The Kazakh population is largely clustered in the far western province of Mongolia, Bayan-Ulgii Aimag, with the second and third largest clusters in Hovd Aimag and Ulaanbaatar.
Bayan-Ulgii is located in the Altai Mountain range and has the highest average elevation in Mongolia. The soum center of this arid and mountainous province is Ulgii, a town of approximately 30,000 people.
Who are the Mongolian Kazakhs?
The Kazakh people are the largest ethnic minority in Mongolia. Numbering over 100,000 in the 2000 Census, they comprise the largest ethnic minority in Mongolia, although only 4% of the total population. The Kazakh population is concentrated in the western province of Bayan-Ulgii, a region physically separated from Kazakhstan by a 47-60 km mountainous stretch of Chinese and Russian territory. Documented Kazakh migration to Mongolia began in 1840 with many migrants arriving from areas now Western China. Records suggest that in 1905, there were 1370 Kazakh households, increasing to 1,870 households by 1924 (the year Mongolia adopted socialism). By 1989, the Kazakh population grew to approximately 120,000 individuals.
Before the fall of the USSR, few Mongolian Kazakhs had ever visited the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic, but in the post-Soviet context, the creation of new nation-states and national borders, relaxation of restrictions on movement, and opening of borders between east and west, new population movements have emerged.
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