Kazakhstan declared independence from the Soviet Union on December 16, 1991.
The declaration came through the Constitutional Law on the State Independence of the Republic of Kazakhstan, adopted by the republic’s Supreme Soviet. Kazakhstan was the last of the Soviet Union’s fifteen union republics to formally declare independence, doing so as the USSR was rapidly dissolving.
The timing followed months of political upheaval. Kazakhstan had declared state sovereignty in 1990, and the failed August 1991 coup in Moscow accelerated the collapse of Soviet authority. On December 10, the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic was renamed the Republic of Kazakhstan; six days later, its independence law was passed and signed.
December 16 is now celebrated as Kazakhstan’s Independence Day. A common confusion is to treat the date as the moment the Soviet Union itself ended. The USSR formally ceased to exist on December 26, 1991, while Kazakhstan’s declaration established its independence earlier. Kazakhstan later joined the United Nations in March 1992.