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In brief

A ruler’s address to his subjects, with a report on what has been done and a programme for the future, is as old as the state itself. We find its traces in Sumerian Lagash, in the Persian Behistun inscription, in the edicts of the Indian king Ashoka, in the Chinese “announcements” of the Zhou era, in the Roman praetor’s annual edict, in the Orkhon inscriptions of the Turkic khagans and in the speeches of an Aztec ruler. None of these forms, however, combined the three features without which today’s address is unthinkable: an obligation in law, a regular period and a fixed addressee. The combination came about in the constitutions of modern times: in the British King’s Speech, in the American address to Congress of 1790, and later in the post-Soviet fundamental laws.

The Kazakh address grew from two close roots. Its legal formula repeats Article 84 of Russia’s 1993 Constitution almost word for word, with one decisive change: the addressee here is not parliament but the people. Its working mechanism — results in figures, an execution plan, a campaign of explanation — is inherited from the Soviet Central Committee report to the party congress. This bridge can be seen with one’s own eyes: on 7 June 1990 Nursultan Nazarbayev himself opened the XVII Congress of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan with the Central Committee report, and seven years later he delivered the first address.

In 1997–2025 there were 31 addresses: 23 by Nazarbayev and 8 by Tokayev. For the first, the address was a strategy with horizons of 2030 and 2050; for the second it became a calendar of reforms with specific deadlines. What makes an address binding is a presidential decree on a nationwide action plan. An analysis of sixteen such decrees for 2011–2025 shows that execution is increasingly attested by a note to the Presidential Administration rather than by a law: in the 2025 plan, 87% of the items are closed this way. Reports on execution have never been published, and in 2018 they began to be filed half as often as before.

The 2026 Constitution kept the address but removed the word “annual” from the norm. The first address under the new Article 46 is delivered today, 28 October, at 11:00 Astana time. When this text was completed the address had not yet been given, so all that is said here about its content is what ought to be checked.

How to read this study

Every statement here has been checked against a primary source: the full text of an address, a constitutional norm, a decree, a scholarly edition of an ancient text or official statistics. Press accounts are used only as pointers to where to look, or as a clearly marked assessment by one of the parties. The links lead to pages that were opened and read on 28 October 2026.

The sources fall into four classes. Class A — normative primary sources: constitutions, decrees, laws in official databases. Class B — authorial primary sources: texts of addresses and speeches on the President’s website. Class C — official foreign sources: the UK Parliament, the US National Archives, the French National Assembly. Class D — media and reference works; here they serve as pointers.

Quotations from ancient texts are given in the editorial team’s translation from the scholarly translation indicated; where the original is available (Latin, classical Chinese), it is given alongside. Figures that belong to a party rather than to independent measurement are marked as claims. Analysis is kept apart from facts: where the editors interpret, the paragraph begins with the word “Version” or “Expectation”.

Glossary

The terms are arranged in the order in which the reader will need them. When a term recurs in the main text, it receives a new detail rather than repeating what is said here.

Poslanie (address). A verbal noun from the Russian “poslat”, to send; the verb “slat” goes back to Old Russian “sъlati” and Proto-Slavic *sъlati. In the bookish tradition the word is firmly tied to the apostolic epistles — the letters of Paul and other apostles to their communities — hence its note of instruction, which a “report” lacks. It became a legal term in our region in Russia’s 1993 Constitution (Article 84: the president “addresses the Federal Assembly with annual messages”), from where it passed into Kazakhstan’s 1995 Constitution. The very name of the genre denotes the act of sending, not speech: a trace of the age when an address was a written dispatch.

Zholdau. The Kazakh name of the same genre. It is made of “zhol” (road), the verbal suffix -da-, which turns a noun into a verb, and the ending -u, which forms a verbal noun (the editors’ morphological analysis). The literal sense is “setting on the road, dispatch”. That is how the word lives in today’s official language: “khat zholdau” is to send a letter, “sotqa zholdau” is to refer a case to court. The reading “zholdau means showing the way”, which one sometimes meets, belongs to folk etymology (see below): there is a road in the word, but it is the road of something sent, not of something shown.

Folk etymology. Explaining a word by its sound or by the apparent sense of its parts instead of the real history of its formation. A classic Russian example is “polu-klinika” (“half-clinic”) for “poliklinika”. Folk etymology is not an error of the ignorant but a natural wish to make a word transparent; in research, however, it must be kept apart from verified analysis.

King’s Speech. The speech of the British monarch at the opening of a parliamentary session. The government writes the text and the monarch only reads it; in substance it is a list of bills for the session. The custom goes back to the XVI century. For our subject two features of the King’s Speech matter, both later inherited by Kazakhstan: the link to the opening of a session and a programme for the year.

State of the Union. The American form. The US Constitution of 1787 (Article II, Section 3) obliges the president “from time to time” to give Congress information on the state of the Union and to recommend measures. The word “annually” is not in the norm: annual delivery is a custom set by Washington on 8 January 1790. Until 1946 the document was officially called the Annual Message; the familiar name took hold informally in 1942–1946 and officially from 1947.

Central Committee report. The main genre of Soviet political speech: the report of the First (from 1966, General) Secretary of the Central Committee to the party congress. The congress met once every five years; the report summed up the five-year plan in percentages and physical indicators and set out the tasks. It is the direct ancestor of the Kazakh address in mechanism, though not in addressee.

