Besides its claim to the title of second coldest capital city in the world, Astana, Kazakhstan is renowned for its architecture — in fact, mentions of the city are always accompanied by reference to its futuristic architectural style. After 17 hours of pacing, playing cards, intermittent sleep on a stiff fold-down bed and watching the low hills of the Kazakh Steppe race by the train window, I was prepared to be unimpressed by the city of Astana. Yet, even bleary-eyed and weakly shuffling after our tour guide, the sleek, fantastical skyline of Astana throttled me into amazement.
Marvels of steel and glass wound in impossible shapes rose high above wide, barren streets. As I walked down sidewalks wide enough for six people across, I felt like an intruder, some lower life form who had wandered into a world entirely beyond my comprehension, forced to contend with a pyramid and a false tent of fiberglass sprouting up in the city center. Government office buildings leaned and jutted out at vertiginous angles, while other buildings took the forms of glass eggs.
What these outrageous structures were intended to impress upon the city’s denizens I could not grasp, yet I nonetheless craned my neck to spot the tops of buildings that stretched haughtily far above my mortal human bearings.
The crown jewel of Astana is Baiterek, a golden sphere cradled by a white cylindrical tower splaying up into the sky. From afar, I felt certain that the sphere at the top would detach at any moment and fly up into outer space, leaving humanity to some terrible fate. However, instead of an escape pod, housed in the sphere is a golden handprint of Nursultan Nazarbayev, the first president of Kazakhstan. There, after waiting for nearly an hour behind families and eager tourists, I laid my hand onto his and made a wish, as is tradition. Although I cannot reveal my wish (or else it definitely won’t come true), I can say that the pinnacle of Baitarak has an incredible view of Astana, with tinted windows and the beginning of sunset bathing the city in a warm, golden glow.
In that moment, gently cradling Nazarbayev’s hand, I could feel the will behind the city. The irresolute determination not only to build a modern capital city where there had been only empty steppe and modest Stalinist apartment blocks, but to construct architectural wonders — to push upwards without regard for modesty or sensibility. This city was not grown but born in a defiant instant, torn into existence by cranes and steel and window panes, a decades-long battle to outmaster the natural beauty of Kazakhstan through human achievement.
About 20 miles outside the city, there is another architectural curiosity, albeit of a much smaller scale. Amid the dry brush and gray factories of what is now Tonkeris is what looks like a rocket ship. A steel lattice traces out the shape of an arch, overlaying a black stone arch beneath, and round mirrors line the tip of the arch, like the portholes of a ship. The rocket points up, poised to blast off in an instant and deliver people to some land of fantasy and wonder — one not unlike Astana of today. But behind the rocket is a squat, gray bunker, solid and plain. This is what the rocket ship appears to be so desperately trying to escape, and it is also what makes the city truly remarkable.
Inside the bunker are images, letters and artifacts from the over 18,000 women who were interned at the Akmolinsk Camp of Wives of Traitors to the Motherland during Stalinist rule of the Soviet Union. These women were related or married to Soviet political prisoners or subversive in their own right.
Contrary to the typical mental reference for a concentration camp, there were no buildings in the camp at first — only empty steppe, guard towers and barbed wire. Every building for the prisoners’ use was built by their own hands out of bricks of soil, grass and water. Through the stinging cold of winter and unrelenting, often physical, abuse from the guards, these women were determined to survive. They built homes from only the dirt beneath their feet, sewed clothes from scraps of fabric, and carried on long days of manual labor in the fields. One woman carved a statuette of a colorful, rosy-cheeked family from stale bread and other debris so that her child would have a toy to play with.
These rough-shod dwellings have all crumbled now, yet the artifacts and memories remain. Looking into a model of such a house, upon the worn pallet and the mud-packed walls which hardly seem strong enough to stand the blistering winds of northern Kazakhstan, you can see a will beyond any other — far beyond the gaudy strivings of Astana.
A will to live, but not for themselves: for their children and their family who were still free. A will to build where there was nothing, to find warmth in the dead of winter, to make toys in a place of utter solemnity and desolation. An unbridled power to create.
