[copula4]

Welcome, I hope you have a good time. You don't hear about Kazakhstan here every day, and rarely in a positive light.

If anyone else comes to Kazakhstan and wants to see "the real country", I'd humbly suggest looking outside the two largest cities because they're the only places that have seen any development over the past three decades. My city hasn't changed at all since the end of the 1980s, you look at the photographs from that era and the only difference you see are significantly increased numbers of cars. That's pretty typical.

If you ever wonder why some people have a nostalgia for the Soviet Union — that's why, all significant infrastructure was built back then and hasn't been touched since. The Chinese have been pouring some money into infrastructure for the past few years (mostly power plants and railroads), but the volume is incomparable with ye olde days since they are doing it across the globe and don't have infinite money.

Some of our "patriots" become aggressive when you mention this, so you might want to keep it in mind.

A commenter down below called us "a third-world country", and while that's silly (pretty much only because we're "second world" by definition), it's only fair.

[mavidser]

Hi, OP here - your country is amazing and I'd love to visit beyond the major cities.

This was mostly a ski trip and my first time here, so I barely got a chance to get out of town - but I do intend to come back next winter and go visit some friends in the western region :)

[mitthrowaway2]

Hello! Thank you for your comment! Do you have any thoughts about why the capacity to invest in infrastructure in Kazakhstan seemingly decreased after the collapse of the Soviet Union?

[copula4]

The answer is boring — massive corruption: the country has been making very good money by selling oil and gas to the West (along with some other things like uranium and coal), but most of it goes to vanity projects like building out Astana (hiring famous - and thus expensive - architects from around the world) and buying luxury real estate for the ruling elite in places like London and Dubai.

There's also the brain drain: since 1991, there's been a massive emigration to Russia of all places, which has slowed down a bit since 2022, but it's still going on — we have a negative migration balance with them. That in itself is quite telling.