Abstract
Nationalism is probably the domain that best highlights Kazakhstan’s desire to break away from its past. Indeed, although the Kazakhstani authorities refer to their country as embracing multiculturalism and the desire to recognise the numerous ethnocultural and religious minorities living in their country, this rhetoric is challenged by an unofficial process that aims to ensure the dominance of ethnic Kazakhs in all spheres of independent Kazakhstan. This chapter discusses this ‘Kazakhisation’ process through the lens of urbanism to illustrate how this nationalist policy is intimately connected with Astana’s urbanism.
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Notes
- 1.
Indeed, ‘the starting point of Nazarbayev’s brainstorming was the realisation that Almaty had insurmountable disadvantage as the capital of an independent nation state. Emotionally and personally the President was attached to the city. He loved its beauty, its cosmopolitan culture, its vibrant life style and its jewel-like setting on the edge of the Alatau Mountains. But those mountains were a barrier to the expansion of Almaty. Already an overcrowded city of more than 1.5 million inhabitants, it had no space for future growth. Its horrendous traffic congestion made the conurbation a notorious smog trap whose air pollution problem was the worst in Central Asia. The airport was too close to the centre and too often fog-bound. Perhaps there could have been upward expansion as in Manhattan or Hong Kong, but because of the region’s record of earthquakes, building skyscrapers in Almaty would have involved prohibitively expensive construction costs. In any event, the shortage of land available for development meant that there was little or no room for the new public edifices Nazarbayev envisaged’ (Aitken 2009: 224–225).
- 2.
Namely, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.
- 3.
- 4.
For instance, the domestic terminal of Astana Airport is also shaped like a yurt.
- 5.
Barys Arena was commissioned by the Astana Presidential Sports Club, whose honorary president is Nursultan Nazarbayev.
- 6.
As was said by David Nelson, a member of Foster & Partners who worked for the Kazakhstani President, ‘He had thought about the building. That’s what’s impressive’. Moreover, according to the city’s head architect, Amanzhol Chikanayev, ‘There’s no project he doesn’t participate in. The President’s head works very hard, and he asks about very small details’ (Kucera 2011). Mr. Chikanayev has also stated that the president ‘dominates the country’s decision-making, right down to which architectural bid should win next in Astana. [He] has such a mind for architecture that it’s sometimes very difficult for us professionals to contradict him’ (Dalton 2013). In fact, the extreme micromanagement of Astana by President Nazarbayev finds its full expression in the fact that his minutiae of city planning goes as far as the choice of flowers that are laid out in the capital (Lancaster 2012).
- 7.
This chapter considers only statues representing historical figures, which is why artistic statues have been omitted from this list.
- 8.
Momyshuly also has a statue in Almaty where he can be found wearing what is an odd sword for a former Soviet officer. But when analysed within a context of Kazakhisation, the shape of this weapon finds an explanation: he is wearing a curved blade sword with a handle that recalls a traditional Kazakh narkesken.
- 9.
He was awarded this title only in 1990, eight years after his death.
- 10.
In Kazakh, the patronym ‘-uly’ is very typical and refers to ‘the son of’.
- 11.
It is traditional in the sense that 200 years ago, the prevailing idea of the city was a conception of urbanity as a work of art, with the goal to impress its viewers and to legitimise in their eyes the rule of the sovereign (Boyer 1994).
- 12.
It has to be noted that urban planning can also play an opposite role, for example, erasing the historical ethnosymbolism of a peculiar group. For instance, after the occupation of Warsaw by the Germans in 1939, they carefully identified all the historically significant buildings of the city (Tung 2001: 74). Their objective was to obliterate them from the collective memory of the Poles, a people destined to serve as slaves of the Germans according to Hitler’s philosophy. On the other hand, the Polish resistance spent a great deal of time to document these buildings for the sake of postwar reconstruction.
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Caron, JF. (2019). The Contemporary Politics of Kazakhisation: The Case of Astana’s Urbanism. In: Caron, JF. (eds) Kazakhstan and the Soviet Legacy. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-6693-2_9
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