Kazakhstan
For most of its history, the Central Asian country of Kazakhstan has been inhabited by nomadic tribes. The Russians began advancing into the Kazakh steppe in the 18th century, and by the mid-19th century, all of Kazakhstan was part of the Russian Empire and later, as the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic, a part of the USSR. Kazakhstan declared itself an independent country on December 16, 1991, the last Soviet republic to do so.
Eurasianet.Org
EurasiaNet provides information and analysis about political, economic,
environmental and social developments in the countries of Central
Asia and the Caucasus, as well as in Russia, the Middle East, and
Southwest Asia.
http://www.eurasianet.org/resource/kazakhstan/index.shtml
Maps
of Kazakhstan
from the Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection at the University
of Texas at Austin
http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/iraq.html
