# Jezkazgan Founded as a Copper-Mining City (1938)

URL: https://allhistories.com/kazakhstan/timeline/1938-jezkazgan-founded-as-a-copper-mining-city
Location: Jezkazgan (Zhezkazgan)
Themes: Copper, Mining, Industrialisation

In 1938 the city of Jezkazgan was created in the central Kazakh steppe to exploit its rich copper deposits. The ore body had been identified around 1928–29 by the geologist Kanysh Satpayev, who argued it could rank among the world's richest. The railway linking Jezkazgan, Balkhash and Karaganda was finished by 1940, tying the mines to smelters and coal. The Soviet drive for industrial raw materials made copper a strategic metal, especially as war approached. The remote site needed housing, water and rail transport on a huge scale, and labour came from volunteers, prisoners and exiles. Nearby, the Kengir camp operated in the Gulag system, and Wikipedia notes forced resettlement of Koreans to the area in the 1940s. Jezkazgan later hosted a large mining and metallurgical complex, built in 1973 to smelt copper formerly sent elsewhere. It was the centre of its own oblast from 1973 to 1997 and became the capital of the new Ulytau Region, effective 8 June 2022. The mines remain a pillar of Kazakhstan's metal industry. At this point in the timeline (1938), the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic was run by Nikolay Skvortsov, first secretary of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan (23 May 1938 – 23 July 1945), with Nurbapa Umirzakov, chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet (28 October 1937 – 15 July 1938), while Ibragim Tazhiyev, chairman of the Council of People's Commissars (September 1937 – 17 July 1938) headed the government.

## Why it matters
Jezkazgan anchored Kazakhstan's copper industry from the 1930s and shows how Soviet resource towns were built in empty steppe by forced and free labour alike.

Ruler at the Time: [Nikolay Skvortsov](https://allhistories.com/kazakhstan/rulers/nikolay-skvortsov)

## Sources
- [Wikipedia — Jezkazgan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jezkazgan)
- [Wikipedia — Kanysh Satpayev](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanysh_Satpayev)