This flag was adopted by the Kazakh SSR on January 24, 1953.
Prior to this, the flag was red with the gold hammer and sickle in the top-left corner, with the Cyrillic characters Казак ССР (Kazak SSR) and Казахская ССР (Kazakhskaya SSR) in gold to the right of the hammer and sickle.
Between 1937 and the adoption of the above flag in the 1940s, the flag was red with a gold hammer and sickle in the top-left corner, with the Latin characters QAZAQ SSR and the Cyrillic characters КАЗАХСКАЯ ССР (KAZAKHSKAYA SSR) in gold in a sans-serif font beneath the hammer and sickle.