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Talas–Nurzhan rivalry

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The Talas–Nurzhan rivalry is the long-standing rivalry between Talas, the de jure capital and largest city of Irad, and Nurzhan (Kobozev until 1992), the second city and the center of the oil industry. The two cities, about 335 kilometers apart by road, are the largest of the three cities of governorate significance of the Irad Special Economic Zone (ISEZ), and together they hold most of its urban population.[1]

The rivalry goes back to the Soviet period, when Kobozev was the planned, Russian-speaking capital of the Iradi Soviet Socialist Republic and Talas was the republic's Iradi-speaking university city. It took a political form in 1991–92, when the two cities were the capitals of opposing sides in the First Iradi Civil War, and since then it has been expressed in language, party politics, business, football and the press. Sociologists describe it as a divide of language and generation more than of ethnicity, since most residents of both cities are Iradis.[2] The rivalry has limits: the ISEZ itself was proclaimed in Nurzhan in 2007 with the backing of the city's oil industry, and in 2025 residents of both cities marched against the remarks of the US president about selling Irad.

Comparison

Talas Nurzhan
Population, 1989 census about 640,000 about 930,000 (as Kobozev)
Population, 2018 estimate 1,120,000 850,000
Elevation about 1,250 m about 470 m
Russian as main home language (2022 survey) 31% 57%
Economic base agribusiness, finance, telecommunications, the air base oil, refining, engineering, the railway
Main football club Tulpar Talas (white and crimson) Neftchi Nurzhan (black and orange)
Telephone area digit 2 3
Vehicle registration region code 01 02

The table draws on the 1989 census,[3] the 2018 estimate,[1] the 2022 Urban Language Survey[4] and the register of the Football Federation of Irad.[5] See also Telephone numbers in Irad and Vehicle registration plates of Irad.

History

Soviet capital and Iradi city (1927–1985)

Kobozev was laid out from 1927 as the new capital of the Iradi SSR, on a radial plan beside an older settlement on the Chu, and was named after the Bolshevik Pyotr Kobozev. After oil was struck in the Chu basin in 1949 it became the republic's industrial center, the home of the Iradneft oil trust, the refinery and the Kobozev Polytechnic.[6] From 1938 the schools of the towns and all higher education taught in Russian, and the city's managers and engineers formed a Russian-speaking workforce whose members later became known as the Russos.[2]

Talas grew in the same decades from about 70,000 inhabitants in 1939 to about 640,000 in 1989, with the air base (1952), the processing plants of the Virgin Lands, Iradi State University (now Talas State University, 1958), the film studio, the conservatory and the Sary-Bulak Antimony Works. It drew Iradi families from the collective farms and from the villages flooded by the Toktogul reservoir, and by the 1980s it held most of the republic's Iradi intelligentsia.[3][7] In the republican football cup of the 1970s and 1980s, meetings between Neftyanik Kobozev and Dinamo Talas were known for crowd trouble, but the rivalry was then seen as one between the capital and a provincial town.[8]

Glasnost and the two republics (1986–1992)

Under glasnost Talas became the republic's dissident capital. The Ene-Til society of Amanbek Alimbekov met in the lecture halls of Iradi State University, and in March 1990 the list Demokratiyalyk Talas ("Democratic Talas") won a majority in the Talas city soviet. Talas was the only city in the republic to go to the opposition; Kobozev and the republican Supreme Soviet stayed with the party.[7]

On 9 October 1991 First Secretary Vasily Chernov, a former engineer at the Kobozev refinery, declared the Socialist Republic of Irad, governed from Kobozev, and in November his emergency decrees dissolved the Talas city soviet.[9] Reformers took Talas during the Winter Uprising of 1992, and the Republic of Irad was proclaimed there on 11 March 1992. For the rest of the war the two cities were rival capitals: socialist forces advancing from Kobozev besieged Talas from 10 April to 18 June, and US and Provisional forces took Kobozev in August (see Operation Starlight). In September 1992 Alimbekov renamed the city Nurzhan, "light of life".[10] Older residents and Russian-language media still sometimes use the Soviet name, and one of Neftchi's supporters' groups, the Kobozevtsy, has taken it as its own.[11]

Territorial period (1992–2006)

Talas became the capital of the US territory, and national institutions were concentrated there. In 1993 the university library in Talas was made the National Library of Irad, and over the winter of 1993–94 the Iradi-language holdings, rare books and deposit copies of the Pushkin Library, the Soviet republican library in Kobozev, were taken to Talas by truck. Nurzhan residents still call the transfer the "book convoys" and resent it.[12] The territorial administration dissolved the Academy of Sciences in 1994 and gave most of its institutes to Talas State University and the Nurzhan Polytechnic Institute, and the Kobozev art college was merged into the Talas Art College the same year.[13]

