Astana, formerly known as Akmola until 1998, Tselinograd until 1992 and Akmolinsk until 1961, has been the capital of Kazakhstan since 1997, and is the country's second largest city (after Almaty, the former capital) with an officially estimated population of 775,800 as of 21 June 2012.[3] It is located in the north portion of Kazakhstan, within Akmola Province, though administrated separately from the province as a federal city area.  The current mayor of Astana is Imangali Tasmagambetov. He was appointed on 4 April 2008.

History — Russian and Soviet eras

A unit of Siberian Cossacks from Omsk founded a huge fortress on the upper Ishim in 1824, which later became the town of "Akmolinsk". During the early 20th century, the town became a major railway junction, causing a major economic boom that lasted until the Russian Civil War.

In the Stalinist era, Kazakhstan hosted a series of Gulag-like labour camps; in total, 11 camps that housed up to hundreds of thousands of internees and their families. Outside Astana, there once stood the ALZHIR camp, a Russian acronym for the Akmolinskii Camp for Wives of Traitors of the Motherland, one of the most notorious in the Gulag archipelago, which was reserved for the spouses of those considered "enemies of the people" by the government under Joseph Stalin.[6]

In 1961, it was renamed "Tselinograd" ("Virgin Lands City"[7]) and made capital of the Soviet Virgin Lands Territory (Tselinny Krai). The city was at the centre of the Virgin Lands Campaign led by Nikita Khrushchev in the 1950s, in order to turn the state into a second grain producer for the Soviet Union. The high portion of Russian immigrants in this area, which later led to ethnic tension,[citation needed] can be traced to the influx of agricultural workers at this time. Additionally, many Russian-Germans were resettled here after being deported under Joseph Stalin at the beginning of World War II, when Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union.

The population increased from 270 thousand in 1996 to 700 thousand in 2011. However, while I was walking through the main streets in the fresh frosty morning, the streets was not a single person.