Portal:Kazakhstan
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Kazakhstan, also spelled Kazakstan, (Kazakh: Қазақстан, Qazaqstan, IPA [qɑzɑqˈstɑn]; Russian: Казахстан, Kazakhstán, IPA [kəzʌxˈstan]), officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a country that stretches over a vast expanse of northern and central Eurasia. Its territory of 2 717 300 km² (bigger than Western Europe) is partially located to the west of the Ural River in eastern-most Europe. It has borders with Russia, the People's Republic of China, and the Central Asian countries Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, and has a coastline on the Caspian Sea. Prior to full independence, Kazakhstan existed as the Kazakh SSR republic in the Soviet Union. It is now a member of the Commonwealth of Independent States. Kazakhstan is the ninth-largest country in the world by area, but it is only the 62nd country in population with less than 6 people per square kilometre (15 per sq. mi.). The population in 2006 is estimated at 15,300,000, down from 16,464,464 in 1989[1] due to the emigration of ethnic Russians and Volga Germans. Much of the country's land consists of semi-desert (steppe) terrain.  The Kengir uprising was a prisoner uprising that took place in the Soviet prison labor camp Kengir in May and June of 1954. Its duration and intensity distinguished it from other Gulag uprisings in the same period (see Vorkuta uprising). After the murder of some of their fellow prisoners by guards, Kengir inmates launched a rebellion and proceeded to seize the entire camp compound, holding it for weeks and creating a period of freedom for themselves unique in the history of the Gulag.Following a rare alliance between the criminals and political prisoners, the prisoners succeeded in forcing the guards and camp administration to flee the camp and effectively quarantine it from the outside. The prisoners thereafter set up intricate defenses to prevent the incursion of the authorities into their newly won territory. This situation lasted for an unprecedented length of time and gave rise to a panoply of colourful and novel activity, including the democratic formation of a provisional government by the prisoners, prisoner marriages, the creation of indigenous religious ceremonies, a brief flowering of art and culture, and the waging of a large, relatively complex propaganda campaign against the erstwhile authorities.  Photo credit: User:Kalendar  Aubakirov graduated from the Air Force Institute and was a parachutist and test pilot with the rank of Major General in the Kazakh Air Force before he was selected as a cosmonaut. On October 2, 1991 he started together with the Austrian cosmonaut Franz Viehböck and the Russian cosmonaut Alexander Volkov in Soyuz TM-13 from the Baikonur cosmodrome spaceport, and spent over eight days in space. He was also the first Soviet citizen to go into space without being fully certified as a cosmonaut, as his flight was hurried forward — several commercial international cosmonauts were already booked, but the flight of a Kazakh cosmonaut was part of the Baikonur rental agreement between Kazakhstan and Russia.
[–] Kazakhstan
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