Standards and legal basis of the official status of Kazakhstan compatriots are considered in the article. Legal documents which allow to draw conclusion about status of Kazakhstan ethnic Russian population in the 1990s — 2000s are analyzed in the article. The evolution of republican legislative norms which reflect declarative changes of the attitude to the ethnic Russian population is investigated. The following legislative acts are examined: the constitutions of 1993 and 1995, «The Declaration on the State Sovereignty of the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic», «On State Independence of the Republic of Kazakhstan», the Citizenship Act, the Migration Act, the concept of migration policy, the Languages Act, the law on mass media, the concept of information security, as well as international Russian- Kazakh treaties. Legal provisions of ethnic Russians in the republican legislation which serves the foundation of conciliatory practices and actual politics without fully reflecting them have been studied. The developing tendencies prompted medium-term forecast made by the author.