Nursultan Nazarbaev was born into a peasant family in the village of Chemolgan, in Kaskelen district, Almaty region, on July 6, 1940.
In 1967, he graduated from an advanced Technical Institute supervised by the Karagandy integrated iron-and-steel works and, in 1992, defended his doctoral thesis entitled, Strategy of resource saving in condition of formation and development of market relations, at the Russian Academy of Management in Moscow. In 1993, he became an Academician of the International Engineering Academy and in 1994, an Academician of the Academy of Social Sciences of the Russian Federation. The following year, he became an Academician of the National Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Kazakhstan.
Nazarbayev has received many honorary professorships, as well as degrees, and accolades, including the Honorary Professor of the Al-Farabi Kazakh State National University, the Honorary Member of the Byelorussian Academy of Sciences, and the Honorary Professor of the M. V. Lomonosov Moscow State University.
Nursultan Nazarbaev
Nazarbayev's career began in 1960 as a worker at the construction directorate under the "Kazmetallurgstroi" Trust (Temirtau, Karagandy region). Later on, he worked as an iron founder and a blast furnace attendant at the Karagandy metallurgical works.
Between 1965 and 1969, he returned to the Karagandy metallurgical works and served as a dispatcher, a gas operator, and a senior gas operator of the blast furnace plant.
Nazarbayev's political career began in 1969 in Komsomol activities in Temirtau, Karagandy region. Between 1973 and 1977, he was the Secretary of the Party Committee at the Karagandy Integrated Iron-and-Steel Works. From 1977 to 1979, he was the Secretary, and the Second Secretary of the Karagandy Regional Party Committee.
From 1979 to 1984, he was the Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan. Thereafter, until 1989, he was the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Kazakh SSR. Between 1989 and 1991, he served as the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan.
Since April 1990, Nazarbayev has been the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan. In 1991, he won the presidency with 98.7 percent of the vote. In 1995, Nazarbayev's presidential term of office was extended up to the year 2000. In January 10, 1999, Nazarbayev was elected again as President with 79.78 percent of the vote. In 2007 the President's party, Nur-Otan, received about 88% of the vote and won all of the available seats.
Nazarbayev holds many offices including the Chairman of the Assembly of Peoples of Kazakhstan (1995), the Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Kazakhstan (1993), the Chairman of the World Association of Kazakhs (1992), the Honorary Chairman of the Friendship Fund of Peoples of Central Asia and Kazakhstan, the President of the International Fund for Rehabilitation of the Aral Area (1993-1997), and many others.
Nazarbayev has authored a number of works, including, Steel Profile of Kazakhstan, With Neither the Right nor the Left, Strategy of Resource Saving and Market Transition, Strategy of Formation and Development of Kazakhstan as a Sovereign State, Market and Social-and-Economic Development, On the Threshold of the XXIst Century, In the flood of history, The Epicenter of Peace, and others.
Nazarbayev's wife, Sara Alpysovna, is an economics engineer. Currently she is the Chair of the "Bobek" (Kiddy) International Children's Charity Fund.
The Nazarbayevs have three daughters: Dariga, Aliya, and Dinara. Dariga is the Chairperson of the Board of Directors of CC "Khabar" Agency, Aliya is the head of Educational Fund named after Nazarbaev, and Dinara is in charge of "Elitstroi" Building Corporation. They have four grandsons and one great-granddaughter.