Kazakhstan'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.
Related historical events
- 1988–1991The Nationalities Crisis and the Collapse of Central AuthorityChanged the referendum wording in KazakhstanThe Kazakh Supreme Soviet changed the referendum wording from 'federation of sovereign republics' to 'Union of sovereign states.' The republic formally asked Moscow to include its results in the overall count anyway.
- 1991The Novo-Ogaryovo Process and the New Union TreatyThe treaty's strongest advocate, spoken of as premier of the new union.
- 1991The August Coup and the Collapse of the USSRStayed away from Belovezha, then presided over the dissolution's conclusion in the Alma-Ata Protocol.
From the blast furnace to first secretary: the lesson of Alma-Ata
Nursultan Nazarbayev was born in 1940 in Chemolgan, a mountain village near Alma-Ata, a herdsman's son. Entering working life at the blast furnaces of the Temirtau steel works, he moved from the shop floor into the party, grew up as an industrial official in Karaganda, and in 1984, at forty-four, became chairman of the Kazakh republic's Council of Ministers, the youngest republican premier in the union.
In December 1986, when Gorbachev replaced the Kazakh elder Kunaev with the Russian Kolbin, youth protests erupted in Alma-Ata and ended in bloody suppression. The first great national disturbance of the perestroika years, it taught the centre a painful lesson, and in the summer of 1989 Moscow finally installed the local man, Nazarbayev, as first secretary.
He began by settling the ethnic clashes at Novy Uzen on the spot and negotiating with the movement against the Semipalatinsk nuclear test site, managing the republic's grievances. The worker-turned-manager soon became the weightiest non-Slavic voice on the central stage of union politics.
1991: the union's last defender
In 1991, as republics raced for the exits, Nazarbayev stood at the opposite pole. For Kazakhstan, sharing thousands of kilometres of border with Russia and with Russians nearly half its population, a disorderly dissolution would be catastrophe. He became the most active architect of the new union treaty at Novo-Ogaryovo and sat in the late-night meeting with Gorbachev and Yeltsin on 29 July; there was even talk that once the treaty was signed he would be premier of the new union.
The August coup burned all of it. He denounced the coup, and on 29 August signed the decree closing the Semipalatinsk nuclear test site: the ground that had poisoned the Kazakh steppe for forty years shut by Kazakh hands. When the three Slavic states declared the union extinct among themselves at Belovezha in December, he protested by his absence, but the course was set. On 16 December Kazakhstan became the last republic to declare independence, and five days later the Alma-Ata Protocol formalised the Soviet end.
The union received its death certificate in his capital. For the man who had defended it to the last, history chose that manner of ending.
Thirty years of the Elbasy: state-building and its shadow
As independent Kazakhstan's first president, Nazarbayev inherited the world's fourth-largest nuclear arsenal and bought the new state international trust by giving up all of it. In 1997 he moved the capital from Almaty to Astana in the north, binding the Russian-majority north to the state, and his multi-vector diplomacy balancing Russia, China and the West laid the foundations of an oil power. That the multi-ethnic state held together without ethnic war is the achievement his rule claims above all.
The price was democracy. Elections became a formality, opposition was marginalised, and in 2010 parliament conferred on him the lifetime title of Elbasy, Leader of the Nation. In 2019 he passed the presidency to his chosen successor Tokayev while keeping real power as chairman of the Security Council and party leader, and the capital was renamed Nur-Sultan in his honour.
In January 2022 unrest that began over fuel prices swelled into a nationwide revolt, its streets filled with the cry Shal, ket! - old man, out! After the suppression, Tokayev stripped his remaining posts and titles, and the capital's name went back to Astana. Father who built the state, ruler who privatised it: the judgement of the longest-lasting power raised by the Soviet Union's final generation is only now beginning.