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Walking along Nurzhol Boulevard in downtown Astana can feel otherworldly. On the eastern end stands Khan Shatyr, a giant translucent tent that houses a shopping and entertainment center. Designed by the renowned Norman Foster, it covers 14 hectares. Its shape was inspired by a traditional Kazakh dwelling, one of many nods to local culture in the city’s modern architecture.
Across the street stretches Lover’s Park, home to the boldest lover’s statue in Central Asia. Then comes the imposing House of Ministries – a 1.5-kilometer-long arch ending with two golden towers. At night, dozens of lights illuminate its multi-story structure, making it glow like a scene from another world.
A brisk steppe wind sweeps across the pedestrian path as you continue walking. Fountains spatter water across the walkways, flower beds line the streets, benches invite lovers to linger, and small sculptures dot the boulevard. In summer, this stretch is refreshing and alive; in winter, the heart of the city grows cold, its grandeur softened by the chill.
Ahead rises Baiterek, a 97-meter-tall observation tower and monument built in 1997 to mark the transfer of the capital from Alma-Ata. The structure, sponsored by Oman and designed by Foster, was envisioned by Nursultan Nazarbayev, Kazakhstan’s first president, himself.
Its form draws from an old Kazakh legend: each year, the sacred bird Samruk flies over the Tree of Life – Baiterek – and lays a golden egg in its crown. The egg is then seized by a dragon, symbolising the cycle of day and night, winter and summer, and the eternal struggle between good and evil.
Finally, on the western end of the boulevard, lies the Ak Orda, the presidential palace crowned with a blue-and-gold dome and a spire reaching skyward. Alongside Baiterek and Khan Shatyr, it is one of the most striking symbols of the capital — a city built to impress and inspire.
Many visitors dislike Astana. It’s too new, badly designed, hard to navigate on foot, boring, with too few cycling lanes, no private avant-garde galleries, art spaces, or museums, few good parties, no underground culture, and mediocre restaurants.
Especially compared with the former capital, Almaty, where art and culture have long flourished, Astana can feel artificial – a megalomaniac project of a dictator, a place without a soul. Because everything here, on the left bank of the Ishim River, is new.
The beginnings
Temirtas Iskakov is thirty-three, with black shoulder-length hair and very strong legs. For the past few years, he has been organising city walks in Astana, covering dozens, if not hundreds, of kilometers on foot each week. He was born in Russian Siberia but returned to Kazakhstan with his parents as part of a repatriation program in 2002. In 2009, at the age of 18, he moved to Astana. An architect by training, a cultural activist and curator of educational projects, he knows the city and its history inside and out.
“If you are familiar with the history of the Russian Empire, you know that it pursued a particular colonial policy toward the steppe. Akmolinsk appeared in the first half of the nineteenth century precisely as such a colonial outpost, an external district marking the advance of tsarism.”
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Before Astana, a city in the middle of the steppe, became the capital, it had a long history and underwent many name changes. It was founded as a Cossack settlement called Aqmoly by the Russian Empire in 1830. “Ақ мола” (Aqmola) in Kazakh means “white grave,” although this etymology is not universally accepted. Soon after, it was renamed Akmolinsk.
In 1961, under Nikita Khrushchev, it was renamed Tselinograd — Russian for “City of Virgin Lands” — to commemorate the Soviet Virgin Lands campaign, a state development and resettlement program aimed at transforming underdeveloped, sparsely populated, highly fertile lands into a major agricultural region.
In 1991, following Kazakhstan’s independence, the city was renamed Akmola. Six years later, it became Astana, which in Kazakh simply means “the capital.” In 2019, following the resignation of President Nursultan Nazarbayev, it was briefly renamed Nur-Sultan, but in 2022, the name Astana was restored.
“Astana has always been a city of migrants. These included, for example, exiled immigrants, deportees – people whom the tsarist government sent into exile here. Among them were Polish political activists, and more broadly, political dissidents – people considered undesirable, who stood up for reform and the rights of the people,” Iskakov says.
“Then came the October Revolution. For the first few years, things were still all right — but soon the campaign against entrepreneurs began. They were eliminated as a social class, all private enterprise and business were nationalised.”
The 20th century was not easy for the Kazakhs. The forced collectivisation of the 1930s, which aimed at turning traditionally nomadic communities into farmers in state-owned collective enterprises, resulted in mass starvation. According to estimates, it claimed the lives of around 40 percent of the Kazakh population.
