The complex problems reflecting the course of World War I on the processes in Kazakh steppe, in base of funds of archives and data acquisition, published in the last period, are revealed in the article. This problem is still little studied in European and Russian historical literature, as the Kazakh lands were a kind of “historical periphery” in the first half of the twentieth century. In the meantime, the hardships of World War I had the strongest impact on national margins due to the mobilization of the war, requisitioning of material values and caused the widespread social discontent. As a result, because of hardships of War riots broke out of 1916, which swept a significant part of Kazakhstan and Central Asia. The political processes that gave impetus to the course of military actions, the fall of the tsarist autocracy in 1917, led to dynamic actions by the Kazakh intelligentsia. It was during this period, that ideas about national definition, expressed in the program goals of autonomy are matured among Kazakh intellectuals. At the end of the article, the conclusion is given: the reasons why the searchlights of the autonomists, who offered an alternative variant to the Bolshevik platform, are succeeded. The author of the article analyzes the causes and genesis of ideas of leaders of social movement Alash in conditions of chaos and multiple authorities that occurred in 1917. In order to more fully disclose the topic, he used the materials from foreign archives, memoirs literature of the participants of those events.