Poles in Kazakhstan
| Total population | |
|---|---|
| (47,300 (1999 census)) | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
| Karaganda | |
| Languages | |
| Primarily Russian; only 12% claim knowledge of Polish | |
| Religion | |
| Christian |
Poles in Kazakhstan form one portion of the Polish diaspora in the former Soviet Union. Slightly less than half of Kazakhstan's Poles live in the Karaganda region, with another 2,500 in Astana, 1,200 in Almaty, and the rest scattered throughout rural regions.
The first Pole to travel to the territory which today makes up Kazakhstan was probably Benedict of Poland, sent as part of the delegation of Pope Innocent IV to the Khagan Güyük of the Mongol Empire.
Migration of Poles to Kazakhstan, largely of an involuntary character, began soon after the Kazakh Khanate came under the control of the Russians. Captured participants of the 1830-1831 November Uprising and the 1863-1865 January Uprising, as well as members of clandestine organisations, were sent into exile throughout the Russian Empire. By the time of the Russian Empire Census of 1897, there were already 11,579 Poles in Central Asia, 90 per cent male. Poles both inside and outside of the Soviet Union would later get caught up in Stalinist population transfers in the late 1930s. At least 250,000 Poles from the Polish autonomous regions of the Ukrainian SSR were deported to the Kazakh SSR in 1930; among those, as many as 100,000 did not survive the first winter in the country.
After the Soviet invasion of Poland, another 150,000 Poles were deported from eastern Polish territories to Kazakhstan; 80 per cent of these were women and children, as the adult men of their community were typically absent due to army service. After the end of the war, people who had been Polish citizens before September 1, 1939 were allowed to repatriate to Poland; however, no provision was made for earlier deportees to leave Kazakhstan. The 1970 Soviet census found 61,400 Poles (0.5 per cent of the population) in the Kazakh SSR, while the 1979 census found 61,100 (0.4 per cent) and the 1989 census 59,400 (0.4 per cent). However, Polish scholars believe these numbers to be underestimates, due to the reluctance of Poles to register their true ethnicity in their official documentation and the relative ease of changing one's declared nationality to another, such as Ukrainian or Russian; they have given numbers ranging from 100,000 to 400,000.
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