The Stalinist purges wiped out much of the local intelligentsia, while Kazakhstan became the site of several GULAGs, where the regime sent thousands of Soviet citizens from across the country. Due to its vast and sparsely populated territory, it became a destination for millions of people from ethnic groups deported by Stalin.
These included Poles, Germans, Koreans, Chechens, Crimean Tatars, and several others. As a result of these changes, Akmolinsk — and later Tselinograd — began to grow. While at the beginning of the 20th century the city had only 12,000 residents, by 1945, when the Second World War ended, its population had risen to 69,000.
“And then Tselinna – the Virgin Lands Campaign – begins, which greatly changed the city’s ethnic and demographic composition. Young Komsomol members came here, following Nikita Khrushchev’s call, to take part in this great construction project of communism,” Iskakov ads.
All of this was built on the right bank of the Ishim River. At the time, the opposite side, where modern Astana now stands, was nothing but open steppe.
The new era
When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Kazakhstan was the last republic to leave. Between December 11, when Russia declared independence, and December 16, Kazakhstan was briefly the only remaining Soviet state.
Like most new republics, especially in Central Asia, Kazakhstan’s early independence was bittersweet. The new states faced a pressing question: how to build loyalty to the nation without the ideological glue of Marxism-Leninism? What should the national idea – and self-image – be built on?
Across the region, countries turned to their pasts. Uzbekistan revived Amir Timur, replacing Lenin statues with those of the conqueror of Samarkand. Tajikistan embraced its 10th-century ruler, Ismoil Somoni. Kyrgyzstan looked to the Epic of Manas and its nomadic heritage.
Kazakhstan, however, saw that a new state needed more than revived heroes – it needed a vision of the future. Nursultan Nazarbayev, whose later rule would be marred by corruption and authoritarianism, grasped this early on. For Kazakhs to believe in their new state, he thought, they needed a symbol of progress: a new capital, a new Kazakh dream.
“Almaty, as a city, had already taken shape, building a new capital there for Nazarbayev, I think, would have been difficult. He would have had to compete with the achievements of the Soviet period and with the legacy of Dinmukhamed Kunayev, his predecessor, an important figure whom everyone still loves and respects,” Iskakov says. “Nazarbayev needed to symbolically create his own legacy, and of course, that would have been impossible to do there.”
When the decision to transfer the capital was made, several questions arose. Who would sponsor it? Kazakhstan was a newly independent state and, like much of the former Soviet Union, struggled with the transition from communism to a market economy, inadequate infrastructure, and growing poverty. It did not seem like ideal conditions to build a new city. In fact, in the early 1990s, the idea faced considerable criticism.
Most importantly, however, the question was: where to build it. Several cities were considered: Karaganda, Ulytau, Kokshetau, Aktobe. Ultimately, the commission chose Akmola. This is how Nursultan Nazarbayev described the choice in his memoir:
“The main advantage was that Akmola is located in a zone that can be regarded as the geographical center of the Kazakh steppe. (From Almaty to Akmola is about 1,000 kilometers, and from Akmola to the northern border roughly 800 kilometers.) The city is equidistant from the major economic regions that determine the country’s development.
There was no doubt about the economic and social effectiveness of purposefully redistributing migration flows within Kazakhstan. It was necessary to encourage people from the densely populated south to move to the northern regions of the country.”
Another step was to create a Master Plan. Nazarbayev knew that to attract investments and foreign loans, he needed an architect of great standing – someone whose reputation would legitimise the new Kazakh endeavour. Among the many submitted proposals, it was the vision of Japanese architect Kisho Kurokawa that won the hearts of Nazarbayev’s team.
And quite understandably. It was Kurokawa who designed Nurzhol Boulevard as the government axis in the middle of the steppe. He believed the new capital could harmonise with its natural surroundings, history, and the region’s nomadic traditions. The city could achieve a symbiosis between nature and urban life, tradition and modernity, and between the already inhabited right bank of the Ishim River and the new city on the left bank.
This was particularly important because the new Astana was intended to grow out of the existing city, which in 1997 had around 270,000 inhabitants.
