and the latter that formerly Kazakh-majority regions in Russia should become part of Kazakhstan.
    Such claims and counter-claims have only increased in number since 1991, but fortunately, Zhenis Baykhozha says, they have been advanced not by either of the two governments but by commentators, journalists and scholars (spik.kz/2101-kazahstan-i-rossija-zemelnye-spory-poslednee-delo.html).
    If one looks back to the period before 1917, the Kazakhs have the better claims, the Kazakh commentator says; but if one considers the period since that time, the Russians do, largely because Kazakhs have left Russian areas and Russians have moved into what are today Kazakh lands.
    One of the most interesting and sensitive issues concerns the land around Orenburg which between 1924 and 1925 was part of the Kazakh autonomy but which even then did not have a Kazakh majority. (For details, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/09/orenburg-corridor-arose-because-kazakhs.html.)
    The status of Orenburg has become the focus of particular attention in recent years both because it is the land bridge between Kazakhstan and the Muslim Turkic republics of Bashkortostan and Tatarstan and because it is part of the historically Ukrainian region known as the Blue Wedge in which Kyiv has an interest.
    On these sources of attention, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/02/tatars-and-bashkirs-must-recover.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/07/a-rare-report-from-blue-wedge-ukrainian.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2022/06/kyiv-seeking-to-use-ukrainian-blue.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2022/06/russian-census-results-reopening.html.
    In his article, Baykhozha suggests that such issues should be allowed to die out because any discussion of the ethnic mix of regions then or now will only spark more controversy and exacerbate problems in relations between Moscow and Astana. But he insists that if these issues are going to be discussed, those doing so should rely on accurate figures rather that imagined ones.