Nursultan, formerly (until 1961) Akmolinsk, (1961–92) Tselinograd, (1992–98) Aqmola, and (1998–2019) Astana, city, capital of Kazakhstan. Nursultan lies in the north-central part of the country, along the Ishim River, at the junction of the Trans-Kazakhstan and South Siberian railways.
It was founded in 1824 as a Russian military outpost and became an administrative centre in 1868. Its population had reached 33,000 when it was made an oblast (province) centre in 1939. The city’s importance was greatly enhanced during the Soviet period by the government’s Virgin and Idle Lands Campaign of the mid-1950s—Tselinograd was Russian for “City of the Virgin Lands”—and by the city’s role as capital of a kray (region) that united the five northern provinces of the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic in 1960–65. There was much new construction and the establishment of various research and higher educational institutions (teacher training, agriculture, medicine, and engineering and construction).