“Kurokawa was chosen, but his initial proposal did not correspond to what Nazarbayev wanted. Kurokawa proposed developing the city on the right bank and expanding it, because the old city, Tselinograd, had a general plan based on a very classic Soviet scheme: a natural river, neighborhoods developed organically along the right bank, with streets laid parallel to the river,” Iskakov says.
“But the authorities did not like this idea. Firstly, it had drawbacks: the city could not reasonably stretch 50 kilometers. Moreover, the capital was already in the process of moving, and the right bank was a fully Soviet city.”
In 2005, the government approved a revision to the Master Plan, authored by local architect Nurmakhan Tokayev. It stated that, for logistical reasons, the city would expand radially around a designated “core open circle,” rather than in a linear fashion, as proposed by Kurakawa.
Building the dream
With the new plan came investments, loans and grants. As Nazarbayev wrote in his memoir, the presidential residence Ak Orda was made possible by a grant from Abu Dhabi. The Nur-Astana Mosque was funded by Qatar. Some other buildings were sponsored by Turkey, Kuwait, and Oman, while grants and loans came from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Italy, Japan, and other countries. The rest was funded by the revenues from the developing oil industry.
Before anything was built, however, government workers were housed in temporary accommodations or dormitories on the right bank, while what would later become the government district was little more than open steppe, swept by unbearable winds and swarming with mosquitoes.
The government had to act fast, and the left bank soon turned into a massive construction site working around the clock to bring the new city – the fantasy – to life.
“It was a colossal construction project that demanded massive human and economic resources. All regions of Kazakhstan contributed in one way or another – or were drawn into the process of building the country,” Iskakov says.
“This was truly the Kazakh Dream: to enter university, buy an apartment, get a job as a top manager in a national company, and make good money. That was the Kazakh Dream – the one that, I think, was created.”
But before the Kazakh Dream materialised, Astana was still Akmola — a city awaiting its planned transformation.
At that time, Rahat Nurtazin was a child. We meet at a café outside one of Astana’s large shopping malls. Rahat arrives by bike. Dressed in sporty clothing, the thirty-two year old DJ and event organiser welcomes me with a wide smile.
“I remember that most of the construction was on the left bank. And yes, we used to go there – it was a completely empty lot. Baiterek stood right in the middle of the steppe. There were only two buildings on the left bank back then,” says Nurtazin.
“Imagine living your whole life in a place where all the buildings are just five stories high. The only thing taller was the Akimat – the local administration building. That was it. And then suddenly, in the steppe, you see Baiterek. For us at the time, it felt futuristic.”
The young Rahat soon sensed that his town was changing in ways he had never imagined and that would have a huge impact on the shape of the new capital and the entire country.
“There was definitely a sense of a huge influx of people — more and more people arriving, and less and less space. I probably noticed it first through my father. New opportunities were opening up, and my father’s friends from the West started moving here,” he says.
“They were so different from us that it was hard for me to talk to them. My father had served with them in the army for two years and was close to them, but it was difficult for me to connect with their children, they just seemed completely different.”
When I ask Rahat what kind of city Astana is — and how he would define it — he takes a moment to think.
“It’s a new city. It still doesn’t have any defining characteristics, because about 70 per cent of the people here are newcomers – everyone brings their own culture. So the city is just developing, it’s still taking shape. I’d divide it into the right bank, which feels cozy, and the left bank, which is simply new – a little artificial, not yet fully formed,” he says.
“It’s just new — still taking shape — and it still feels like a construction site. still missing a sense of grounding. It just needs more time.”
Uniting river banks
When I met Sergey Romanenko, 30, last April, he and his team were assembling a Soviet mosaic saved from a demolished building on the city’s right bank – the old part of town. I saw the thousands of colourful pieces they had meticulously sorted, protected, and reassembled in his bar called Vtoroy. It was a titanic effort to piece together countless fragments of glass into a majestic, beautiful image.
Now, the mosaic proudly adorns the bar’s wall. The venue is nice and cozy. The staff is friendly, and the food is simple but good. For a split second, Astana feels small and close to the heart.
“Why did the mosaic appear? It’s an attempt to unite the two riverbanks. Because the two banks are still very different, both visually and in terms of people. There are still people who stay on one bank and don’t understand that the other bank is also their city,” Romanenkon says.
