This article summarises the results of field research carried out in 1998 among families of Czech origin in north-west Kazakhstan. The centre of research was the rural community of Borodinovka, founded in 1911 by emigrants of Czech origin who had already settled in Tsarist Russia in the later 19th century on the territory of what today is the Southern Ukraine. Research was ais o conducted in the industrial town of Aktyubin, where some of the descendents of the Czech emigrants had moved over the years. We likewise visited the village of Meshcheryakovka not far from Orenburg in Russia, where other emigrants of Czech origin has settled at the beginning of the 1990s after leaving Kazakhstan. The text contains a concise history of Czech emigration to Kazakhstan, with a description of characteristic livelihoods, accommodation, food, healing, social and family life. Attention is also devoted to forms of identification with ethnic and national consciousness. The survey shows that the group is a remarkable cultural form in which elements of Russian, Ukrainian, Czech and Kazakh culture interpenetrate. The descendents of Czech emigrants conceptualise some of the particular features in material and spiritual life by which they distinguish themselves from the other groups of the local population as specifically culturally Czech, whether these in fact have their roots in Bohemia or elsewhere conditions. The research suggests that the concept of tradition in social anthropology is highly problematic, since in the conditions of contemporary Kazakhstan and Russia, where there is a struggle formaterial survival, the application of cultural elements that we often call „traditional“ can actuallybe an innovation born of hardship. These are elements relating to self-sufficiency andindependence of a range of public institutions such as canteens, shops, bafories, houses of cultureand so on. Institutional relations have also relaxed in the field of transport and health care, and newforms of commercial exchange are emerging to replace monetary economy. After 1991 when Kazachstan gained independence, much of the non-Kazakh population moved away. In recent years descendents of the Czech emigrants have also been re-emigrating to the Czech Republic and to Russia with their Russian, Ukrainian and other family members. The materials obtained are deepening our knowledge of Czech minorities abroad.
The article focuses on the problem of resettlement of Czechs, Slovaks, Poles and Germans who lived on the territory of the former Soviet Union, to the countries of their forefathers. It is centered especially on the period of the 1990s. After the disintegration of the Soviet Union in the year 1991 important streams of migration occurred, especially out of those former Soviet republics with certain ethnic minorities. The Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland and Germany arranged conditions for the resettlement of their countrymen and their family members in the areas of legislature as well as the material support. While in the case of Czechs, Slovaks and Poles smaller groups were resettled (1–3 thousands of persons), there were about 2 millions of Germans.