Kazakhstan - Central Asia - page 113

parts, models of other blast sites, and a lump
of granite turned to something more like
pumice by a nuclear blast.
Four buses a day run to Kurchatov (820T,
three hours) from Semey's Avtostantsia¨
Sulu (Naymanbaev) . A taxi round-trip from
Semey with an hour or two in Kurchatov
costs around 10,000T.
Though some parts of the Polygon itself
can be visited safely, it would be lunacy to
wander in without an expert guide. Two
professional travel agencies that can ar-
range trips with proper safety equipment
and precautions are Karaganda-based No-
madic Travel Kazakhstan (p110) and Ust-Ka-
menogorsk's Altai Expeditions (p115). Give
them at least two weeks to make arrange-
ments. You can expect to see sites such as
the Opytnoe Pole (location of the first nu-
clear test), the 'Atomic Lake' (a water-filled
bomb crater created as an experiment in
'peaceful' landscape change) and the Dege-
len mountains, where bombs were exploded
in tunnels cut into hillsides.

very strong 8% a year in the decade up to
2012. By 2013 Kazakhstan was the world's
17th biggest oil producer, pumping 1.6 mil-
lion barrels per day, and the Kashagan field
in the Caspian Sea - the world's biggest oil-
field outside the Middle East - was expect-
ed to come on stream by 2014, eventually
adding another million barrels to the total.
Nazarbaev certainly does not welcome
political opposition, but he has managed
to forge a largely peaceful and increas-
ingly prosperous country, which keeps him
popular enough among the population at
large. In the main cities it's easy to see -
from the ostentatious imported motors,
the expensive restaurants and the night-
clubs where some locals will happily plonk
down the equivalent of hundreds of dol-
lars to reserve a table - that Kazakhstan's
new rich are quite numerous. And there's a
sizeable middle-class developing. Yet those
who are excluded from the networks of the
new wealthy have begun to get disgruntled
about corruption and poor health and edu-
cation services as well as poverty. This was
brutally highlighted in 2011 when a strike
by government oil workers in the western
town of Zhanaozen ended with security
forces shooting dead at least 14 demon-
strators - the first time independent Kaza-
khstan had seen social unrest and violence
on such a scale.
There is no apparent strategy in place
for a transition to multiparty democracy,
nor - despite Nazarbaev's age and rumours
of health problems - any obvious heir ap-
parent, which fuels a lot of gossip and
shadowy manoeuvrings behind the scenes.
Nazarbaev's extremely rich and powerful
son-in-law Timur Kulibaev is one possible
candidate.
Critics of Nazarbaev continue to be put
out of action. Prominent human-rights
activist Yevgeny Zhovtis received a four-
year manslaughter sentence in 2009 after
a driving accident, and in the wake of the
Zhanaozen events, opposition politician
Vladimir Kozlov got a seven-and-a-half
year sentence for attempting to overthrow
the government by encouraging strikes.
Both trials were condemned as unfair by
human-rights groups. The media rights
body Reporters Without Borders ranked
Kazakhstan 160th out of 179 countries in
its 2013 press freedom index.
Kazakhstan's Soviet state-run economy
was dismantled in the 1990s, but corruption

UNDERSTAND
KAZAKHSTAN

Kazakhstan Today
President Nursultan Nazarbaev was elected
to another seven-year presidential term
in 2011. Born into a rural peasant family
in 1940, Nazarbaev has ruled Kazakhstan
since late Soviet times, and still garners So-
viet-style percentages of the vote - 95.5% in
2011, an election criticised by international
observers (like every other post-Soviet elec-
tion here) for its irregularities. Nazarbaev
has fostered a strong personality cult - his
picture and words of wisdom greet you on
billboards everywhere you go - and there is
nothing to stop him staying at the top for as
long as his health holds. In 2010 parliament
named him 'Leader of the Nation', enabling
him to exert a strong influence over govern-
ment if he ceases to be president.
Nazarbaev doesn't hide his belief that
the economy comes first and democracy
second. He has certainly delivered on the
economy, using international investment to
help develop Kazakhstan's vast resources of
oil, gas and almost every other known valu-
able mineral. Economic growth averaged a