Once an obscure township on Kazakhstan’s wolf-plagued plains, Astana has outgrown its teen years and is now firmly established as the country’s capital city.
Rising From The Steppe: Kazakhstan’s Capital Turns 20
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Tselinograd in 1984. The banner reads “Glory to the hands that smell of bread.”
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When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Nursultan Nazarbaev, a top politician in the communist republic, became president of an independent Kazakhstan. His Soviet pedigree was apparent in his photo ops, as well as his “ruler-for-life” ambitions.
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Workers outside the town’s new presidential palace in 1998. In the summer of that year, Nazarbaev decreed the former Tselinograd be renamed Astana, which means “capital” in the Kazakh language.
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Astana became a city of cranes as the government relocated from Almaty and the population swelled from 326,000 in 1999 to over 1 million today.