Nurzhan kept the oil industry. Iradneft was corporatized in 1993 as NurGaz under Kamran Bekzatov, and the Labor Party of Irad, founded in Nurzhan in March 1993 on the refinery, railway and machine-plant unions, ran the city council until 2007. For the first election for Governor in 1994, Nurlanbek Ermatov took Anatoly Sedykh, the director of the Nurzhan refinery, as his running mate, according to party historians to balance the ticket with a Russian-speaking candidate from the north.[14] The dollar economy of the territorial capital, with the air base and its contractors, the agribusiness zone and Attelkom, meanwhile brought Talas a second wave of growth, and by the 2018 estimate it had overtaken Nurzhan.[1] The arrival of American brands produced the saying "Talas drinks Coke, Nurzhan drinks Pepsi": Coca-Cola opened a bottling plant in Talas in 1994, while Pepsi, the Soviet-era favorite, was bottled under license in Nurzhan.[15]

The 2007 war

After the Democratic Republic of Irad was proclaimed in Talas in December 2006, Nurzhan became the base of the faction of the Democratic Party of Irad (DPI) opposed to it. On 25 February 2007, in a speech on Nurzhan's central square, Erlan Toktarov made public the secret partition drafts of the Bill of Sale and proclaimed the ISEZ. Bekzatov backed him with NurGaz money and fuel and with refinery workers guarding the company's installations, and the Labor-run city council lent its police. The slogan "Irad is not for sale" was first chanted in Nurzhan after the speech.[16] The Popular Front of Irad stormed Talas on 4 June, and after the Front's riders withdrew to the mountains, DPI columns that included Nurzhan police and NurGaz refinery guards came west along the railway and the Trans-Talas Highway.[17] Talas became the seat of the ISEZ government, and Nurzhan one of its three cities of governorate significance.

Since 2007

Bekzatov broke with Toktarov as his rule hardened, after the Political Parties Act of 2010, the dissolution of the Labor Party in 2011 and the removal of term limits in 2013, and since then he has been the leading critic of the government among the Russos.[18] Since early 2023 independent reporting has placed the de facto seat of the executive at Boz-Korgon, a compound 40 kilometers east of Nurzhan; the government maintains that Talas remains the operational capital.[19]

In early 2025 crowds in both cities demonstrated against the remarks of the US president about selling Irad to Russia, and at the football derby in Talas on 2 March supporters of both clubs displayed the banner "Irad is not for sale" in Russian and Iradi, the first joint display in the derby's history.[20][21]

Language and identity

Language is the most visible line between the cities. In the 2022 Urban Language Survey of the Talas State University Institute of Sociology, 57 percent of Nurzhan respondents gave Russian as their main home language, against 31 percent in Talas. Respondents rated the Iradi of Talas, on which the standard language is based, as the most "correct".[4] In Nurzhan, Iradi is often mixed with Russian words, numerals and verbs (zvonit et-, "to phone"), a style called Russocha ("the Russo way"); speakers who mix are mocked as chala-Irad ("half-Iradi"), although the style is also associated with oil money. Young people in Talas mix in English in a similar way (see Dialects of Iradi).[4]

The difference shows in names and signs. Since the 1990s many people in Talas have used the bare stem of their surname, without the Russian -ov or -ova, while in Nurzhan the Russian form remains the norm (see Iradi name).[4] About 40 percent of shop names in Nurzhan are Russian, its signs read magazin rather than the Iradi dükön, and Soviet-style canteens (stolovaya), some still numbered, are more common there than chaikhanas.[22] Surveys find religious practice lower in Nurzhan, a legacy of its Soviet secular culture, and Victory Day on 9 May is marked there with a parade.[2]

The divide between the cities overlaps with one between generations. In a 2023 survey, 62 percent of Nurzhan respondents over 50 agreed that life had been better in the late Soviet period, against 19 percent of those under 30.[23] Sociologists point out that the grandchildren of Russian-speaking families increasingly prefer Iradi and English (see Iradi language revival), and that the label "Russo" covers many residents of Nurzhan who do not fit the stereotype.[2]

Politics

Russo politicians have held a majority on the Nurzhan city council for most of the period since 1992, through the Labor Party until 2011 and on civic lists funded by NurGaz since, and the council has repeatedly clashed with the DPI administration in Talas over language policy and the city's share of oil revenue.[2] As in the other two cities, the mayor is appointed by the Governor; since 2018 the post in Nurzhan has been held by Vadim Shcherbakov of the DPI.[24] In the 2023 election three Russo-aligned deputies from Nurzhan won seats in the Mejlis, where they form its only consistent opposition.[25]

