Mapping the Changing Communities of Late Soviet Kazakhstan

• In Event: Uncertain Liberations: Central Asia in Transition from Soviet Socialism

Abstract

Dozens of nationalities migrated involuntarily or voluntarily to Kazakhstan from the 1930s to the 1970s. We have had access to the census data for a long time, but Geographic Information Systems allows us to explore the geographic dimensions of profound population change. This project provides spatial analysis of where Kazakh, Slavic, Dungan, German, and other communities predominated, grew, dissolved, and moved in the last decades of the Soviet Union. GIS helps us see directly how Kazakhstan was an anomaly among the 15 republics.

Author

• Shoshana Keller, Hamilton College