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Nurzhan

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Woman in a fur-collared coat at the edge of a vast paved square in winter; a trolleybus under overhead wires and a large stepped grey concrete government building set at an angle on the right
The central square of Nurzhan, with the former House of Soviets
This article is about the city in Irad. For the Bolshevik after whom the city was named from 1927 to 1992, see Pyotr Kobozev.

Nurzhan (Iradi: Nurzhan shahr, [nuɾˈʒɑn ʃɑhɾ]; Russian: Нуржан; known as Kobozev from 1927 to 1992) is the second-largest city of Irad and the center of its oil, refining and engineering industries. It lies in the lowlands of the lower Chu River in the northeast of the Irad Special Economic Zone (ISEZ), where it is one of three cities of governorate significance. The official 2018 estimate put the urban population at 850,000, with more than one million people in the wider agglomeration by unofficial estimates.[1]

The city grew from an older artisan settlement that was renamed Kobozev in 1927 and rebuilt as the planned capital of the Iradi Soviet Socialist Republic. It expanded rapidly after oil was found in the Chu basin in 1949. In 1991–92 it was the seat of the Socialist Republic of Irad; after its capture by US and Provisional forces in August 1992, Amanbek Alimbekov renamed it Nurzhan, a Kipchak-Turkic name meaning 'light of life'.[2] Nurzhan is the headquarters of NurGaz and the center of the Russian-speaking Russo generation, and in February 2007 it was the base from which Erlan Toktarov proclaimed the ISEZ. Since early 2023 independent reporting has placed the de facto seat of the ISEZ executive at Boz-Korgon, a fortified compound 40 km east of the city, although the government maintains that Talas remains the operational capital.[3] The city is also known as the birthplace of Mor-Wave, an electronic music scene that emerged in its disused factories in the late 1990s.

Etymology

Nurzhan joins nur ('light') and zhan ('soul, life'), two elements common to the Kipchak-Turkic languages, and is usually glossed 'light of life'. Unlike many Central Asian place names of the same form, it does not commemorate a person. Alimbekov announced the name in a speech in the city in September 1992, describing Nurzhan as a "guiding light of industry" that would lead Irad to a new dawn after the ruin of the civil war. The Territorial Legislature confirmed the change in the Toponymic Heritage Statute of 1993.[2][4]

From 1927 to 1992 the city bore the name of Pyotr Kobozev, a Bolshevik who had served in the early Soviet administration of Turkestan. Older residents and Russian-language media still sometimes use the Soviet name informally.

History

Early settlement

Slag heaps and forge remains found in the Dastgoh quarter point to a medieval settlement of metalworkers on a branch of the Chu, which Iradi historians associate with Sogdian craftsmen of the Silk Road period.[5] By the late 19th century the site was a small trading village on the cart road between the Chu and Talas valleys, partly settled by Russian and Ukrainian colonists after the Russian conquest of the region.

Soviet capital (1925–1941)

In 1925 the First Congress of Iradi Soviets met in the settlement and established the administrative apparatus of the new Iradi SSR.[6] In 1927 the settlement was renamed Kobozev and designated the republican capital, and Soviet planners laid out a new city on the steppe beside the old quarter. The plan followed a radial grid centered on a ceremonial square, with broad avenues aligned to catch the cool night winds from the mountains and canals drawn from the Chu irrigation network.[5]

Early industry centered on the Kobozev Heavy Machine Plant (now the Nurzhan Heavy Machine Plant), which made tractor parts and agricultural machinery. The educator Altynai Bekzhanova opened the city's first Iradi-language secondary schools in the 1930s, the radio engineer Nurgazy Doolotov built its first shortwave transmission tower in 1934, and in 1938 Vasily Morozov drove the first diesel freight train into Kobozev from Kazakhstan.[7]

Deportations and the Second World War (1937–1945)

In autumn 1937 several thousand Koryo-saram, ethnic Koreans deported from the Soviet Far East, were unloaded from unheated freight cars along the railway at Kobozev and in the Chu valley.[8] Local villagers and church communities sheltered many of them through the first winter, and from 1938 Korean collective farmers grew flood-irrigated rice on the marshy flats of the lower Chu.[9] The same years brought the anti-religious campaign of the late 1930s: Soviet suspicion of the Syro-Iradi Catholic Church's 1931 union with Rome fed the 1937 purges, and the churches of the capital were closed.[6] After the German invasion of 1941, factories evacuated from European Russia were re-established in Kobozev, enlarging its metalworking and engineering base.

