History of Kazakhs in the Khiva (Khorezm) region in the XVIII-XX centuries

Abstract

The article examines the history of the Kazakhs, mainly the Younger Zhuz, who inhabited the
territory of the Khiva Khanate in the middle of the 18th century. The Kazakh clans of this region were ruled by
the khans of the Younger Zhuz. Subsequently, in the middle of the 19th century, after the colonization of the
region by the tsarist regime, the Khiva Khanate became part of the Turkestan Governor-General. Part of the
Kazakh population was assigned to the Amu Darya department of the Turkestan region. After the victory of
Soviet power, this region was transformed into the Khorezm Republic. The article discusses the political and
social life of the region, the areas of settlement and the size of the Kazakh population, their economic structure,
and relationships with local authorities and other ethnic groups of the region.
The main events in the article cover the period from the beginning of the 18th century to the administrativeterritorial survey of Kazakhstan and Central Asia in 1925. By the middle of the 1920s, the Soviet government
decided to form national states in the region, and for this purpose, demographic data (population censuses,
etc.) of Kazakh clans from the period of the Khiva Khanate, their areas of settlement, and the development of
economic life were studied and analyzed. In addition, socio-political (creation of local and central executive bodies, elections, appointments, etc.) and migration processes during the preparation of the national-territorial
delimitation of the region are considered. During the years of Soviet power (1917-1925), an active position in
the creation of the first state formation of the Kazakh-Karakalpak Autonomous Region as part of the Khorezm
Republic was expressed by the leaders of the Kazakh population, who advocated joining the Kazakh ASSR. The
authors widely used archival documents of Karakalpakstan and materials from scientific publications.