September 16, 2022 - 1:15pm
The tradition of naming things after respected leaders is an ancient one. Usually it is regarded as being in better taste to do so once they are dead, though in exceptional cases such an honour can be applied to the living. So it was with Queen Elizabeth II, whose name was attached to the tower housing Big Ben for the Diamond Jubilee and then more recently to a new railway line to mark her Platinum Jubilee.
As the national outpouring of grief has made clear, the affection for the deceased monarch was sincere and so there is little risk of those names being changed any time soon. The situation is somewhat different for Nursultan Nazarbayev, the octogenarian former president of Kazakhstan whose name is being stripped from the capital a mere three years after it was renamed Nur-Sultan in his honour. At the start of the year he was still riding high, confident that his legacy was assured, but riots over a spike in fuel prices changed everything, and now the current president Kassym-Jomart Tokayev — a former protégé who proposed calling it after him in the first place — is restoring the previous name, Astana.
Nazarbayev will be well aware of the fluidity of names in the post-Soviet space, of course. He presided over a few changes himself as he transitioned from Soviet boss to national leader: Alma Ata (the Soviet capital) became Almaty, Semipalatinsk became Semey, while Dzhambul became Zhambyl and then Taraz. But what he is experiencing now has a lot more in common with what happened in the USSR whenever a powerful figure fell out of favour.
Following Lenin’s death Soviet leaders grew quite keen on naming things after themselves, but this could get complicated very quickly in a country where Stalin was in charge and high-ranking officials were regularly purged. But once Stalin died, a similar fate befell the towns and cities bearing his name: Stalinabad became Dushanbe, Stalingrad became Volgograd and Stalino became Donetsk. He at least was dead and so did not have to witness his own downfall, but the same cannot be said of many of his henchmen like Vyacheslav Molotov and Lazar Kaganovich who were still alive when they saw their names stripped from things.
Nazarbayev is, by comparison, still quite fortunate. Molotov not only saw his name vanish from cities, but he was dispatched to Mongolia to serve as ambassador before being expelled from the party in 1961. Although he was eventually allowed back in, he endured a long, forced retirement that ended with his death in 1986 at the ripe old age of 96. Kaganovich, who had at one time been Khruschev’s main patron, was demoted to minor administrative positions and also expelled from the party. He also lived a long and bitter life, and died at the age of 97 in July 1991, a mere five months before the USSR evaporated. Nazarbayev is already in his 80s, so it is unlikely he will have to suffer that long of a humiliation.
Meanwhile, Astana (which simply means “capital”) has had many names, even by the standards of the region. Before that it was Tselinograd and before that it was Akmolinsk and before that it was Akmola. At the turn of the millennium, I was teaching English in Almaty when one of my students told me that Akmola meant “white tomb”. He suggested that Nazarbayev might want to rethink locating his new capital in a place with such a name; it did not bode well. Indeed.
Daniel Kalder is an author based in Texas. Previously, he spent ten years living in the former Soviet bloc. His latest book, Dictator Literature, is published by Oneworld. He also writes on Substack: Thus Spake Daniel Kalder.
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SubscribeWhatever. At least the people who run countries like Poland and Hungary have nt consistently demonstrated a hatred of their own people.
WHat are you talking about?
I think Fraser is talking about governments that have instituted policies that are against the interests of their own people. Excessive inward immigration for example. I’m surprised you haven’t heard about that before.
Hatred is probably too strong a word but then again these same governments are having folk arrested under “hate” speech laws for saying something as innocuous as “women don’t have penises” so maybe not.
Totally agree Fraser. Protecting your people and acting in their (democratically expressed) interests rather than at the behest of the EU cabal is now anti-democratic?
BTW our New Zealand government, headed by globalist darling Jacinda Ardern has also called a state of emergency, shut down parliament and empowered military intervention. We are now, essentially, being governed by decree as well but Orban’s the bad guy?
Having had to live under the BBC-tastic, mass-immigration, hug a backward zealot, wokey-liberal, pro-remote democracy, patriotic-man-bad, regimes of David Cameron and Theresa May almost makes one yearn for a more totalitarian form of government.
While I understand concern for the lack of sunset clause, we are also talking about a very different culture where limited use of authoritarian measures used sporatically for the common good is ingrained in their history. These leaders are applauded and remembered fondly. The halting of millions of illigal immigrants at the Hungarian border is percieved as “saving the country” not racism in Hungry. I tend to agree with them. Illigal immigrants steal the basic safety net funds and services from the domestic poor. In the US this is more than $134 Billion per year. This is allot of health, education and housing for the poor. I think concern is fine, but really this is a situation of wait and see. The beat up of “Evil Trump”, which has been debunked over and over makes reasonable middle class people cringe now at alarm before the fire. Media crying wolf has become too common.