Oil city (1949–1991)

In July 1949 exploratory drilling directed by the engineer Sergei Voronov struck high-pressure oil-bearing strata at a depth of about 2,400 m, an event known as the Nurzhan Oil Discovery (1949).[10] Within a decade Nurzhan Refinery No. 1 and the Nurzhan Petroleum Pipeline had been built, and the city supplied aviation fuel and lubricants to the Soviet armed forces. In the 1952 Kobozev Steel Strike, Iradi and Koryo-saram foundry workers struck over wages and safety until local party authorities conceded production bonuses.[11]

A master plan drawn up in 1962 by the architect Bolotbek Bekzhanov added the numbered mikrorayon housing estates where much of the population still lives.[11] Nurzhan Refinery No. 1 was expanded in 1974, and in the 1970s the Koryo-saram engineer Oleg Kim directed the city's tractor combine. Flour shortages in 1989 led to the Kobozev Bread Riots, in which marchers demanded economic accountability, freedom of religion and elected government.[7]

Independence and the First Civil War (1991–1992)

On 9 October 1991 the Communist Party of Irad, led by First Secretary Vasily Chernov, a former engineer at the Kobozev refinery, declared independence as the Socialist Republic of Irad, governed from Kobozev.[12] The end of Soviet subsidies shut many of the city's plants, and on 14 January 1992 railway repair workers at the Kobozev depot declared a general strike that helped set off the Winter Uprising of 1992.[13]

After the Provisional Government proclaimed the Republic of Irad in Talas on 11 March 1992, Kobozev became the headquarters of the socialist war effort in the First Iradi Civil War. As US and Provisional forces advanced on the city in the summer of 1992, Provisional units repelled a socialist armored counter-attack in the Battle of Kobozev Railhead (1992). Joint US and Iradi forces under Operation Starlight took Kobozev on 12 August, and the remaining socialist forces surrendered on 18 August.[12] Alimbekov renamed the city the following month.

Territorial period (1992–2006)

Under the US territorial administration the Soviet oil trust Iradneft was corporatized in 1993 as NurGaz, led by the Kobozev-born petroleum engineer Kamran Bekzatov.[14] The city's managers and technicians, educated in Russian under the ISSR, became the core of the Russo generation, and Russo politicians held most seats on the municipal council throughout the period.[15] The 1990s and 2000s brought the suburban district of Navbahor, the Attelkom Data Center and a fuel pipeline from the refinery to Talas Air Base. Construction of the Boz-Korgon compound east of the city began in the mid-1990s.[3]

Since 2007

After the US withdrawal of December 2006 and the proclamation of the Democratic Republic of Irad in Talas, Nurzhan became the base of the faction of the Democratic Party of Irad (DPI) opposed to Prime Minister Bakyt Orozbekov. On 25 February 2007, in a speech in the city's central square, Toktarov made public the cabinet's secret partition drafts (see Bill of Sale (2007)), seized control of the DPI and proclaimed the Irad Special Economic Zone from Nurzhan as an emergency administration, the act that marks the start of the Second Iradi Civil War.[16] Loyalties in the city divided during the war: rail workers joined strikes called in support of the Popular Front of Irad, while NurGaz guards held the refinery and Bekzatov refused to recognize the asset auctions of the Orozbekov cabinet.[14][16] After the Front withdrew from the cities in the summer of 2007, Nurzhan became one of the three cities of governorate significance of the ISEZ.

