Not-quite-eternal Nursultan

WEEKS of celebrations to mark the 20th anniversary of Kazakhstan's independence come to a head in Astana, the new capital full of surreal bombast, on December 16th. The 16m-odd citizens of the oil-rich country have plenty to be proud of. Growth has averaged 8% a year for the past decade, a far better performance than any of the other ex-Soviet Central Asian economies. Average income per person is now over $11,000 a year, twice as much as Turkmenistan and six times more than Uzbekistan, which, with 28m people, is the region's most populous country. It puts Kazakhstan nicely among the ranks of middle-income nations.

In 1991 it was not obvious that things would turn out this way. The betting was on Uzbekistan, with a settled agricultural hinterland and some manufacturing. Kazakhstan seemed a vast and fractious place that had suffered greatly from forced population-movements and the collectivisation of its pastoralists. Under its strongman, Nursultan Nazarbayev, Kazakhstan clung to the Soviet Union till the bitter end and was the last of all the Soviet republics to declare independence.