Shybyndy

Shybyndy takes its name from a salt lake in the Kazakh Uplands, lying in a basin among low granite hills about fifteen kilometres south-southeast of the later settlement of Molodezhny. The surrounding country is open steppe with scattered salt pans, a landscape of grazing land used by the Kazakh nomads of the Middle Horde, who drove their herds between winter quarters and summer pastures.

In the eighteenth century the steppe north and east of the Kazakh Uplands was drawn into the orbit of the Russian line of forts along the Irtysh. The village of Bayan-Aul was founded in 1826 by Siberian Cossacks, and in 1833 the Bayanaul outer district was set up within the Omsk region, bringing the pastoral clans of this area under Russian administration.