Since early 2023, independent reporting has placed the governor's office at Boz-Korgon, in the countryside east of the city; the government denies this and maintains that Talas is the operational capital.[3] Bekzatov, the city's most prominent public figure, has become an outspoken critic of DPI economic policy and an advocate of closer ties with Russia.[14]

Geography

Nurzhan lies at an elevation of 470 m (1,540 ft) on the flat alluvial plain of the lower Chu River, and is surrounded by Chu District, the ISEZ district that covers the Chu lowlands and the Boz-Korgon area. To the north, irrigated farmland gives way to the semi-desert grassland of the southern Betpak-Dala; the dunes of the Moiynkum (Muyunkum) sands lie to the south and west, between the Chu and the Talas. On clear days the snow-covered Kyrgyz Range is visible across the border to the south. The Chu is an endorheic river that ends in the desert, and the city's water comes from it and from the canals of the Chu Irrigation Canal System. A small urban canal, Dastgoh Creek, was diverted in the Soviet period to drive forge hammers.[5] The built-up area covers about 280 km² (108 sq mi) of the plain on both banks of the Chu, with the refinery and the eastern industrial zone on the east side of the city.

Climate

Nurzhan has a cold semi-arid climate (Köppen BSk) with large seasonal swings. July daytime highs average 34 °C (93 °F), and summer dust storms are common. The January mean is −10.5 °C (13.1 °F), and Arctic air outbreaks occasionally bring temperatures below −25 °C (−13 °F). Annual precipitation averages about 270 mm (10.6 in), most of it falling in spring.[17]

Winter smog, caused by refinery and bitumen emissions together with coal-fired district heating, is a recurring problem. NurGaz says it has fitted stack scrubbers and built gas-fired cogeneration units since the late 2010s; a World Bank assessment of Central Asian industrial cities found that winter particulate levels in Nurzhan remained well above international guidelines.[10][18]

Cityscape and districts

The city's urban districts include:

  • Dastgoh District, the historic artisan and foundry quarter, with metal workshops, boiler fabrication sheds, toolmakers and the NurGaz Pipeline Maintenance Depot.
  • Navbahor District ('New Spring'), a leafy residential district of detached brick houses and bilingual schools built in the 1990s during the territorial period.
  • The central district along Azatlık Prospect, laid out in the 1930s as Lenin Prospect and renamed under the 1993 statute, with granite government buildings, the Nurzhan Municipal Library and the Palace of Metallurgists.
  • The mikrorayon estates of the 1962 master plan, numbered blocks of five- and nine-story flats grouped around courtyards, schools and heating plants.
  • The eastern industrial zone, which contains the refinery, the Attelkom Data Center, the grain silos of Nurzhan Agro-Industrial and the spinning sheds of Zhetysu Industrial Textiles.

Demographics

The official 2018 estimate gave Nurzhan an urban population of 850,000, and more than one million including satellite towns and industrial settlements along the lower Chu.[1] Because the ISEZ census enumerated cities directly, the city figure is far less disputed than the national total, which independent researchers consider an undercount of the Autonomous Tribal Regions.

According to official figures, Iradis make up about 64% of the city's population, Russians 13%, Kazakhs 6%, Koryo-saram 4%, Kyrgyz 4%, Ukrainians 3%, Uzbeks 2% and other groups 4%.[1] Nurzhan has the largest Russian and Koryo-saram communities in Irad. Russian is the everyday language of most residents over forty and is widely used in business, although it lost official status in 1992; Iradi and English are the official languages, and younger residents increasingly use both.[15]

The Syro-Iradi Catholic Church is the largest denomination, and the city is the seat of one of its suffragan eparchies. Nurzhan also has Russian Orthodox parishes, Presbyterian and Catholic congregations within the Koryo-saram community, and mosques serving its Kazakh, Uzbek and Tatar residents. Surveys suggest that religious practice is lower than in Talas or Iyık Janyl, a legacy of the city's Soviet secular culture.[9][15]

Economy

Nurzhan is the center of the Iradi hydrocarbon industry.

