[War & Business] The Name of Kazakhstan's Capital

In June 2019, Nursultan Nazarbayev, former President of Kazakhstan, attended the inauguration ceremony of Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, who was elected as his successor. Nursultan (Kazakhstan) = Reuters·Yonhap News Agency

[Asia Economy Reporter Hyunwoo Lee] The name of the capital city of Kazakhstan, which has recently attracted global attention due to large-scale protests, is "Nur-Sultan." When former President Nursultan Nazarbayev stepped down in 2019, he replaced the original name, Astana, with his own name. It is said that he wished for his name, meaning "shining ruler," to be forever engraved on the capital.

The main demand of the Kazakhstani protesters this time was the removal of this Nur-Sultan. The slogan most loudly chanted by the protesters was "Old man, step down now." This was aimed at Nazarbayev, who, despite having retired three years earlier, still wielded strong influence behind the scenes.

However, the evaluation of him was not always this negative from the start. Kazakhstan, a newly independent country from the former Soviet Union in 1990, was considered the most stable country in Central Asia largely due to his efforts. Right after independence, Kazakhstan was a country where various ethnic groups such as Kazakhs, Russians, and Tatars were mixed, and religious sects including Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism were widely spread, making it a country where ethnic and religious conflicts could have escalated the most.

What prevented these concerns was the inclusive policy promoted by Nazarbayev. After the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States in 2001, he proposed holding a World Religious Leaders Conference, and since then, every three years, delegations from major religious groups such as Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, and Hinduism have been dispatched to Kazakhstan to continue the conference.

Even after independence, it was also his achievement to adopt Russian as an official language despite much opposition. While encouraging the use of Kazakh, he insisted that Russian, which had been continuously used since the 19th century for communication among different ethnic groups, should be used. Thanks to his proactive inclusive policy, Kazakhstan was able to become the most stable country in Central Asia with minimal ethnic and religious conflicts.

However, his long-term rule of 30 years gradually transformed the hero of unity into a dictator. He spared no means to maintain his long-term rule. Whenever officials opposed his policies, he carried out large-scale cabinet reshuffles and forced personal worship by erecting statues of himself everywhere.

The wealth gap also worsened day by day. Kazakhstan, a resource-rich country with oil, natural gas, and uranium, was the richest country in Central Asia with a per capita income exceeding $10,000 in the early 2000s, but more than half of the national wealth was concentrated in a small privileged elite. Even as collusion between politics and business and corruption worsened, Nazarbayev showed endless leniency toward the corruption of his close associates to strengthen his own power. His excessive obsession with power turned the founding hero into a ruthless dictator.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.