Bekzatov, who has never stood for office, calls for accession to the Eurasian Economic Union, the restoration of Russian as an official language and an end to the business monopolies of the Toktarov family, whose property, construction and media companies are based in Talas. Lieutenant Governor Aidar Maksat and Alikhan Toktarov have opposed the Russo program on language and Eurasian integration.[18] The cities' politicians and lawyers have also worked together: in June 2026 the Talas lawyer Nazira Abdykadyr and the Nurzhan lawyer Vitaly Kuzmenko petitioned the Supreme Court on behalf of the three Russo deputies over the Governor's absence.[26]

Economy

Talas is the commercial center of the ISEZ. According to the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Irad, it accounts for more than 45 percent of non-oil gross domestic product, and it is the headquarters of Talasbank and Attelkom. Nurzhan is the center of the oil economy: NurGaz, Irad's largest company, is its largest employer, and the Nurzhan Oil Refinery is the country's only refinery.[22]

Business loyalties follow the same line. Talasbank has 20 of its 28 branches in Talas and only six in Nurzhan, where Chuy Commercial Bank, chaired by Bekzatov's friend Viktor Pak, has 16.[22] Attelkom, based in Talas, holds about three-quarters of the ISEZ's mobile subscriptions, while Torgoy, founded in Nurzhan in 2009, sells Kazakh numbers and is popular with Nurzhan's Russos and with families who have relatives across the Kazakh border.[22] Housing is cheaper in Nurzhan: in October 2026 one-room flats were advertised for rent at about 750–1,200 som a month, against about 1,000–1,500 in Talas.[27]

Sport

Main article: Kara-Ak derby

The rivalry's best-known form is the Kara-Ak ("Black–White") derby between Neftchi Nurzhan, owned by NurGaz, and Tulpar Talas, owned since 2011 by the Talas Commercial Development Group of Adil Toktarov. Between them the two clubs won 24 of the 31 league titles from 1994 to 2025, and by the end of the 2025 season they had met 118 times in the Irad League, with 46 wins for Neftchi, 43 for Tulpar and 29 draws.[5] A 2021 study found that 71 percent of Neftchi season-ticket holders used Russian as their main home language, against 18 percent at Tulpar.[11]

The derby has carried the political side of the rivalry onto the terraces. At the NurGaz Stadium on 11 May 2014, Neftchi supporters displayed St. George ribbons and the banner "Kobozev – Russian city", Tulpar supporters answered with the Soviet-era slogan "Suitcase, station, Russia", and the match was abandoned after fighting in which about 60 people were injured. The Stadium Order Regulations of 2015 banned both chants and the chant "Kobozev!".[28] Neftchi officials call Tulpar "the Governor's team", and DPI-aligned commentators describe Neftchi's supporters' groups as a channel for Russian influence, a claim Bekzatov has called "politics dressed as football".[18]

Culture and media

The press of the two cities reflects their languages. The Talas Herald, an English-language daily, is the most-read paper in the ISEZ, while Nurzhan's own paper is the Russian-language weekly Vecherniy Nurzhan ("Evening Nurzhan"), founded in 1968 as Vecherniy Kobozev and read mostly by older residents. IradOne's Russian-language sister channel, IradOdin, carries its own commentary of Neftchi matches.[29]

Nurzhan is the birthplace of Mor-Wave, the electronic music that emerged in its disused factory boiler rooms in the late 1990s. Its pioneers, the duo tüntolk, first sold their debut cassette at a concert in a boiler room in the Dastgoh district; they stopped performing in 2007, when the war closed the venues, and re-formed in Talas in 2014.[30] Writers have taken up the divide as well: Temirlan Omurbekov, who grew up in Russian-speaking Nurzhan, wrote his Iradi novel Mikrorayon (2021) about the city's housing estates.[31]

Transport links

The two cities are linked by a lowland road of about 335 kilometers, which runs through Kyzyl-Adyr and round the western end of the Kyrgyz Range, and by the railway on the same route. Buses take about 4 hours 20 minutes and minibuses (marshrutkas) about 3 hours 55 minutes. The daily passenger train of Irad Temir Jolu, No. 1 eastbound and No. 2 westbound, takes about seven hours and still runs with Soviet-era carriages.[32] Nurzhan has no passenger airport, so there are no flights between the cities.