Directives. The congress document that turned the provisions of the report into the targets of the five-year plan. The Directives were not yet law: the targets acquired legal force later, when the Supreme Soviet adopted the law on the five-year plan. The counterpart of the Directives in Kazakh practice is the nationwide plan.

Nationwide action plan. An annex to the presidential decree on measures to implement an address. It is a table of four columns: action, form of completion, executors, deadline. It is the decree, not the address itself, that makes the instructions binding on state bodies.

Form of completion. The column of the plan that says what attests execution: a law, a decree, a government resolution, a minister’s order or “information to the Presidential Administration”. The form does not measure the result, but it shows what the state itself counts as execution.

National income, GDP, GNP. Three measures of the size of an economy. Soviet statistics counted national income — newly created value in the branches of material production, leaving out most services. Western estimates counted gross national product (GNP), which includes services. Kazakh addresses speak of gross domestic product (GDP). Figures computed by different measures can be compared only as trends, not as levels.

Alternative estimates. Recalculations of Soviet indicators by independent researchers. The best known is the work of Grigory Khanin, first published in the journal “Kommunist” in 1988: he took account of hidden price growth and declining product quality, which official statistics passed off as growth.

Kurultai (құрылтай). Among the Turkic and Mongol peoples, an assembly of the nobility and the army at which a khan was elected and affairs of state decided; the best-known example is the assembly of 1206 at the source of the Onon, where Temüjin was proclaimed Genghis Khan. In 2022 the name was given to the National Kurultai, a consultative assembly for dialogue between the authorities and society; since 1 July 2026, under the new Constitution, it is the name of Kazakhstan’s unicameral parliament.

Qazaqstan Halyq Kenesi. Literally “People’s Council of Kazakhstan”. The highest consultative body, established by the 2026 Constitution; by October 2026 it is already at work.

Edict. From the Latin edictum, “that which is proclaimed”, from the verb edicere, “to proclaim”. In Rome this was the name of a magistrate’s public act. The praetor’s edict, issued on taking office, was valid for a year and was therefore called “the annual law”.

Annals. From the Latin annus, “year”. In Assyriology, royal inscriptions in which events are set out by regnal year (Akkadian palû). They are contrasted with “summary inscriptions”, in which the same material is grouped by place.

Gao (誥). In the Book of Documents (Shujing), the genre of a ruler’s announcement to vassals and dignitaries, setting out circumstances, arguments and objections. The best-known example is the “Great Announcement” (大誥).

Huehuetlahtolli. In Nahuatl, “the words of the ancients”: a body of Aztec ceremonial speeches recorded by the Franciscan Bernardino de Sahagún in the XVI century in the Florentine Codex. Among them are the first speech of a new ruler to the city and the reply of an elder.

Ama-gi. A Sumerian word from the inscriptions of Uruinimgina (Lagash, around 2350 BC), literally “return to the mother”. It is usually translated as “freedom”: release from debts and duties. It is the oldest known record of such a concept.

Bodun. In the Old Turkic language of the Orkhon inscriptions, “people”. The khagans addressed “the begs and the bodun”, that is, the nobility and the people.

Pedigree: the ruler speaks to the people

Sumer and Babylon: a report to a god and a law in the square

The oldest known texts in which rulers speak of “the state of the country” are addressed not to people but to gods. Uruinimgina, ruler of Lagash around 2350 BC, recorded his “reforms” on clay cones: the abolition of abuses by former authorities, the protection of the widow and the orphan from “the powerful man”, the return of seized property. Here the word ama-gi appears for the first time. But the cones were laid in the foundations of a temple, so this is the ruler’s covenant with the god Ningirsu, a report upward rather than an address to subjects.

The step towards the people was taken by the Babylonian king Hammurabi in the XVIII century BC. His law stele stood in the open, and in the epilogue the king himself explains its purpose: let the wronged man who has a case come to the king’s image, read the inscription, understand his case and say that Hammurabi is like a father to his subjects. Three features of the future address are already here: a report on what has been done, a promise to protect the weak, and a text displayed so that anyone can read it. Only regularity and the right of reply are missing: the reader of the stele can understand but cannot object.

Assyria and Persia: a report by regnal year

The Assyrians were the first to write reports year by year. The editors of the corpus of Assyrian royal inscriptions RINAP call annals the texts whose narrative is arranged chronologically, by regnal year, and distinguish them from summary inscriptions, in which the same material is grouped by place. Scholars regard the inscription of Tiglath-pileser I (XI century BC) as the first annalistic text. Its four identical prisms were buried at the corners of the temple of Adad in Ashur, so the addressees were again the gods and future kings. Three and a half centuries later the “Kalhu Annals” of Tiglath-pileser III were carved on slabs in the palace halls, where courtiers and foreign envoys saw them.

The Persian king Darius I brought the genre to a form remarkably close to today’s address. The Behistun inscription (around 520 BC) is built as a speech in the first person: every paragraph opens with the words “Thus says King Darius”. The king lists what he did “in one and the same year”, calls on the god to witness the truth of what he says, and admits that he did more but did not record it, “lest the reader think it exaggerated”. The fifth column of the inscription was added later and opens with what was done “in the second and third year of my reign”, so the text was continued, as an annual report is continued. Whoever proclaims the inscription to the people is promised the god’s favour; whoever conceals it, a curse. Finally, the text was “read out before the king” and “sent everywhere among the provinces”. According to the same paragraph, the text was composed “on clay tablets and on parchment”, that is, reproduced on portable media: the rock served as a monument, the copies as a means of distribution.

