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This windswept city in the frozen steppe was briefly called Akmola but changed to Astana because the former means "white grave".

This northern region of Kazakhstan has long been called Akmola, which translates to “white grave,” a reference to the hard and chalky ground beneath the earth’s crust.

Its former name, Akmola, meant “white grave,” summoning images of the icy death that awaited those condemned to internment there.

Back then, it was a small town in the middle of the vast steppe called Akmola, which consisted mostly of Soviet-style block buildings, grim remnants of the country’s past.

In 1997, he moved the capital from the leafy city of Almaty in southeastern Kazakhstan to the windswept steppe town of Akmola in the north.