Y. Palmin, A. Bronovitskaya, N. Malinin "Alma-Ata: A Guide to Soviet Modernist Architecture. 1955-1991"

Today, Alma-Ata could perhaps be called the capital of Soviet modernism. While its former architectural rivals Yerevan, Kiev, Tashkent, and Minsk lost much of their heritage of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s in the decades that followed, Alma-Ata avoided such losses as in 1997 it lost its status of the capital to Astana, which also took on the mission of representing the country architecturally. Alma-Ata has remained a living museum of Soviet modernism where still today you will find a glass library, the first Soviet postmodernist skyscraper, and a dam built by the biggest directed explosion in history.