Nursultan Nazarbayev

Biography

Nursultan Nazarbayev was born in 1940 in Chemolgan near Almaty, the son of a poor rural labourer. He trained and worked at the Karaganda steel works in Temirtau, joined the Communist Party in 1962, and studied at the Karaganda Polytechnic Institute while rising through the party organisation at the plant and in Karaganda region.

In 1984 he became chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Kazakh SSR, the republic's prime minister, and in 1989 first secretary of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan. The republic's Supreme Soviet made him president in 1990, and he guided Kazakhstan to independence as the Soviet Union dissolved, winning an unopposed presidential election in December 1991.

As president he extended his term by referendum in 1995, adopted a constitution that strengthened his powers, and won a series of elections that observers did not regard as democratic. He gave up the nuclear arsenal inherited from the Soviet Union, closed the Semipalatinsk test site, and presided over oil-driven growth alongside authoritarian rule, corruption and a cult of personality.

He resigned the presidency in March 2019 in favour of Kassym-Jomart Tokayev but kept power as chairman of the Security Council and of the ruling Nur Otan party. After the unrest of January 2022 he lost those posts, and a 2022 referendum stripped him of most remaining privileges.