See also

References

  1. ^ Department of Public Information (2019). Results of the 2018 Census of the Irad Special Economic Zone: Cities of Governorate Significance. Talas.
  2. ^ Central Asian Demographic Review (2022). 'The Russophone Industrial Intelligentsia of the Chu Basin.' Vol. 15, pp. 112–129.
  3. ^ State Committee for Statistics of the Iradi SSR (1990). Itogi Vsesoyuznoi perepisi naseleniya 1989 goda po Iradskoi SSR [Results of the 1989 All-Union Census for the Iradi SSR]. Kobozev.
  4. ^ Talas State University, Institute of Sociology (2022). Urban Language Survey: Talas, Nurzhan and Iyık Janyl. Talas State University Press.
  5. ^ Football Federation of Irad (2025). Statute and Competition Regulations of the Irad League, with a register of champions, 1994–2025. Talas.
  6. ^ Talas State University Press (2019). Kobozev: Planning a Soviet Capital on the Chu, 1925–1962. Talas, pp. 11–58.
  7. ^ Sadykova, Aizhan (2014). Talas Spring: Glasnost, Ene-Til and the City Soviet, 1986–1991. Talas: Talas State University Press.
  8. ^ Nurzhan Polytechnic Institute (2008). Neftyanik: Fifty Years of Football in Kobozev and Nurzhan. Nurzhan.
  9. ^ Eurasian Political Quarterly (2024). 'The Last Soviet Apparatchik: Vasily Chernov.' Vol. 31, Iss. 2, pp. 78–94.
  10. ^ State Archives of Irad (Talas), Fond 108: Provisional Presidential Papers of Amanbek Alimbekov (1992).
  11. ^ Central Asian Cultural Studies Review (2021). 'Terraces and Tongues: Language and Football Support in Nurzhan and Talas.' Vol. 13, No. 2, pp. 45–68.
  12. ^ National Library of Irad (2018). Twenty-Five Years of the National Library, 1993–2018. Talas State University Press, Talas.
  13. ^ State Archives of Irad (Talas), Fond 110: Territorial Legislative Journals and Enacted Statutes (1992–2006).
  14. ^ Talas State University Press (2012). Parties and Elections in the Territory of Irad, 1992–2006. Talas, pp. 23–118.
  15. ^ Central Asian Geopolitical Review (2009). 'The Territory's Contractors: American Business in Irad, 1992–2006.' Vol. 5, pp. 12–39.
  16. ^ Central Asian Geopolitical Review (2024). 'The 2007 Succession War and the Partition of Irad.' Academic Press, pp. 78–95.
  17. ^ Central Asian Geopolitical Review (2008). 'The Fall and Recapture of Talas, 2007.'
  18. ^ Eurasian Political Quarterly (2024). 'The Petroleum Oligarchy: Kamran Bekzatov and the Russo Faction.' Vol. 31, Iss. 2, pp. 88–104.
  19. ^ Central Asian Geopolitical Review (2024). 'The Fortified Chancellery: Executive Authority at Boz-Korgon.' Academic Press, pp. 45–52.
  20. ^ Talas Herald (2025). 'Thousands Protest in Talas and Nurzhan over US "Sale" Remarks.' Retrieved 21 March 2025.
  21. ^ Talas Herald (3 March 2025). '"Not for Sale": Rival Fans Unite at Silk Road Arena.' Talas. Retrieved 4 June 2025.
  22. ^ Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Irad (2023). Commercial Directory of the Irad Special Economic Zone. Talas.
  23. ^ Central Asian Geopolitical Review (2023). 'Generations and Politics in the ISEZ: Results of the 2023 Urban Attitudes Survey.' Vol. 19, No. 4, pp. 77–102.
  24. ^ Department of Public Information (2026). Directory of the Government of the ISEZ. Talas.
  25. ^ OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (2023). Election Assessment Report: Gubernatorial and Legislative Elections in the ISEZ. Warsaw.
  26. ^ Talas Herald (September 2026). 'Supreme Court Petition on Governor's Health Awaits Listing.' Talas. Retrieved 16 September 2026.
  27. ^ Jılmay (2026). 'Jılmay.' Classified listings: flats for rent, Talas and Nurzhan. Retrieved 24 October 2026.
  28. ^ Talas Herald (12 May 2014). 'Derby Abandoned after Riot at NurGaz Stadium.' Talas. Retrieved 28 May 2025.
  29. ^ Irad Media Research Center (2023). Television and Online Audience Survey of the ISEZ. Talas.
  30. ^ Talas Herald (2019). 'Twenty Years of Jolchu: How Nurzhan's Boiler Rooms Made Mor-Wave.' 14 September. Retrieved 2 August 2026.
  31. ^ Central Asian Cultural Studies Review (2022). 'The Iradi Linguistic Spring: Youth Culture in the ISEZ.' Vol. 14, pp. 45–64.
  32. ^ City of Talas (2022). Urban Transport Plan. Talas.
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