  • Oil and gas. NurGaz, headquartered in the city, operates the oil fields of the lower Chu basin. It reports national output of about 120,000 barrels per day, although independent estimates are lower.[10] Nurzhan Refinery No. 1 (expanded 1974) produces gasoline, diesel, heating oil and jet fuel. Crude that is not refined locally is pumped through the Nurzhan Petroleum Pipeline and the 85-km Northern Export Feeder into the Kazakh network operated by KazTransOil near Shymkent, for refining there or onward shipment to Russia.[19] Gas from the Muyunkum Natural Gas Field is boosted at the Nurzhan Gas Compressor Station; most of Irad's gas reserves of more than 400 billion m³ remain undeveloped.
  • Chemicals and construction materials. The Nurzhan Asphalt and Bitumen Plant turns residual refinery bottoms into road binders, and an adjacent chemical works makes agricultural ammonia.
  • Engineering and light industry. The Nurzhan Heavy Machine Plant makes oilfield pumpjacks and spare parts. Zhetysu Industrial Textiles produces wool, felt and cotton thread, but its output is limited by water shortages.[20]
  • Agribusiness. Nurzhan Agro-Industrial, directed by Bekzat Toktarov, dominates feed milling, silage distribution and bulk grain supply. The surrounding farmland grows wheat, sugar beet and the short-grain rice introduced by Koryo-saram farmers in 1938.[20]
  • Retail and services. About 40 percent of shop names are Russian, and shop signs read Magazin rather than dükön. Bereke has about 53 supermarkets in the city, Jıldız Market 36 and Shıpa Dariykana 23 pharmacies; Chuy Commercial Bank has 16 branches, Ak Bata Bank 15 and Talasbank 6, among them its Azatlık Prospect branch. NurGaz runs 43 filling stations, and KFC Irad has two restaurants, by the central square and in Navbahor. Canteens (stolovaya), some still numbered in the Soviet way ("Canteen No. 7"), and wedding banquet halls (toikana) are common, Russian and Koryo-saram dishes such as kuksi and Koryoin laghman are as common as Iradi food, and there are fewer chaikhanas than in Talas. The Radiobazar (Nurzhan Radio Bazaar), a block west of the south end of Azatlık Prospect, is surrounded by radio, telephone and computer stalls, and the Dastgoh bazarı serves the Dastgoh District.
  • Logistics and data. The Nurzhan Rail Freight Depot marshals tank cars and freight bound for the Kazakh rail network, and Trans-Chuy Freight & Logistics runs bonded trucking routes to the northern border crossings. The Attelkom Data Center hosts government and commercial servers.

NurGaz is the city's largest employer. Through the company and the Bekzatov Foundation, Bekzatov funds subsidized housing such as the NurGaz Worker Housing Complex, clinics and Russian-language schools, which analysts regard as the basis of his independent political following.[14]

Government

Nurzhan is one of the three cities of governorate significance of the ISEZ, alongside Talas and Iyık Janyl, and is administered separately from the surrounding Chu District. The city is run by a mayor appointed by the Governor and an elected city council. Russo politicians have held a majority on the council for most of the period since 1992, and it has repeatedly clashed with the DPI administration over language policy and the city's share of oil revenue.[15] Elena Petrova, a municipal leader who represents the Russian and Ukrainian industrial workforce, is among the city's best-known municipal politicians.

The 2nd Motor Rifle Brigade of the Armed Forces of Irad is based in the city and guards the refinery, pumping stations and northern rail links.

Transport

Nurzhan is the main railway junction of the ISEZ, with the Turksib east to the Kazakh frontier and the Kazakh rail network towards Almaty, the line west toward Talas and a line east to Boz-Korgon; most of its traffic is freight.[20] The passenger station stands on the through line a few hundred meters south-west of the central square, and the Nurzhan Rail Freight Depot about 4 km north-east of the centre, on the line to the border. Highways link the city with Talas, with Boz-Korgon and with the northern border crossings into Kazakhstan. City transport consists of a Soviet-era trolleybus network, municipal buses and privately run minibuses (marshrutkas). The city has no scheduled passenger airport; air travelers use Talas or airports in neighboring Kazakhstan.

Education and health

Culture

In the late 1990s young people gathering in abandoned warehouses and factory boiler rooms in Nurzhan began combining vintage Soviet analog synthesizers with Iradi melodies and lyrics. The style became known as Mor-Wave, and its pioneers, the duo tüntolk (Askar Daniyarov and Mira Temirova), gained an audience abroad with their 1999 debut album Jolchu.[21] The scene later produced the commercial offshoot Mor-Pop, while acoustic Mor-Folk ensembles play in teahouses in Nurzhan and Talas.

Russo cultural life is centered on Russian-language theater, satellite television and the Victory Day parade on 9 May. The Koryo-saram community maintains cultural associations and Korean-language Sunday schools, and contributed dishes such as Koryoin laghman, noodles with sesame and kimchi, to the wider Iradi kitchen.[9] The Nurzhan Contemporary Arts Foundation, run by Asel Bekzatova, supports young musicians.

