The article deals with the issue of the impact of the agrarian policy of tsarism on the socio-economic development of Western Kazakhstan in the late XVIII - early XX centuries.The processes of development of cattle breeding, agriculture, settlement of the nomadic and semi-nomadic population are studied in the article. The scientific works of historians on this subject are analyzed. The author describes the factors that contributed to the development of agriculture and cattle in the region, the involvement of Western Kazakhstan in the Russian market.