A report for a term, distribution to the provinces, explanation — almost the whole future procedure except one thing: Behistun speaks but does not wait for a reply.

Egypt: the decree of a new ruler

The pharaoh Horemheb, who came to power around 1320 BC not by direct succession, left a stele with a decree at the Tenth Pylon of Karnak. It is a new ruler’s statement of programme: a list of abuses by officials and soldiers in collecting taxes, measures against them, a promise of justice. The text addresses its hearers: “Hear ye these commands which my majesty has made”, made “when my majesty remembered these cases of oppression”. Modern scholars also see in the decree a means of establishing Horemheb’s own legitimacy. The genre of the “new ruler” — a list of old ills and a programme for curing them — is recognisable in the Kazakh addresses of 2019 and March 2022 as well. This is a similarity of content, not kinship: there is no direct line of succession from Egypt to Kazakhstan.

India: the edicts of Ashoka, the first addresses with rules of procedure

The edicts of King Ashoka (III century BC), carved on rocks and pillars throughout the Maurya empire, come closer than any other ancient texts to the system “address — execution — explanation”. Their opening formula is “Thus speaks Beloved-of-the-Gods, King Piyadasi”; dates are given in years from the coronation. Ashoka was the first to set rules for public reading: certain edicts are to be heard on the day of Tissa, once every four months, and on other suitable occasions, “even to a single person”. He created a feedback channel: before, reports on the people’s affairs did not reach the king at any hour; now the reporters must find him anywhere — at meals, in his chambers, in his chariot. He established a check on execution: officials tour the country every five years, and special commissioners check whether judges have understood the king’s intention. In the thirteenth edict Ashoka speaks of remorse after the conquest of Kalinga. The text itself reports that the message was proclaimed by the king on tour two hundred and fifty-six times. In Dhammika’s translation these texts are divided into groups: fourteen “rock edicts”, the special Kalinga edicts, the minor rock edicts and seven pillar edicts. By their number and placement across the empire they form a system, not a one-off act.

Ashoka did what today’s address still lacks: he wrote the procedure for checking into the text itself.

China: the “announcement” as a genre and the edict of repentance

In China the ruler’s address became a literary genre long before the empire. In the Book of Documents the chapters of the gao genre open with the formula “Thus spoke the king”. The “Great Announcement” (大誥) begins: “Oh! With a great announcement I address you, the many states, and your managers of affairs” (王若曰：猷大誥爾多邦越爾御事). Then the ruler sets out a calamity, a divination and the decision to go to war — and at once cites the objections of the lords: the task is hard, the people are restless. Here we already have a reasoned speech to the ruling stratum that sets out the arguments of others as well.

The Han emperor Wu, around 89 BC, gave an example found nowhere else. Having received a report proposing to send troops to settle Luntai, he, according to the History of the Han, “issued an edict deeply expressing regret for the past” (上乃下詔，深陳既往之悔). The edict says: “formerly I was unwise” (曩者，朕之不明), and the new task is defined thus: “to forbid cruelty, to stop arbitrary levies, to strengthen agriculture” (當今務在禁苛暴，止擅賦，力本農). Later tradition calls such texts “edicts of self-accusation”. Kazakh addresses know changes of course — it is enough to recall the transition “from a super-presidential form of government” in March 2022. Self-accusation in the first person, in the form “I was wrong”, has not been found in the corpus.

Rome: the annual law and an account in denarii

Rome gave the genre an annual cycle tied to the term of office. The right to issue edicts, wrote the jurist Gaius in the II century, belongs to the magistrates of the Roman people, “but the widest is in the edicts of the two praetors” (Institutiones, 1.6). On taking office, a praetor announced the rules by which he would judge for the whole year. Cicero, in his speech against Verres, records the expression of the time: the praetor’s edict is called “the annual law” (legem annuam), and its force ends with the January calends (Verr. 2.1.109). This is the closest ancient counterpart of an address delivered at the start of a session for the year ahead.

Rome also gave an example of a financial report to the people. The “Deeds of the Divine Augustus” (Res Gestae, AD 14) is a copy of a text cut on two bronze pillars in Rome; it is best preserved on the walls of a temple in Ankara. Augustus lists his offices, wars, distributions and buildings and separately sums up his expenditure in denarii. He ends with the news that the senate and people named him “father of the fatherland”, and a note that he is writing this in his seventy-sixth year. The Ankara inscription is bilingual: the Latin original is accompanied by a Greek translation made in antiquity — the ruler made sure his report would be understood in the province in its own language.

The Great Steppe: the khagan’s word to the people

For Kazakhstan this line is closer than the British one. The monument to Kül Tegin (732) in the Orkhon valley, in present-day Mongolia, carries on its southern side the address of Bilge Khagan, and it reads as a direct ancestor of the address “to the people”. The khagan demands that his words be “clearly heard” by his brothers, sons, the united tribes and the people, the begs of the south and the north. He gives an account: “I made the poor people rich.” He asks: “is there any falsehood in my words?” He reproaches: the people yielded to the “sweet words” of neighbours and lost many. And he orders “the present Turkic begs and people” to read the inscription and grasp its meaning (T. Tekin’s translation as given in Chen Hao’s article, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 2020). The western side of the same monument carries a Chinese text by the Tang emperor Xuanzong: the stele speaks to two addressees in two languages. Scholars of diplomatics note that the formula “my word” (sabım) in these inscriptions means “my order”, and trace it down to the formulas of later khans’ charters.

