City stranded in Central Asian steppes marks 10th anniversary as Kazakshtan's capital

Kazakhs flocked to gleaming, grandiose _ and isolated _ Astana to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the city's designation as the capital of the vast Central Asian nation.

Public celebrations over the past several weeks have included all-day concerts and special sporting events. City officials unveiled more than a dozen new monuments and ordered discounts on the prices of food such as milk and bread as part of celebrations of Sunday's anniversary.

Leaders from neighboring countries _ including Russia's President Dmitry Medvedev as well as the king of Jordan _ attended a special function at the presidential palace Saturday to mark the milestone.

It's a rousing birthday party for a city long seen as a sterile, isolated backwater.

The town in the barren steppe first was established in 1824 by an invading Cossack division that named it Akmolinsk.

In 1961, Soviet authorities designated the city the hub of an ambitious effort to turn the surrounding steppes into farmland and renamed it Tselinograd, or Virgin Land City. The effort failed.

Upon gaining independence in 1991, Kazakhstan quickly restored the town's name to Akmola. But in 1997, it elevated its status to Astana, which means "capital."

Plans to transfer the seat of government from Almaty, the country's largest city, initially were greeted with skepticism, not least because the blisteringly cold and windy Astana winters made living there a horrendous proposition.

But officials claimed Almaty was too cramped, with too high a risk of earthquakes. According to one theory, Kazakh authorities wanted to move the capital to a safe distance from the frontier with China.

Nursultan Nazarbayev, president of the energy-rich ex-Soviet state, seems determined to be remembered as one of the world's great city builders.

At the golden observation pod propped atop a 320-foot-tall (97-meter) tower in the heart of Astana's half-built administrative center, hundreds pay tribute daily to Nazarbayev's grandiose vision. For many, the highlight of the visit is placing their fingers into a golden mold of the president's own right hand.

"Those who touch this monument can dream about anything they want and it will come true," said 22-year-old Baurzhan Saparov, who traveled 920 miles (1,500 kilometers) from the oil town of Atyrau to join the celebrations.

Baiterek Tower, inspired by a folk legend about a magical bird that lays golden eggs, lies on the site of a marshy former farming collective. At the head of a promenade stands the presidential palace, an imitation of the White House _ but topped by a gigantic blue dome.

Beyond is the 250-foot-tall (77-meter) glass Pyramid of Peace designed by British architect Sir Norman Foster and built at a cost of more than US$65 million.

Other planned Foster buildings include the towering, cone-shaped Khan Shatyr shopping center, slated to encompass an area the equivalent to more than 10 football stadiums.

Not everyone in Astana, where the population has gone from 300,000 a decade ago to 700,000, is happy about the construction.

"We didn't need all this. The only people who benefited from this are the people at the top who bought up all the land and became millionaires," said 70-year-old retiree Alexander Tarasov, who receives a monthly pension of less than US$100.

Building a modern metropolis has cost billions of dollars in public funds that critics say could have been better spent elsewhere.

"If you go just 20 kilometers (12.5 miles) out of Astana, you will see how much worse the situation is there. It is just unethical to boost one city at the expense of everywhere else," Bulat Abilov, chairman of the opposition Azat party.

Last month, Nazarbayev approved a bill decreeing that a new holiday in Astana's honor should be observed on July 6, which happens to coincide with his birthday. Lawmakers even proposed giving the city another new moniker: Nursultan.

The president quickly rejected the idea in a rare display of modesty.

But he authorized the lavish celebrations and the cut in food prices to mark the milestone.

"The capital's anniversary celebrations must demonstrate that the Kazakh economy is in order and that it will overcome the crisis," he said in recent televised comments.