evidence: The analysis of the project’s basic documents and intermediate results suggests that its real objective is to cultivate the collective identity of Kazakhs through symbolic nationalization of Kazakhstan’s territory, reactualizing and recoding the semantic field of geographical space in the paradigm of an ethnonational state. The discourse of Kazakhs’ right to the territory they historically held occupies an important place in social consciousness in Kazakhstan today. The question of the historical right to territory is constantly raised by activists and politicians of a nationalist bent, who insist that ethnic Kazakhs have a right to privileged preservation and reproduction of their native culture and language, as well as to symbolic control over territory inside the republic (Oka Reference Oka and Oka2002; Laruelle Reference Laruelle and Omelicheva2015).Footnote 2 This right is exercised in a procession of renaming initiatives for settlements and streets, which stir up consistent public debate.Footnote 3 The prioritization of the country’s titular nation’s rights is based on notions of the "inherited state," primordial cohesion of the people and its homeland, bonds of the statehood and landscape, and the historical struggle of the Kazakhs for the right to own their territories.