The Ishim river bisects the centre of Astana and divides it between the older part of the city (built when Astana was not yet the capital, but Tselinograd, a small grain-producing village that was part of the Virgin Lands Campaign initiated by Nikita Khrushchev in the 1950s and 1960s), and the newer part. ‘The fishermen are caught in a liminal zone between the city’s polar identities,’ says Kondratyev