The kurultai is the second steppe line. The Secret History of the Mongols describes the assembly of 1206 at the source of the Onon, where a white banner with nine tails was raised and Temüjin became Genghis Khan; the text itself, according to its closing note, was written in the year “when the Great Kurultai assembled”. The kurultai was the place where a ruler received power and announced decisions, but not a place of regular reporting.

The addressee “the people” (bodun, in Kazakh halyq) and the ruler’s direct word to it distinguish the Kazakh formula from the Russian one. The oldest written example of such an address on the land of the Turkic steppe is the Orkhon inscriptions. The primary sources, however, show no direct continuity of texts from Orkhon to the address of 1997: legally, the formula came from Moscow.

The Aztecs: the speech and the city’s reply

From the Aztecs what survives is not a text in stone but a whole order of exchanged speeches, recorded by Sahagún from the words of the nobility in the 1540s–1580s. From the chapters of Book Six of the Florentine Codex it can be reconstructed as follows. The new ruler addresses the god Tezcatlipoca with thanks. The nobility greets him, and a dignitary expresses the joy “of all the common people”; the ruler replies, humbling himself. Then he delivers a long speech instructing all the inhabitants of the city, “when he speaks for the first time”. After him another dignitary instructs the townspeople in his presence, and finally an elder, “skilled in speech”, answers on behalf of the city. The same book also contains a prayer for the death of a ruler who performs his office badly.

No other ancient source shows the form “address — reply” so clearly. In Britain its role is played by the address of the houses to the monarch in reply, in the United States by the opposition’s televised response. The Kazakh procedure has no formal reply.

From clay to broadcast: how the medium changed

1. 2350 BC · Lagashclay conesin a temple foundation
2. 1750 BC · Babylonstone stelein the square
3. 1100 BC · Assyriaprismsat the temple corners
4. 730 BC · Kalhuslabsin palace halls
5. 520 BC · Behistunrock and copiestablets and parchment
6. 250 BC · Ashokarocks and pillarsreading aloud
7. AD 14 · Romebronzecopies in the provinces
8. 732 · Orkhonstelein two languages
9. XVI century · Aztecsmanuscript codexspeeches recorded
10. 1790 · USAliving speechbefore Congress
11. 1801 · USAwritten messageon paper
12. 1923 · USAradiothe whole country at once
13. 1947 · USAtelevisionevening broadcast
14. 1990 · Alma-Atareport to the congressand transcript
15. 2026 · Astanabroadcast and social mediaAkorda’s stream

The strip scrolls sideways. Ochre — antiquity and the early Middle Ages, teal — the constitutional age.

The medium is part of the meaning of an address: it decides who will hear the word, how long it will live and whether the listener can reply. The Sumerian cone buried in a temple foundation is addressed to eternity and to a god; it has no human reader. Hammurabi’s stone stele is set up in the square and meant to last for centuries, but it speaks to the passer-by in one direction. Darius, besides the inscription on the Behistun rock, had the text composed on clay tablets and parchment and sent to the provinces: for the first time monument and circulation parted — the rock preserved, the copies were sent out. Ashoka joined both methods with the living voice: the edicts were carved across the empire, and reading aloud was set by the calendar.

Rome added metal and translation: the “Deeds” of Augustus were cut in bronze in the capital and repeated in Latin and Greek in Ankara. The Orkhon stele of 732 is also bilingual: the khagan’s Turkic text stands next to the Chinese text of the Tang emperor. The Aztec speeches have come down to us not in stone but in a XVI-century manuscript codex, in which a friar wrote them down from the words of the nobility.

The constitutional age brought back the voice and made it mass. Washington spoke before Congress in 1790, Jefferson from 1801 sent the text on paper, Wilson returned to speech in 1913. Radio (1923) and television (1947) turned an address to legislators into an address to the whole country at once. The Soviet report lived in two forms: the spoken word at the congress and the transcript printed by the newspapers. Today’s Kazakh address, according to Akorda’s announcement, is broadcast by national television channels and Akorda’s official social media pages.

Version. Each new medium widened the circle of listeners but almost never gave them a voice: stone and bronze are mute, broadcasting runs one way. The digital environment is the first to allow, technically, the reverse movement — verification and reply — and the only question is whether the design of the genre will provide for it.

The nearest sources: the King’s Speech, Congress, Roosevelt

The constitutional address in its present form grew out of two modern forms. The British King’s Speech gave the link to the opening of a session and a legislative programme for the year. The American address gave the duty of the head of the executive to report to the legislators. Washington read his first address in person; from 1801 Jefferson began to send the text in writing, and this custom lasted one hundred and twelve years, until Woodrow Wilson revived the spoken address in 1913. The historian of the House of Representatives names Calvin Coolidge’s address of 1923 as the first radio broadcast of the address, and Harry Truman’s of 1947 as the first televised one.

Franklin Roosevelt created, alongside the address, a special form — direct conversation with the people by radio, the so-called “fireside chats” (about thirty between 1933 and 1944). On 11 January 1944, ill with influenza, he sent Congress a written message and the same evening read it on the radio from the White House. The two forms met. Winston Churchill created no annual genre: his great speeches of 1940–1941 were extraordinary.

In France the president’s right of message appeared in 1873 and, as a deputy of the National Assembly recalled in 2018, it was introduced to shield the chamber from the oratorical gift of President Thiers: the message was to be read in the chamber without debate and without the president himself. Only the constitutional reform of 23 July 2008 allowed the president to speak in person before parliament assembled at Versailles.

