ADAEV, a province of the Kazakh Socialist Soviet Republic. Area 303,325 sq.km. Pop. (1926) 136,000 (urban 3,012). The area includes the Ust Urt plateau (700f t.) in the south, and the low plain to the north of it which apparently once linked the Caspian and Aral seas, and which is studded with salt lakes with fauna bearing evidence of this link. The soil is either gravelly, and stony desert or alkaline and gypsiferous grey soil, so that vegetation is sparse. The nomad Kirghiz tribes are mainly herds men. The administrative centre is Fort Alexandrovsk on the Mangishlak peninsula, which has a fishing industry (including seal fishery) and exports Glauber salts obtained from the shores of Kara Bugaz bay. On Mangishlak peninsula there is evidence of naphtha, ozokerite and bitumen deposits, as yet unworked (1928). In the north-west the province extends northward in a narrow strip nearly to lat. 5o° N., and thus includes the naphtha area round Uilsk, where the population is mainly Russian and Tatar. Apart from this strip, the province is semi-desert; there is no railway.