SUMMARY:

This case study analyzes the demographic shifts that resulted from the development of uranium and hydrocarbon extraction industries in Western Kazakhstan in the 1960s–1980s and the serious social tensions that ensued. Contrary to the promise of national emancipation of the local population (Kazakhs) through economic development as the pinnacle of Soviet nationality policy, the economic authorities in Moscow continued to prioritize industrialization over indigenization. They opted to import a large labor force from the Slavic and Caucasian republics of the USSR rather than training an indigenous proletariat. This policy escalated socioeconomic frustrations of the Kazakh population that eventually erupted in interethnic strife amid the general rise of nationalism in 1989. Violent labor conflicts persist in the region, now much more ethnically homogeneous, up to the present, which demonstrates that the Soviet-era conflict was a result not just of interethnic animosity but the contradictory nature of the Soviet project in general.