At present, with the rapid advancement of industrialization and the intensive development of agriculture in the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic, forestry workers face the urgent task of ensuring the proper utilization and timely restoration of the Republic’s forest resources. In this process, special attention should be paid to mountain and desert forests, which are currently being utilized more extensively and more intensively than ever before. In these forests, harvesting methods must be employed that ensure regeneration while preserving their protective functions. Forestry workers in Kazakhstan must find ways to eliminate the existing gap between timber harvesting and the regeneration of logged areas. Forestry workers, including those in Kazakhstan, face the important task of improving forest management practices. During the Sixth Five-Year Plan, the Republic’s forestry personnel must implement a series of major forestry measures. In particular, management plans for all Category I and Category II forests should be completed by 1960, and comprehensive forestry development plans should be prepared for the Republic and its regions wherever forest management planning has been completed. Every region and the Republic as a whole should adopt measures aimed at increasing forest productivity by raising the average annual increment per unit forest area by at least 10–15 percent by 1960. It should be noted that a program of such measures for the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic was completed in early 1957 and is currently being implemented. In addition, forestry authorities are responsible for maintaining strict supervision of forest health conditions, strengthening fire protection, and carrying out large-scale forest regeneration using fast-growing and economically valuable tree species. To address these tasks properly, it is necessary to study forest growth conditions and naturally occurring tree and shrub species, determine their abundance and distribution throughout the Republic, investigate the conditions for introducing exotic species, explore possibilities for improving existing forest stands, and resolve a number of other issues related to establishing a scientifically based forestry management system. However, to date, the forestry literature of the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic lacks comprehensive review materials that provide an overall picture of the current condition of forest resources in the Republic and its individual regions. The present work represents an initial attempt to fill this gap. It provides a general description of the forests, discusses their significance to the national economy, presents forestry-management and forest-typological characteristics, identifies forest-vegetation zones, reviews the state of forestry research, and addresses a number of other issues concerning the general characteristics of the Republic’s forests and woody flora. Questions of forest management, including land-use planning, forest inventory and management planning, forest utilization, reforestation measures, and forest protection and conservation, will be treated in a subsequent volume and will constitute the subject of a separate study. In preparing this work, the author drew upon personal observations and materials collected during nearly thirty years of forestry work in Kazakhstan. Extensive archival materials from the Main Forestry Administration of the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic, together with a wide range of published literature concerning the Republic’s forests, were also analyzed. This work does not seek to provide an absolutely exhaustive treatment of all aspects of forest research and description. Rather, the author’s aim is to present a general overview of the Republic’s forest resources and to supply essential data describing their characteristics, thereby assisting practitioners and researchers engaged in forestry and agriculture. The author also hopes that the information and materials presented in this book will help a broad readership gain a better understanding of the natural wealth of our Republic. Students of secondary and higher agricultural and forestry educational institutions will likewise find useful knowledge in its pages. The author will be grateful for any criticisms, suggestions, and recommendations that contribute to improving the content of this work.