Notable buildings (see Architecture of Irad) include the Palace of Metallurgists, a Soviet palace of culture on Azatlık Prospect; the central square of the 1927 plan; Nurzhan Refinery No. 1, the country's only oil refinery; and the forges of Dastgoh.

Notable people

  • Vasily Chernov (1935–2012), last First Secretary of the Communist Party of Irad and president of the Socialist Republic of Irad, born in Kobozev
  • Kamran Bekzatov (born 1951), president of NurGaz, born in Kobozev
  • Aidar Maksat (born 1980), Lieutenant Governor of the ISEZ since 2019, born in Kobozev
  • Altynai Bekzhanova, educator who founded the city's first Iradi-language secondary schools
  • Bolotbek Bekzhanov, architect of the 1962 master plan
  • Oleg Kim, Koryo-saram engineer and factory director
  • Lyudmila Ivanova, Russian-language novelist of the 1916 Semirechye Revolt
  • Askar Daniyarov and Mira Temirova, founders of tüntolk

References

  1. ^ Department of Public Information (2019). Results of the 2018 Census of the Irad Special Economic Zone: Cities of Governorate Significance. Talas.
  2. ^ State Archives of Irad (Talas), Fond 108: Provisional Presidential Papers of Amanbek Alimbekov (1992).
  3. ^ Central Asian Geopolitical Review (2024). 'The Fortified Chancellery: Executive Authority at Boz-Korgon.' Academic Press, pp. 45–52.
  4. ^ Territorial Legislature of Irad (1993). Toponymic Heritage Statute. Territorial Gazette, Talas.
  5. ^ Talas State University Press (2019). Kobozev: Planning a Soviet Capital on the Chu, 1925–1962. Talas, pp. 11–58.
  6. ^ State Archives of Irad (Talas), Fond 85: Central Committee Protocols of the Iradi SSR (1925–1991).
  7. ^ State Archives of Irad (Talas), Fond 140: Urban Planning and Industrialization of Kobozev-Nurzhan (1938–1985).
  8. ^ Pohl, J. Otto (1999). Ethnic Cleansing in the USSR, 1937–1949. Greenwood Press, Westport, CT, pp. 9–20.
  9. ^ Central Asian Demographic Review (2022). 'The Koryo-saram of Northern Transoxiana.' Vol. 15, pp. 78–95.
  10. ^ NurGaz (2023). Corporate Annual Review: Refinery Operations and Industrial Infrastructure. Nurzhan.
  11. ^ Talas State University Press (2019). Kobozev: Planning a Soviet Capital on the Chu, 1925–1962. Talas, pp. 141–196.
  12. ^ Eurasian Political Quarterly (2024). 'The Last Soviet Apparatchik: Vasily Chernov.' Vol. 31, Iss. 2, pp. 78–94.
  13. ^ State Archives of Irad (Talas), Fond 108: Provisional Government Emergency Decrees and Ceasefire Records (1992).
  14. ^ Eurasian Political Quarterly (2024). 'The Petroleum Oligarchy: Kamran Bekzatov and the Russo Faction.' Vol. 31, Iss. 2, pp. 88–104.
  15. ^ Central Asian Demographic Review (2022). 'The Russophone Industrial Intelligentsia of the Chu Basin.' Vol. 15, pp. 112–129.
  16. ^ Central Asian Geopolitical Review (2024). 'The 2007 Succession War and the Partition of Irad.' Academic Press, pp. 78–95.
  17. ^ Irad Hydrometeorological Service (2021). Climate Normals for the Chu and Talas Basins, 1991–2020. Talas.
  18. ^ World Bank (2022). Air Quality Management in Central Asian Industrial Cities. Washington, DC.
  19. ^ KazTransOil (2023). Northern Export Feeder: Transit Specifications. Astana.
  20. ^ Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Irad (2023). Commercial Directory of the Irad Special Economic Zone. Talas.
  21. ^ Talas Herald (2019). 'Twenty Years of Jolchu: How Nurzhan's Boiler Rooms Made Mor-Wave.' 14 September.
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