Kazakhstan
sovereign state in Eastern Europe and Central Asia
Kazakhstan, officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a landlocked country situated primarily in Central Asia, with a portion of its territory extending into Eastern Europe. It borders Russia to the north and west, China to the east, Kyrgyzstan to the southeast, Uzbekistan to the south, and Turkmenistan to the southwest, and it has a coastline along the Caspian Sea. The capital is Astana, and the country's largest city and principal cultural and economic center is Almaty, which served as the capital until 1997.
Kazakhstan is the world's ninth-largest country by land area and the largest landlocked country. Hilly plateaus and plains account for nearly half its vast territory, with lowlands composing another third; its southern and eastern frontiers are composed of mountainous regions. Kazakhstan has a population of 20.6 million and one of the lowest population densities in the world, with fewer than 8 people per square kilometre (21 people/mi2). Ethnic Kazakhs constitute a majority, while ethnic Russians form a significant minority. Officially secular, Kazakhstan is a Muslim-majority country with a sizeable Christian community.
Kazakhstan has been inhabited since the Paleolithic era. In antiquity, various nomadic Iranian peoples such as the Saka, Massagetae, and Scythians.
“Kazakhstan” enters the record as sovereign state in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Kazakhstan, sovereign and state can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Kazakhstan” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Kazakhstan, sovereign and state provides the most credible route into that argument.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q232. VIAF identifies the subject as 124906451. The Library of Congress control number is n92000005. Authority coordinates are 48.000, 68.000. 3 of 6 selected statements include explicit references; 3 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1997.
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This entry incorporates text from “Kazakhstan” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.