Nursultan Nazarbayev, the longtime leader of Kazakhstan, Central Asia’s richest country, has always had a rather particular sense of humor. Back in 1998 he moved the country’s capital from the cozy, sunny city of Almaty to a place called Akmola on the windswept northern steppe.

On March 19, 78 years old Nursultan Äbisjuly Nazarbayev unexpectedly announced his resignation as President of Kazakhstan, referring to the need for “a new generation of leaders”.

In a sign of growing social and political turmoil in Central Asia, Kazakhstan’s 78-year-old president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, who has been head of state of the country since its formation out of the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, announced his immediate resignation on Tuesday, March 19.

And can it be a model for other countries in the region to follow, namely Russia?

On March 19, 2019, Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev announced he would be stepping down after nearly three decades in power.

The major economic strides made by energy-rich Kazakhstan during President Nursultan Nazarbaev's nearly 30-year reign often overshadow reports chronicling an undemocratic, repressive tenure punctuated by jailings and the suspicious deaths of opposition leaders, activists, and journalists.