Nursultan Abishuly Nazarbayev (born 6 July 1940) is a Kazakh politician who served as the first president of Kazakhstan from 1991 to 2019. He also held the special title of Elbasy from 2010 to 2022 and chairman of the Security Council from 1991 to 2022.
Nazarbayev's political career began in the Soviet era, where he joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1962 while working as a steel factory worker. Rising through the party ranks, he became Prime Minister of the Kazakh SSR in 1984 and First Secretary of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan in 1989. In 1990, the Supreme Soviet elected him as the president of Kazakhstan. Nazarbayev played a key role in navigating Kazakhstan through the dissolution of the Soviet Union, leading to the country's independence in 1991. In the country’s first direct 1991 presidential election, Nazarbayev appeared on the ballot without opposition and secured an overwhelming victory. In 1995, ruling by decree, Nazarbayev extended his presidency through a referendum and adopted a new constitution that expanded his powers. He was re-elected in an undemocratic 1999 election, deemed eligible to run again in 2005 by a Supreme Court ruling, and benefited from a 2007 constitutional amendment solely exempting term limits for him, allowing undemocratic re-elections in 2011 and 2015.
In March 2019, following a wave of protests and increasing discontent, Nazarbayev announced his resignation, handing over power to Kassym-Jomart Tokayev. Tokayev was elected president in a snap election in June 2019. While Nazarbayev stepped down from the presidency, he remained a powerful figure in Kazakh politics, retaining influence through his leadership of the Assembly of People of Kazakhstan and the Nur Otan party. He also chaired the Security Council until his dismissal in 2022. Nazarbayev's power was diminished following the 2022 unrest, which led to a constitutional referendum that stripped him of many privileges and titles, including his membership in the Senate and the Constitutional Council. By 2023, he had lost most of his official titles, signaling the end of his political dominance.
Nazarbayev was one of the longest-ruling non-royal leaders in the world, having led Kazakhstan for nearly three decades, excluding chairmanship of the Security Council after the end of his presidency. He has often been referred to as a dictator due to his consolidation of power and autocratic rule. His tenure was marred by widespread authoritarianism, significant human rights abuses, nepotism, and systemic corruption. His leadership was further characterized by a pervasive cult of personality, with his image and influence deeply entrenched in the nation’s political and social landscape. Nazarbayev gained recognition for his efforts in nuclear disarmament, renouncing Kazakhstan's inherited nuclear arsenal, and closing the Semipalatinsk Test Site.
Nursultan Nazarbayev () was born in Chemolgan, a village near Almaty, when Kazakhstan was one of the republics of the Soviet Union, to parents Äbiş Nazarbayev (1903–1970) and Äljan Nazarbayeva (1910–1978). His father Äbish was a poor labourer who worked for a wealthy local family until Soviet rule confiscated the family's farmland in the 1930s during Joseph Stalin's collectivization policy. Following this, his father took the family to the mountains to live out a nomadic existence. His family's religious tradition was Sunni Islam.
Äbiş avoided compulsory military service due to a withered arm he had sustained when putting out a fire. At the end of World War II, the family returned to the village of Chemolgan where in 1948, Nazarbayev began attending school and being taught the Russian language; while living with his paternal uncle, as his parents had not owned dwelling in the place for a brief period. Nazarbayev later himself chose to settle in the upper part of Chemolgan where mainly ethnic Russians lived, in order to master Russian while communicating with them. Despite performing well at school, by the time Nazarbayev was in 10th grade, all the classes in the same grade were called off due to a student shortage and as a result in 1957, he was sent to a boarding school named after Abai Qunanbaiuly in Kaskelen. During that time, Nazarbayev's father, Äbiş, wished to create favourable conditions towards his son for studying and living as well as to potentially avoid bad influence from peers by renting himself an apartment for Nazarbayev in the village.
After leaving school, Nazarbayev took up a one-year, government-funded scholarship at the Karaganda Steel Mill in Temirtau. He also spent time training at a steel plant in Dniprodzerzhynsk, and therefore was away from Temirtau when riots broke out there over working conditions. By the age of 20, he was earning a relatively good wage doing "incredibly heavy and dangerous work" in the blast furnace. From there, Nazarbayev married Sara Nazarbayeva on 25 August 1962, who was a dispatcher at the same steel mill that he worked in. Together, both parties would eventually have three daughters: Dariga, Dinara and Aliya, born in 1963, 1968 and 1980, respectively.
On 15 November 1962, Nazarbayev joined the Communist Party, becoming a prominent member of the Young Communist League (Komsomol) and full-time worker for the party, while attending the Karagandy Polytechnic Institute. He was appointed secretary of the Communist Party Committee of the Karaganda Metallurgical Kombinat in 1972, and four years later became Second Secretary of the Karaganda Regional Party Committee.
In his role as a bureaucrat, Nazarbayev dealt with legal papers, logistical problems, and industrial disputes, as well as meeting workers to solve individual issues. He later wrote that "the central allocation of capital investment and the distribution of funds" meant that infrastructure was poor, workers were demoralised and overworked, and centrally set targets were unrealistic; he saw the steel plant's problems as a microcosm for the problems for the Soviet Union as a whole.
In 1984, at the age 43, Nazarbayev became the prime minister of Kazakhstan (Chairman of the Council of Ministers), the youngest-ever officeholder in the Soviet Union to serve the post, under Dinmukhamed Kunaev, the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan. During that period, the Perestroika policies slowly began to take place under Mikhail Gorbachev while Nazarbayev himself was viewed to be more of experienced policy maker as his views and stances had already been formed during the Khrushchev Thaw and 1965 Soviet economic reform. Kazakhstan at that time was seen as a backwater republic within the Soviet Union with its industry being heavily reliant upon rich raw materials, specifically in mining sectors and was forced upon to import its consumer goods from other Soviet republics. It faced problems especially in countryside with a need for state farm repairs, as well as housing for farmers, lack of available preschools for rural children which Nazarbayev during his tenure raised issues in regard to these problems that was reportedly met with disagreements amongst the republic's leadership.
Growing frustrated over the problems within the Kazakh SSR, at the 16th Session of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan held in January 1986, Nazarbayev criticized Askar Kunayev, head of the Academy of Sciences, for not reforming his department. Dinmukhamed, Nazarbayev's boss and Askar's brother, felt deeply angered and betrayed. Kunayev went to Moscow and demanded Nazarbayev's dismissal while Nazarbayev's supporters campaigned for Kunayev's dismissal and Nazarbayev's promotion.
Kunayev was ousted in 1986 and replaced by Gennady Kolbin, an ethnic Russian, who despite his office, had little authority in Kazakhstan. Nazarbayev was named party leader and the top position (First Secretary of the Communist Party) on 22 June 1989, only the second Kazakh (after Kunayev) to hold the post. He was the chairman of the Supreme Soviet (head of state) from 22 February to 24 April 1990.