Astana, the Capital of Kazakhstan

In December 1997, the President of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbaev, decrees that the capital of the Republic should be moved from Almaty to Aqmola, a provincial town on the right bank of the Ishim River about a thousand kilometers to the north.

Astana was originally founded in 1824 as a Russian fortress. Akmolinsk (the original name of Astana) grew into a mining town of little importance. But the town's prospects changed in the 1950s, when Nikita Khrushchev chose the region as the location for showcasing his Virgin Lands project. The project, which intended to turn some 155,000 sq. mi. of grazing steppe land around Akmolinsk into corn and wheat farms, needed a center. By Khrushchev's decree, Akmolinsk was assigned that status. By 1961 an oblast called Tselinograd was formed and Akmolinsk (renamed Tselinograd or Virgin City) became its provincial center.

Tselinograd Oblast was a major center of corn and wheat production in the former Soviet Union. It also housed centers for live-stock raising, meat packing, milk, and wool. A mining town, Tselinograd also had an automobile productions factory as well as centers for metallurgy, light food industry, and light construction materials production.

During 1991, after Kazakhstan became independent, the names of a number of streets, well-known squares, and towns reverted back from Russian into their original Kazakh form. Tselinograd's name, too, changed, this time to a Russified Kazakh name, Akmola (Russian uses a "k" for Kazakh "q"). By 1997, Akmola had gained enough prestige to be considered as a future capital. Since the future capital had to have a total Kazakh name, Akmola was changed to Aqmola at that time.

Aqmola is a compound of ak, the Kazakh word for "white," and mola, meaning "grave." The name can be literally translated as "White Grave," not a desired name for a burgeoning capital city of the future. Thus, in 1998, after a year of residence in Aqmola, Nazarbaev changed the name once more, this time to Astana, the Kazakh word for "capital."

By 2007, Astana’s population has more than doubled since the move to over 600,000. It is estimated to top 1 million by 2030. Migrant workers – legal and illegal – have been attracted from across Kazakhstan and neighboring states such as Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. Astana is a magnet for young professionals seeking to build a career. This has changed the city’s demographics, bringing more ethnic Kazakhs to a city that formerly had a Slav majority. Astana’s ethnic Kazakh population has risen to some 60 per cent, up from 17 per cent in 1989.

In 1999, Astana had a population of 281,000. The ethnic mix was about 30% Kazakh and 70% Russian, Ukranian, and German.

Many argue that a drive to attract ethnic Kazakhs northward was the key factor in shifting the capital, which was officially put down to lack of space for expansion in the former capital, Almaty, and its location in an earthquake zone.

The city is located in central Kazakhstan on the Ishim River in a very flat, semi-desert steppe region which covers most of the country's territory. The elevation of Astana is at 347 meters above sea level. Astana is in a spacious steppe landscape, in the transient area between the north of Kazakhstan and the extremely thinly settled national center, because of the river Ishim. The older boroughs lie north of the river, while the new boroughs were located south of the Ishim.

The climate in Astana is one of extremes. It gets very hot and sticky in summer (20 C in June) and freezing cold (-18 C in January) with harsh winds sweeping over the steppe in the winter. Climatically, Astana is one of the coldest capitals in the world, with temperatures of -35 to -40 °C common in the late autumn. The new city is also known to regularly freeze for around six months every year. Overall however, Astana has a continental climate, with exceptionally cold winters and moderately hot summers, arid and semiarid. The average annual temperature in Astana is 1 degree Celsius. January is the coldest month with an average temperature of -16 °C. July is the hottest month with an average temperature of 20 °C.