So, on the subject of gender, nationality and politics

So, on the subject of gender, nationality and politics. Kazakhstan is issuing commemorative collector's coins with face values of 100, 500 and 5000 tenge bearing the image of Nursultan Nazarbayev.

The inscription on the coins reads: independent Kazakhstan, 30 years. Of course, in Cyrillic the phrase would look more familiar, but the Latin alphabet was approved in Kazakhstan back in 2017.

Alongside the first president of Kazakhstan, the obverse carries other outstanding figures of the country.

From left to right, remember these faces: the musician Kurmangazy;
the akyn Suyunbai;
Abylai Khan, who made a substantial contribution to the establishment of the Russian protectorate over the Kazakh Khanate;
the Nursultan Nazarbayev already familiar to you;
the medieval scholar and philosopher Al-Farabi;
Abai, the founder of Kazakh written literature;
at the top:
the enlightener Shokan Ualikhanov;
Khan Abulkhair, the first to appeal to Russia with a request for subjecthood.

What unites these people is that all of them have previously appeared on Kazakh banknotes. Nevertheless, there are questions about the placing of the heroes and the selection of figures.

There is neither chronological nor semantic logic: one could have put the creators in the centre and the rulers around them, or the other way round. One could have ordered the names by fame, in which case Abai would of course have had to stand at the centre. Nazarbayev could have been placed at the top: firstly, closer to the city of Nursultan, and secondly, as if to mark the present stage of history, built upon the achievements of the past.

Abylai Khan's hat takes the place of one more person; Dzhambul, Korkyt Ata or Kanysh Satpayev himself would have fitted there quite well. For some reason the twentieth century is represented by only 2 people, one of whom died in 1904.

Finally, did you notice that there is not a single woman? There is a way out: to strike one more coin, a women's one. There are names enough: Dina Nurpeisova, Khansha Bopai, Bibigul Tulegenova, Kulyash Baiseitova, Manshuk Mametova, Aliya Moldagulova, Gulfairus Ismailova, Aisha Galimbayeva.

As for the fact that something might also have been issued to commemorate the outstanding builders of Kazakh statehood, culture and economy who were not ethnic Kazakhs, I say nothing. And yet these are hundreds of names of world stature: scholars, writers, artists, musicians, architects, teachers, statesmen, soldiers...