Seven features of the genre and the lessons of the parallels

Click a cell to see the assessment and its basis. Editors’ assessment by the sections of the report: “yes” — the feature is present, “partly” — present incompletely or by custom, empty — absent.

The diagram reduces all the forms examined to seven features: an obligation in law, regularity, the people as addressee, a report on what has been done, a text on view, a formal reply by the addressee, and a check on execution. Each feature appeared long before modern times, yet no ancient form combined more than five in full. The Kazakh address of 1995–2025 has five in full and one in part; it lacks a formal reply by the addressee, and the check on execution exists only by half, because its result is not published. The 2026 Constitution weakened one more feature — regularity.

Historical parallels are useful as ready-made solutions already tested by time. Each also has a limit beyond which the comparison stops working.

The Soviet root: the Central Committee report

The bridge of 1990

The most direct evidence of kinship is biographical. According to the official “Chronicle of Activity” of the President for 1990–1991, on 29 May 1990 the XXII plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan approved the report to the XVII Congress and instructed the First Secretary, N. A. Nazarbayev, to deliver it. A little over a week later, on 7 June 1990, Nazarbayev opened the congress in the Lenin Palace in Alma-Ata with the report “For the unity of the party and the socialist choice, for real sovereignty of Kazakhstan in a renewed Union of SSR”. In it he set the task of offering the congress “fundamental strategic directions” in politics, the economy, ideology and culture, and named as the first point the struggle “for the assertion of the political and economic sovereignty of the Kazakh SSR”. On 9 June the congress adopted a resolution on the report under the same title.

Between this report and the address of 1997 several things persist: the formula “strategic directions”, the role of the top leader as speaker, and the subsequent approval of the course by a special document. What changes is the addressee (the party congress becomes the people) and the source of binding force (a congress resolution becomes a presidential decree).

Genre and mechanism

The report was read by the First, from 1966 General, Secretary of the Central Committee. The congress heard it, adopted a resolution and Directives for the five-year plan, and the Supreme Soviet then adopted the law on the plan. At the XXIV Congress in 1971, according to the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, the agenda included the Central Committee report (speaker L. I. Brezhnev), the report of the audit commission and the Directives for 1971–1975 (speaker A. N. Kosygin).

The figures of the Brezhnev congresses: official and recalculated

Official statistics show continuous growth with the increase narrowing from one five-year plan to the next. According to the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, over the eighth five-year plan (1966–1970) national income grew by 41% and industrial output by 50%. The subsequent official increases in national income were 28%, 21% and 16,5% per five-year plan. Alternative estimates are lower but show the same trend: according to Khanin, 22%, 17%, 5% and 3%; according to the CIA estimate (GNP), an average of 5,0%, 3,1%, 2,2% and 1,8% a year. The disputing parties agree on one thing: on the whole there was no absolute decline in 1966–1985, there was a fading of growth. They differ on its scale and on trust in official statistics.

For the genre of the address the conclusion concerns method, not the past: a report checked by its own speaker systematically diverges from independent measurement.

What can be recognised in the addresses

From the Central Committee report the Kazakh address inherited the habit of opening with results in percentages, the nationwide plan as the successor to the Directives, and the campaign of explanation. A horizon with a date in the title (“Kazakhstan-2030”) recalls the CPSU Programme of 1961 with its target year of 1980, but this is an interpretation, not a proven borrowing: the 1997 address itself refers to the experience of the Asian “tigers”. Gone are the party addressee and the five-year rhythm.

The Kazakh formula

One change that decided everything

Article 84 of Russia’s 1993 Constitution obliges the president to address the Federal Assembly “with annual messages on the situation in the country and on the main directions of the state’s domestic and foreign policy”. Article 44 of Kazakhstan’s 1995 Constitution repeats these words almost verbatim and changes one thing: the addressee is the people of Kazakhstan. The change turned a report to parliament into an address to all citizens; parliament became merely the place where the speech is heard.

What the 2026 Constitution changed

The new Constitution kept the address but removed the word “annual” from the norm. In Kazakh both “zhyl saiyn” (annually) and the verb of address “arnaidy” (dedicates, directs) have gone: the neutral “zhasaidy” (makes) remains. Meanwhile the Kurultai under the new Constitution hears annual addresses of the Constitutional Court. An asymmetry has arisen: the court must speak every year, the head of state need not. The frequency of the address is now set by practice, not by the norm.

Practice so far keeps the old rhythm. Opening the first session of the Kurultai on 28 August 2026, the President promised to “make public the annual Address” once the Kurultai and the government had been formed. The address, however, was not delivered on the day the session opened, as it was in 2019–2025, but is separated from it by two months.

Thirty-one addresses: two eras, two genres

Nazarbayev, 1997–2018: from manifesto to programme

Over twenty-one years Nazarbayev delivered 23 addresses, and the genre passed through three stages. At first it was a manifesto with a distant horizon. The first address, “Kazakhstan-2030” (October 1997), is the longest in the corpus after the 2012 strategy: about 13,8 thousand words and not a single “I instruct”. In genre it is an image of the future: the country’s strengths and weaknesses, seven long-term priorities, the image of a “Central Asian snow leopard” by analogy with the Asian “tigers”. The 1998 address is the most “democratic” in the corpus: thirty mentions of words of that root and a proposal to introduce ten party-list seats in the Mazhilis. The 1999 address, by contrast, is the shortest — about 1,4 thousand words.

