The Hotel Kazakhstan is widely regarded as one of the principal symbols of Almaty. Having taken lodgings rather too far from it for daily convenience, we made its acquaintance not in the flesh, but rather indirectly—much like knowing a masterpiece solely through a remarkably tacky plastic souvenir.
In our case, this introduction took place in the Museum of Almaty, in the guise of a plastic bedside nightlight manufactured in the 1980s by the Alma-Ata Plastics Plant, known as Qyzyltu.
A Moment of Etymology
The Turkic word qyzyl translates as red, while tu traces its lineage back to the ancient Chinese logogram 纛, denoting a feather-adorned leather banner or standard used in ritual ceremonies. Put them together and you arrive at… yes, the quintessentially Soviet moniker ‘Red Banner’.
A Monolithic Gamble: How to Tame a Magnitude 9 Quake
Naturally, we did eventually lay eyes upon the hotel itself. And, truth be told, it does not strike one today as terribly ultra-modern. From an engineering perspective, however, it is unquestionably a magnificent tour de force.
Do you recall my post regarding Zenkov—the pioneer of earthquake-proof construction in Central Asia? He devised the brilliant method of utilising Asian spruce to grant buildings structural flexibility. Naturally, finding enough spruce trees to sustain a hundred-metre tower constructed between 1975 and 1977 was entirely out of the question. Consequently, the visionary architects Yuri Ratushny and Arkady Deyev, alongside their team leader Lev Ukhobotov and structural engineer Leonid Matviyets—drew upon the research of Toleubai Junusov, the founder of Kazakhstan’s scientific school of seismic engineering, and placed their faith in a frameless system of monolithic reinforced concrete.
Take a look at a typical floor plan of one of the hotel’s twenty-six storeys, reproduced here from A. Olkhova’s treatise:
The structural framework is clearly visible: an oval core in the centre housing the elevator shafts and utility lines, which serves as the spine of the building, coupled with transverse diaphragms. These rest upon a box-shaped slab of identical monolithic reinforced concrete, anchored deeply by bored piles.
The creators were so supremely confident in their calculations that, prior to commissioning the building, they ascended to the twenty-fifth floor during rigorous testing involving vibration machinery and pendulums designed to simulate an earthquake of magnitude 8 to 9. Despite the swaying reaching a full metre in amplitude, the architects remained steadfastly on their feet, proving to the world the exceptional seismic resilience of their creation. Though the Hotel Kazakhstan was eventually surpassed in height by newer structures in 2008, it remains to this day the most earthquake-proof building in the southern capital of Kazakhstan.
Recent History: From Soviet Modernism to Turkish Enterprise
As it happens, the hotel is currently owned by the Kasanov family—descendants of the Turkic-speaking Muslims deported by Stalin from Georgia’s Meskheti to Central Asia, who identify as Meskhetian Turks (or Ahiska).
Unlike many other forcibly displaced peoples, they were denied the right to return to their historical homeland following the denunciation of the cult of personality. Some, yearning fiercely for the Caucasus, migrated independently to the Turkic-speaking regions of Kabardino-Balkaria and Azerbaijan, though the majority remained in Central Asia.
While many continue to reside in Kazakhstan to this day—even publishing the country’s sole Turkish-language newspaper, Ahiska—their brethren in neighbouring Uzbekistan were forced to flee following the tragic pogroms of 1989 in the Fergana Valley.
Alas, their tribulations did not end there. Those welcomed by Azerbaijan found themselves resettled within zones affected by the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict; those who sought refuge in Ukraine ended up caught in the active war zone and were forced to flee yet again—this time to Türkiye, where the government began relocating them to regions with significant Kurdish populations, sparking renewed local tensions.
Nevertheless, the Kasanovs clearly stand apart from the tragic destiny of their dispersed half-million compatriots. Boasting a fortune estimated in 2019 at some 140 million US dollars, they own luxurious hotels—not only in Kazakhstan, but also properties such as the InterContinental in Istanbul—alongside manufacturing enterprises across diverse sectors.
Thus, our initial remote acquaintance via a museum nightlight from the Red Banner plant proved rather fitting after all. In the end, both the plastic miniature and the hundred-metre concrete tower complement one another wonderfully in the chronicle of this place. And while modern glass skyscrapers long ago stripped the Hotel Kazakhstan of its status as the tallest building, its golden crown still holds its ground. It triumphs both literally—remaining the city’s most seismically robust structure—and metaphorically, serving as a reminder of the astonishing historical tapestries that can lie hidden behind a façade of monolithic reinforced concrete.
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