The people of Kazakhstan are used to images of President Nursultan Nazarbayev dominating their TV screens, but it’s rare to catch a glimpse of what makes the man tick.
In a carefully scripted documentary beamed around the country ahead of his birthday this weekend, Kazakhstan got to see the Leader of the Nation’s human face. “Nazarbayev. Live.” – a documentary credited as the brainchild the president’s press secretary – aired on the private KTK channel on July 4.
The film came two days ahead of a big celebration for Kazakhstan: July 6, Nazarbayev’s 73rd birthday, marks 15 years since he moved the capital to Astana.
The documentary struck an informal note, with two young presenters in jeans interviewing a relaxed Nazarbayev, snappily dressed in a blue shirt, purple tie and red waistcoat, over tea in his residence.
Nazarbayev revealed some fond memories: his rural childhood in the village of Shamalgan outside Almaty, when he always wanted to “be first;” his baptism by fire at the furnaces of the Temirtau steelworks, where he started his career and had to “overcome fear” and learn “collectivism” and “discipline.”
From there Nazarbayev built a Communist Party career, rising to the top job as Soviet Kazakhstan’s first secretary in 1989. Archive footage showed him 20 days after that appointment appeasing an irate crowd of striking steelworkers – demonstrating the popular touch he hasn’t lost.
The program showed Nazarbayev 22 years on talking to the people of Zhanaozen in western Kazakhstan after 15 civilians died in clashes with security forces in 2011. But it glossed over the violence and presented Nazarbayev as the man to whom the nation turned to resolve the crisis. The Zheltoksan student uprising of 1986 – about which much remains unknown, including Nazarbayev’s role – didn’t get a mention.
Nazarbayev revealed that in nearly a quarter of a century at Kazakhstan's helm he believes he hasn’t made any “fateful mistakes,” though he acknowledged some “practical” ones along the way.
The question of what comes after Nazarbayev – who is up for re-election in 2016, when he would be pushing 76 – is one that pundits in Kazakhstan have long been mulling.
The interviewers put it to the president, who offered a reassuring, if vague, response: “The most difficult moments are moments of change. Anyone who starts reformation always risks … A system has to be constructed which is itself resilient despite a change of leader … I believe everything will be fine.”
Joanna Lillis is a journalist based in Almaty and author of Dark Shadows: Inside the Secret World of Kazakhstan.
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