“I really like Soviet aesthetics. But we didn’t want to create a Soviet-style establishment. We just wanted to bring back the feeling of what it looked like in the 1990s, when people first came here. Imagine what it was like: a small town, really small. There are huge winds, the strongest you can imagine. And imagine this town suddenly becomes the capital.”
In his business, Romanenko wants to reconnect with the history of Astana – a new city built in the middle of the steppe, a dream that soon met reality. Yet there are not many places like his that try to create something new and unique for the city.
“People say, ‘Let’s do it like in England, I’ve been to England, and I want a place like that here.’ Many people opened businesses that way, even big ones. That’s how they think: ‘I’ve traveled to Italy, I want to bring Italy home.’ And we thought: why? We already have a wonderful city, Astana. Let’s bring Astana to Astana,” he says.
“From the very beginning of Kazakh history, Kazakhs have been people who always welcomed others: new clans, new families, new tribes… We have a tradition of embracing foreign cultures. But first and foremost, our own culture must come first.”
“Astana is a very Kazakh city. Nazarbayev brought Kazakhs to the north, to a region where few Kazakhs had lived before. They moved here and they live here now. Thanks to that, we no longer have to fear that one day some Russian guys might come and say they’re separating, like what happened in Ukraine. We won’t have that kind of problem,” he adds.
The Kazakh dream
Viktoria Abdraimova is a speechwriter and political adviser. She has worked in different government departments for most of her adult life. We are meeting in a café in one of Astana’s grand shopping malls. Here, there is nothing strange in that. Shopping malls are the new arbats, pedestrian streets where people hang out, go on dates, have food. A natural environment for Astana’s dwellers.
Viktoria, a 38-year-old, works nearby in Astana’s Expo Centre, a futuristic building called Nur Alem, shaped like a giant glass ball. She says that this is her favourite place in the city.
“We moved to Astana in 1997. I was in fifth grade,” Abdraimova says. “With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the economy collapsed, the plant [where my parents worked] stopped operating, economic problems set in, and the town began to decline. There were such hard times, to the point where, I remember, we had no electricity, water – those were hard times,” she says.
Hard times, required bold decisions and Victoria’s parents decided to move to Astana: the country’s new capital. Today, Victoria is a hundred percent Left Bank girl.
“I like our climate, the fresh breeze, we’ve gotten used to it, and I like the freedom, our steppe is so endless and it’s like nothing is limiting you. Astana is like a modern oasis in the middle of this steppe,” she says.
“Everyone around me is Kazakh by nationality, my friends are Kazakh. I have both Kazakh and Slavic blood. But I’m more drawn to this Kazakh culture, especially the Left Bank, because the people here are very educated, very goal-oriented, they honor traditions, but at the same time most of them studied in Europe, so they’re very modern.”
Victoria’s parents got divorced and her father, an ethnic Kazakh left Kazakhstan. Her Belarusian mother, Irina, decided to stay. Victoria describes her as a Kazakh patriot, who loves her country deeply and who has found her Kazakh dream. But before she did, she went through a difficult period of deep personal crisis.
“She started looking for answers to the questions of why this was happening to her. And that’s how she came to astrology,” Abdraikmova says. “Now she’s a famous astrologer. She’s a blogger. She has 80,000 subscribers on YouTube, 30,000 on Instagram. She runs her own online school. Her clients are mostly Russian-speaking, based all over the world. She specialises in geopolitics and economics.”
Looking at her mother, Victoria believes that one day, she will also find her Kazakh dream. Maybe equally unorthodox as her mother’s.
“I believe Astana is a truly great city of opportunity, because it’s a new city, there’s still little competition, markets are just emerging here, different niches, and there aren’t many people,” she says.
When I walk along the Ishim River, Astana feels like a European city. At times, it even reminds me of my hometown, Krakow – full of pedestrians eating ice cream, artists playing the dutar, a traditional Central Asian two-stringed lute, and happy couples enjoying their day. Kids sip bubble tea.
When I think about Astana, I picture spacious apartments on the top floors of half-empty skyscrapers overlooking the futuristic new capital. I think of wide, busy, chaotic streets bathed in traffic. Older women in traditional clothes casually pay for groceries with their Kaspi app, while children rush along the pavements on electric scooters — though exactly how they deal with the ever-present sills remains a mystery. Have I succeeded in finding the soul of the city? I’m not sure. But I’m definitely closer.
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