Then the address became an annual plan attached to the budget. In 2001 Nazarbayev announced that he would henceforth speak before budget planning began, at the end of the first quarter, so that the budget drafters would know the priorities at once; hence the April addresses of 2002 and 2003 with the titles “…for 2003” and “…for 2004”.

Finally, from 2005 the address again became a strategy, now with figures. The “Kazakhstan-2050” Strategy (14 December 2012, about 15 thousand words) summed up its predecessor: by its account a number of “Kazakhstan-2030” targets had been met ahead of schedule, and in the competitiveness ranking the country stood 51st, “a step away from the goal”. The “Nurly Zhol” address (November 2014) directed National Fund money into roads and infrastructure; the 2015 address considered scenarios of an oil price of 30 and 20 dollars a barrel. Nazarbayev’s last address (October 2018) was social: the minimum wage rose from 28 to 42 thousand tenge.

One address became part of a political collision. In the address of 28 January 2011 Nazarbayev spoke of the disputed initiative for a referendum to extend his powers to 2020: he had rejected it by decree No. 1134 of 6 January, parliament had adopted a constitutional amendment, and the law had been sent to the Constitutional Council. The outcome came three days later: by normative resolution No. 2 of 31 January 2011 the Constitutional Council found the law inconsistent with the Constitution.

Tokayev, 2019–2025: the address as a calendar of reforms

Tokayev has delivered eight addresses, one of them extraordinary (March 2022); the rest were given on the day the parliamentary session opened. The texts are more even in length (from 5,9 to 8,5 thousand words) and are built as a list of instructions. The word “I instruct” occurs up to 28 times per address (2020), although in 2021 it does not occur at all. Five of the eight addresses name none of the former milestones (2030, 2040, 2050): the horizon has become the deadline of a specific instruction.

After the 2020 peak Tokayev uses “I instruct” 0 to 9 times per address. The instructions have not disappeared but have changed their grammatical form: in the 2021 address, where “I instruct” is absent altogether, “should” (sleduet) appears 31 times, “need to” (nuzhno) 35 and “it is necessary” (neobkhodimo) 26 (the editors’ count of the full text). The genre has moved from the first person of the one who gives orders to the impersonal modality of duty, and this changes not the force of the instruction but its addressing: the executor is named less often.

Recurring lines in the texts:

• 2019. The concept of a “listening state”, the National Council of Public Trust, improvement of the law on rallies, an instruction to bring irrigated land to 3 million hectares by 2030.
• 2020. The Agency for Strategic Planning and Reforms, a three-tier model of criminal procedure, an instruction to start direct elections of rural akims.
• 2021. A shortage of 225 thousand school places and the task of building not 800 but 1000 schools by the end of 2025.
• March 2022. The transition “from a super-presidential form of government to a presidential republic with a strong Parliament”, a Constitutional Court, a ban on the president’s close relatives holding political office, the National Kurultai, three new regions — Abai, Zhetysu and Ulytau.
• September 2022. A single seven-year presidential term without re-election, the programme “National Fund for Children”.
• 2023. The goal of bringing the economy to 450 billion dollars by 2029, a Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation.
• 2024. The share of medium-sized business to rise from 7% to 15% by 2029, a “social wallet”, more than 1300 road deaths since the start of the year as the reason for measures.
• 2025. “Kazakhstan in the age of artificial intelligence”: thirty-two mentions of AI, a Ministry of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Development, a Digital Code, a state digital asset fund and a proposal for a unicameral parliament with a referendum in 2027.

From the 2025 address to the 2026 Constitution

The 2025 address proposed one change — a unicameral parliament elected by party lists — and a discussion of “no less than a year” with a referendum in 2027. The word “kurultai” does not appear in its text. The outcome was a new Constitution, a year earlier and much broader.

Version. The 2025 address worked as a launch point: a decision that was to be discussed for a year was reconsidered and broadened elsewhere — at the National Kurultai.

Mechanism: from speech to decree

Sixteen decrees

What makes an address binding is the President’s decree on the nationwide plan. From primary sources, decrees have been established for sixteen addresses of 2011–2025; for thirteen the plan itself is published, and twelve have been analysed line by line. Decrees on the addresses of 1997–2010 and 2015 were not found for this edition.

The editors’ count by the column “form of completion” in the current versions of the plans; an item with several forms is assigned by the first normative one. The 2020 and 2021 plans were updated on 13 April 2023, so their number of items may differ from the original.

What the series shows

The first observation concerns control itself. In 2011–2014 the government reported on the plan twice a year, by 25 January and by 25 July. From 2018 — once a year, by 25 January. In 2025 the deadline was moved to 5 February. The report is always addressed to the Presidential Administration and has never been published as a document with the same item numbers. So the report on execution, like Uruinimgina’s cones, faces upward, not towards those to whom the address itself is directed.

The second: laws are concentrated in the plans of political turns. In March 2022 half the items (36 of 72) were closed by a law, in 2019 one in five (17 of 81); the 2012 strategy produced 15 laws and 11 decrees. In 2023–2025 the share of items closed by a note grew (76%, then 87%), and the number of laws fell (12, then 6).

The third: the time from speech to decree ranged from 3 days (January 2012) to 30 (January 2018), under Tokayev stayed within 8–15 days, and then grew to 23 (2024) and 35 (2025). The reason for the lengthening has not been established from primary sources.

