Nursultan Abishuly Nazarbayev
Нұрсұлтан Әбішұлы НазарбаевKazakhstan's thirty-year ruler, defender of the union to its last day
On 8 December 1991 Yeltsin's side telephoned from the Belovezha forest urging him to join; he did not turn his plane. Eight days later his Kazakhstan became the last republic to declare independence, and the union's formal death certificate, the Alma-Ata Protocol, was signed in his capital.
Starting as a blast-furnace worker, Nazarbayev rose through the Kazakh premiership and party first secretaryship to become president of Kazakhstan in 1990, and at Novo-Ogaryovo was the strongest advocate of the new union treaty. Absent from the Belovezha Accords, his Kazakhstan became the last republic to declare independence from the USSR. Ruling for nearly thirty years thereafter, he laid the foundations of the new state through nuclear renunciation, the transfer of the capital and pragmatic multi-vector diplomacy, while leaving behind the charges of authoritarian rule, a personality cult and dynastic corruption. He kept real power after leaving the presidency in 2019, until the unrest of January 2022 ended his era completely.
Career timeline
- 1960–1969Worker at the Karaganda Metallurgical Combine (blast furnace, casting machines, dispatcher, gasman). Joined CPSU in 1962. Graduated from the Higher Technical School at the Karaganda Metallurgical Combine in 1967.
- 1969–1973Party and Komsomol work in Temirtau.
- 1973–1978Secretary of the Party Committee, Karaganda Metallurgical Combine — effectively second-in-command at the 30,000-worker enterprise.
- 1978–1979Secretary, then Second Secretary, Karaganda Regional Party Committee.
- 1979–1984Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan (industry, transport, communications).
- 1984–1989Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Kazakh SSR (Prime Minister). At 44, the youngest head of government of any Soviet republic.
- 1989–1991First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan. Concurrently President of the Kazakh SSR from 1990. Member of the CPSU Politburo, 1990–1991.
- 1990–2019President of Kazakhstan (first elected April 1990 as President of the Kazakh SSR; first president after independence, December 1991). Re-elected 1991, 1999, 2005, 2011, 2015. Resigned March 2019.