A sign of the transition taking place in the steppe district is the rapid growth of towns, and the contrast between their elec tricity, radio and railway stations, and cinemas, and the primi tive huts of the nomad herders is sharp. Semipalatinsk, the largest, had a population (1926) of 56,411, Alma-Ata, the admin istrative centre, 45,379, Petropavlovsk 44,272, Uralsk, Kustanai, Kyzil-Orda, Aktyubinsk, Chimkent and Turkistan, between 22,000 and 35,00o.
Guryev, at the mouth of the Ural and Fort Alexandrovsk on Mangishlak peninsula are small ports on the Caspian. The only railway is part of the Orenburg-Tashkent line from which a branch goes from Arys to Alma-Ata, which is to be linked with Semi palatinsk. Work has been begun from both ends, and it is hoped that the line will be working by 1933. Considering that the repub lic covers an area as large as Germany, France, Spain and Italy combined, the inadequacy of railway communication is evident. Much trade is still, therefore, done by camel caravan across the desert and steppe. Bazaars and fairs are numerous. The republic shows a marked deficit in its budget, but it is hoped that the new railway link will open up trading and mining prospects and remedy this, and will also develop cultivation of wheat and cotton for export. Serious efforts are being made to cope with illiteracy and to increase the possibilities of education for the Kirghiz-Kazak children, always a difficult problem in a nomad district with poor communications. The difficulty here is complicated by the lack
of Kirghiz-Kazak teachers, and short courses to enable teachers to reach literacy standard hace been arranged. There are 20 cen tres where children may board during their education, and about 200,000 children are receiving primary education, though a large percentage of these are town children. Kazakstan was a region where war and famine resulted in numbers of children becoming homeless wanderers, and in 1924 of 30,036 such children, 11,429 had been accommodated in 16o orphanages.
Russian: T. R. Ryskulov Kazakstan (1927) ; Atlas of U.S.S.R. (Moscow, 1928) ; B. P. Semenov, "The Kirghiz Region," vol. 18 of Russia (1903) ; P. S. Nazarov, "Recherches Zoo logiques des Steppes de Kirghiz" Bull Soc. Imp. Nat. (Moscow, 1886, vol. lxii.). In other tongues: G. Radde, "Wissenschaftliche Ergeb nisse der Expedition Trans-Kaspien and Nord-Chorassen ; Erganzungs heft No. 126 in Petermann's Mitteilungen (Gotha, 1898)"; Alexis Levshin, Description des hordes et des steppes des Kirghiz-Kazaks (trans. from Russian by Ferry de Cigny 1840) ; M. D. Haviland, Forest, Steppe and Tundra (1926).