The fourth, found by comparing dates: the Ministry of AI was created by decree No. 997 of 18 September 2025, twenty-five days before the decree on the nationwide plan, while in the plan itself its creation still appears as an item with the deadline “September 2025”. The plan partly records decisions already taken rather than prescribing new ones.

How to read these observations

The figures in the series allow more than one explanation, and honest analysis must name them.

The growing share of items closed by “information” can be read as a weakening of demands: a note is easier to prepare than a law. But another explanation is possible: more instructions on coordination, monitoring and drafting enter the plans, for which no law is needed, while legislative work follows separate plans of law drafting. The primary sources of this edition do not allow a choice between the explanations; for that the items of the plans must be compared with the law-drafting plans of the same years.

The reduction of reporting from twice a year to once may mean less attention, or it may mean a move to other channels of control: meetings with the President, reports by akims, the state planning system. Only the publication of the reports themselves can settle this.

The lengthening of the time from speech to decree in 2024–2025 coincided with major institutional changes: the preparation of the Tax and Digital Codes, then the reform of parliament. The reason may lie in the complexity of coordination rather than in a loss of pace.

One observation needs no explanation: not a single consolidated report on execution is publicly available. Until there is one, any judgement on the effectiveness of the address remains an assumption — and this is the strongest argument for publishing it.

The address of 28 October 2026: what to check

This is the first address under Article 46 of the new Constitution and the first before the unicameral Kurultai. According to Akorda’s announcement, the hall will hold the deputies of the Kurultai, members of the government and of the Halyq Kenesi; on the same day the President begins an official visit to Turkey. The President named the date on 20 October. His speech for Republic Day on 23 October contained figures that will probably also appear in the address: economic growth of about 30% since 2019, GDP “approaching 350 billion dollars”, more than 15 thousand dollars per capita, 155 billion dollars of foreign investment over seven years. These are claims by one party; there is no independent verification in this edition.

Once the text is published on akorda.kz, the editors will answer five questions:

1. Is the address called annual, and what is its horizon.
2. To whom is it addressed: the people, the Kurultai or both; is the vice-president mentioned as an executor.
3. Are there instructions with the form “law”, and how many days will pass before a new nationwide plan.
4. Does the text contain an item-by-item report on the execution of the 2025 address.
5. What role does AI play: a goal, a tool or a subject of regulation.

Scenarios and recommendations

Does the format suit the age of AI

In content the address keeps pace with technology: in 2025 it mentioned AI 32 times, and in the following four months a law on AI and a Digital Code appeared. In the mechanics of execution it has stayed the same, and in one respect it has begun to check itself less strictly: a note to the Administration replaces a norm, and the report is filed less often than ten years ago.

Version. The annual rhythm of the address has not become obsolete because algorithms work faster: the rhythm is needed not to manage processes but so that society can compare goals and results once a year. Another feature has become obsolete — the closedness of execution. It can be overcome not with new words in the text but with the design of the document.

Three scenarios for 2026–2029

Expectation. The text of 28 October and the decree that follows will show which scenario is closer. The deciding sign will be not the rhetoric of the address but the columns of the future plan.

What can be done: tasks of institutional design

Expectation. If at least the first three measures are adopted, the genre will gain what Ashoka devised: a procedure for checking written into the text itself. A ready platform already exists: according to the President at the opening of the first session, the Kurultai approves the reports of the Supreme Audit Chamber on the execution of the republican budget.

Checking a third-party document

A document entitled “The institution of addresses: the world and Kazakhstan” was attached to the study. Of its 72 verifiable statements, 35 are confirmed by primary sources, 9 partly, 12 find no support in the texts, 9 are refuted or contradict a primary source, 6 were not checked, and one is an interpretation. The most significant discrepancies:

• the document claims that Article 46 of the 2026 Constitution requires an “annual” address — the word is not in the norm;
• it describes the address of 28 October 2026 as already delivered, and takes its “actual indicators” from the speech of 23 October, where they are claims by one party;
• it attributes to the addresses decisions not found in their texts: “100 schools, 100 hospitals” is an instruction of 2007, not 2008; there is no “Road Map” in the 2009 text; joining the 50 most competitive countries was not announced in December 2012; the title of the 2011 address is distorted;
• it exaggerates Soviet indicators: in 1980 the USSR produced about 2,1 million cars out of a world output of 38,6 million, that is about 5,5%, not “every third”; a doubling of GDP in 1970–1983 does not follow even from official data;
• the reading “zholdau means showing the way” belongs to folk etymology.

The document’s main idea — the Soviet Central Committee report as one of the sources of the genre — was confirmed, and even more strongly than it says: the document does not know Nazarbayev’s report to the XVII Congress of 1990.

What remains to be checked

• The text of the address of 28 October 2026 and the answers to the five questions.
• Decrees on nationwide plans for the addresses of 1997–2010 and 2015; the number of the decree on the January 2014 address; the texts of the plans of January 2014, 2017, October 2018 and 2024.
• Checking the analysis of “zholdau” against the “Қазақ тілінің түсіндірме сөздігі” and of “poslanie” against Vasmer’s dictionary.
• The texts of the Assyrian annals in the ORACC corpus (the site was unavailable on 28 October 2026).
• The transcripts of the reports to the XXIII–XXVI Congresses of the CPSU, including the formula “the economy must be economical”.
• An official report on the execution of at least one nationwide plan.
• A comparison of the items of the 2023–2025 nationwide plans with the law-drafting plans of the same years: does this explain the growing share of “information”.

