A Little Kazakhstan Trivia

The historic independent state of Kazakhstan has a rich, colloquial history and breath-taking landscapes that will leave visitors wanting to come back very soon.

The Kazakhs as a people are generally happy, especially as they progress to a new new Kazakhstan democracy. Life is getting better for them. Here is some trivia about the land and its people:

Reported by a 2009 Census, the republic is divided into six main groups:

• 70.2% are Muslim
• 26.6% are Christian
• 0.1% are Buddhist
• 0.2% are other religions, mostly Jewish
• 2.8% are non-believers
• 0.5% chose not to answer the question

With democratic freedom of religion, the number of mosques, synagogues, churches and other types of religious buildings went from 670 in 1990 to over 4,170 total currently.

Kazakh is spoken by 64.4% of the population, but Russian is spoken everywhere and is used routinely as the state language. But Kazakhstan is changing. State TV stopped broadcasting in Russian.

Kazakhstan is also a front-running nation in international child adoptions.

Kazakhstan has the Biggest, Almost

Educated sources estimate that Kazakhstan has:

• The 2nd biggest reserves of uranium, lead, zinc and chromium
• The world’s 3rd largest reserves of manganese
• The fifth biggest reserves of copper
• Three of the world’s top ten reserves
• The world’s eleventh largest reserves of natural gas and oil.
• The world’s seventh largest grain production

Kazakhstan exports some natural diamonds.

There are 236,000 square miles of pasture and hay lands.

Kazakhstan is the first former Soviet republic to pay off its debts to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the loan was paid seven years early.

With 1,040,000 square miles of land, Kazakhstan is the largest landlocked country (or state) and the ninth-largest country (or state) in the world. Its size is comparable to Western Europe.