Kazakhstan is a landlocked country located in Central Asia that is bordered by Russia on the north, China on the east, Turkmenistan on the west, and Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan on the south. By size, it is the ninth-largest nation in the world at 2.7 million square kilometers (1 million square miles).

As of July 2003, Kazakhstan's population was estimated at 16.7 million. The prominent ethnicities are Kazakh (56%) and Russian (28%). The major religions are Sunni Muslim (47%) and Russian Orthodox (44%).

Kazakhstan, which had a nomadic tradition, was annexed by Russia in the late nineteenth century. In 1917, secular nationalists briefly established an independent national government which lasted from 1918 to 1920. The country then rejoined Russia as the Kazakh Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, part of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). After the fall of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, Kazakhstan declared full independence in December 1991 after a failed coup attempt in Moscow.

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