Disclosure

The study was prepared by the VRK News editorial team (vrknews.kz) with the help of an AI assistant. The counts in the corpus of addresses and the analysis of decrees were done programmatically from the texts of the primary sources; conclusions about the role of AI in public administration should be read with this in mind.

Version history

The report is updated as new primary sources appear and new addresses are delivered, so it carries a version number. The number has three parts. The first changes when the concept or structure of the report changes; the second when sections, data or illustrations are added; the third when errors and typos are corrected and the conclusions stay the same. Earlier versions do not vanish: this section records what changed and why, so that a reader who cited the report can tell which edition he quoted.

List of sources used

All sources were opened on 28 October 2026.

Class A. Normative primary sources

1. Constitution of the Republic of Kazakhstan, 1995, Russian and Kazakh (copy of the Adilet database).
2. Constitution of the Republic of Kazakhstan, 2026, Russian and Kazakh
3. Constitution of the Russian Federation, Article 84.
4. Decrees on measures to implement the addresses: No. 1158 of 18.02.2011, No. 261 of 30.01.2012, No. 449 of 18.12.2012, No. 955 of 17.11.2014, No. 422 of 15.02.2017, No. 633 of 9.02.2018, No. 772 of 12.10.2018, No. 152 of 10.09.2019, No. 413 of 14.09.2020, No. 659 of 13.09.2021, No. 847 of 29.03.2022, No. 1008 of 13.09.2022, No. 353 of 16.09.2023, No. 1042 of 13.10.2025.
5. Resolution of the Government of the RK of 25.12.2024 No. 1102 (details of decree No. 658 of 25.09.2024).
6. Resolution of the Government of the RK of 9.10.2025 No. 846 (details of decree No. 997 of 18.09.2025).
7. Normative resolution of the Constitutional Council of the RK of 31.01.2011 No. 2 (Kazinform publication).
8. Decrees and laws of 2025–2026 on the President’s website: decree No. 1151 on the Year of Digitalisation and AI, decree on the referendum of 15 March 2026, decree No. 1338 on elections to the Kurultai.

Class B. Authorial primary sources

9. The “Addresses” section of the President’s website: 29 texts of 1997–2025.
10. Address of 11.11.2014 “Nurly Zhol” and address of 30.11.2015 (copies of the Adilet database).
11. President’s speech at the V session of the National Kurultai, 20.01.2026.
12. President’s speech at the opening of the first session of the Kurultai, 28.08.2026.
13. President’s speech for Republic Day, 23.10.2026.
14. “Chronicle of Activity” of the President of the RK, 1990–1991, entries of 29 May and 7–9 June 1990.

Class C. Official foreign sources and scholarly editions of primary sources

15. US Constitution — National Archives; history of the State of the Union — Historian of the House of Representatives; American Presidency Project: addresses and fireside chats.
16. UK Parliament: State Opening.
17. French National Assembly: proposal on the right of message, 2016; amendment CL578, 2018.
18. Uruinimgina: «Las „reformas“ de UruKAgina», Antigüedad y Cristianismo.
19. Laws of Hammurabi, tr. L. W. King: Avalon Project, Yale Law School.
20. Assyrian annals: H. Tadmor, S. Yamada, RINAP 1, 2011; M. De Odorico, State Archives of Assyria Bulletin, 1994; A. Elli, Mediterraneo Antico.
21. Behistun inscription, Old Persian text in English translation: Livius.org.
22. Decree of Horemheb: J.-M. Kruchten, Le décret d'Horemheb, 1981; International Review of Social History.
23. Edicts of Ashoka, tr. S. Dhammika: Access to Insight.
24. Shujing, “Great Announcement” and Hanshu, ch. 96B — Wikisource.
25. Gaius, Institutes, 1.6; Cicero, Verr. 2.1.109 — The Latin Library.
26. Res Gestae Divi Augusti, Loeb edition, 1924 — LacusCurtius.
27. Orkhon inscriptions: T. Tekin’s translation in the article by Chen Hao, «On the Authorship of the Old Turkic Inscriptions», Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 2020 (link via a library proxy); the Chinese side of the monument: T. Yalınkılıç, «Chinese text and translation of the Kül Tigin inscription»; M. Tezcan, 2017.
28. The Secret History of the Mongols, tr. I. de Rachewiltz.
29. Florentine Codex, Book 6, tr. A. Anderson and C. Dibble: contents, University of Utah Press; ch. 10, Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl.
30. Soviet statistics and their recalculation: Great Soviet Encyclopedia, article “Twenty-fourth Congress of the CPSU”; G. I. Khanin, “Economic History of Russia in Recent Times”, vol. 1, ch. 3; summary by Yesenin Ryazan State University from Central Statistical Office data; Proceedings of the Estonian SSR Academy of Sciences, 1983, No. 3.
31. World motor vehicle production 1950–2008, US Department of Energy, from Ward’s data.

Class D. Media and reference works (pointers and parties’ assessments)

32. vlast.kz: opening of the first session of the Kurultai, composition by party.
33. kaz.zakon.kz: announcement of the address, 27.10.2026.
34. Zakon.kz: approval of the plan for the address of 17.01.2014.
35. Wiktionary: “poslanie”.
36. Examples of the living use of “zholdau”: kaz.zakon.kz, kaz.inform.kz.