The number and resettlement of Belarusians in the Republic of Kazakhstan in the 1990-2000th years

Abstract

In article the main attention is paid to the problem which isn’t investigated in domestic historical and ethnographic science – to ethnodemographic processes among the Kazakhstan Belarusians. The first immigrants of the considered East Slavic ethnos have got on the territory of pre-revolutionary Kazakhstan in the first half of XIX century. More compact groups of Belarusians began to move, since 80th years of XIX of century from various counties of the Mogilev, Vitebsk, Vilna, Minsk and Grodno provinces of Belarus. This process has gained further development after opening in 1900 West Siberian, in 1906 – the Orenburg and Tashkent railroad and Stolypin agrarian reform which has begun in 1906. Migrations of Belarusians to Kazakhstan continued also in days of the Soviet totalitarian system: October revolution of 1917, civil war of 1918-1922, mass hunger of 1919–1922, 1930-1932, violent collectivization and industrialization of 1928-1932, World War II of 1939-1945, development virgin and laylands of 1954- 1960, construction of production industrial facilities, transport and so forth. Ethnodemographic processes among Belarusians in the 1990-2000th years considered by us are characterized by both objective, and subjective factors. First, having reached peak of the highest number (182 601 people) by 1989, in the next years they continued to reduce the number, by 2009 almost three times – to 66 476 people. Sec- ondly, among Belarusians, also as well as at other East Slavic and European ethnoses of the Republic of Kazakhstan process of depopulation is observed. This negative tendency is caused not only by departure of Belarusians for the ethnic homeland, decrease in natural reproduction of the population, but also as- similatory processes among them in favor of the Russian ethnos. Certainly, they are caused by growth of ethnically mixed families with participation of Russians whose second generation in many cases iden- tify themselves with this ethnos especially as many of them don’t know the native language, having completely passed on Russian. We consider that the specified processes among the Russian-speaking population, including the Belarusian, will be continued also in the next decades that will lead not only to reduction of their specific weight in the general population of the Republic of Kazakhstan, but also to their assimilation in the environment of larger Russian ethnos.