NOT long ago it all looked so much better: oil prices were high, the middle classes were growing and the autocrat-father of the state, Nursultan Nazarbayev, presided over 17m grateful subjects. Yet today the situation in Kazakhstan looks more troubling than at any time since the country broke free of the Soviet Union to become, against the odds, Central Asia’s most prosperous state. To many, Mr Nazarbayev’s promise of a “Kazakh dream” now seems like a sick joke.
Asia | Kazakhstan’s tanking economy
Drift and dissent
So much for Nursultan Nazarbayev’s “Kazakh dream”
|ALMATY
This article appeared in the Asia section of the print edition under the headline "Drift and dissent"
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