Grigory Yavlinsky’s blog post, yavlinsky.ru, 7.01.2022

KAZAKHSTAN-PROTESTS/

Photo: The building of the Mayor’s office in Almaty. 6 January, 2021 // REUTERS / Pavel Mikheyev

The events in Kazakhstan have been developing rapidly. Yesterday morning the government was dismissed in order to extinguish the wave of discontent, and by nightfall, fighting began in different settlements of the country. Photos and videos from Kazakhstani mortuaries circulated online testify to a large number of victims.

Simultaneously with civil protests, marauders and pogromists are taking to the streets. The international airport in Almaty has been destroyed, banks are being smashed, shops are robbed, weapons are seized and distributed, there is shooting in the streets, and looks like that it does not necessarily come from the side of security forces. In general, the country is plunging into chaos.

It all started with the fact that three years ago the government of the Republic of Kazakhstan liberalised prices for liquefied gas and stopped subsidising them in order to stimulate private investment in this industrial sector. On 1 January this year, prices for liquefied gas, which many Kazakhstanis use instead of gasoline, became market prices. Quite unexpectedly for the authorities, a wave of discontent rose and quickly spread throughout the country.

What is happening in Kazakhstan is the inevitable common lot of weakening authoritarian dictatorships. A system relying on disrespect for the law on both sides and manipulation of power, laws that have been adopted in an undemocratic way for many years, falsified elections and life-long rule, ceases to function as soon as the power weakens. That’s when chaos ensues.

The situation in Kazakhstan is another lesson for everyone who believes that there may be “good” dictatorships. It is difficult to imagine a more cunning and experienced dictator than Nazarbayev. Sooner or later, the era of any authoritarian ruler ends – and the wretched political organism bursts into oblivion. This, certainly, does not mean at all that the order that will be established after the riot will be better. The likelihood of further clashes will remain high until real working democratic institutions are created in the country and a mechanism for regular legal change of power emerges.

The decision to send CSTO forces to Kazakhstan is a serious and unprecedented step. The President of Kazakhstan Tokayev, appealing to the CSTO member states for help, spoke about the suppression of the “terrorist threat”. Certainly, the versions of Western intervention have already been actively disseminated. But Kazakhstan is not an easy region. 35 years ago, in December 1986, when the Soviet communist regime was still in full force, mass protests took place in Alma-Ata without any “foreign terrorist threat” – the first in the USSR after the 1962 Novocherkassk massacre. About 200 protesters were killed and hundreds were injured then, as a result of violent clashes with the military. The reason for those protests was Moscow’s appointment of a Russian Gennady Kolbin from the Ulyanovsk Regional Committee of the Communist Party of the USSR to the post of the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan, instead of Dinmukhamed Kunayev, a Kazakh and a long-term leader. This means that it is unlikely that it will be possible to easily scare away the rebels in Kazakhstan. There can be many victims.

The difficulty is also in the fact that the CSTO is now headed by the Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan, and the forces sent now to Kazakhstan are virtually represented by only the Russian and the Belarusian military. At the same time, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan will most likely try not to interfere in what is happening in Kazakhstan as much as possible. As a result, it will turn out that Russians and Belarusians will be suppressing the Kazakh revolution. This is just one step away from the transition of the conflict to a kind of a religious plane.

These developments will result in enhancing the uncertainty of Moscow’s position in negotiations with the United States next week, and then with NATO. But China may be the beneficiary of the events in Kazakhstan in the long term. Beijing does not suppress anyone, it does not participate in the “showdown”, but it is a very interested party, since it has been long and persistently present in the region.

Grigory Yavlinsky

is Chairman of the Federal Political Committee of the Russian United Democratic Party YABLOKO, Vice President of Liberal International, PhD in Economics, Professor of the National Research University Higher School of Economics.