But the most recent version was in Kazakhstan a year ago. Demonstrations began in the Mangystau region on January 2nd, 2022, and quickly spread across the central Asian country to all its big cities. The initial cause was rising fuel prices. But the protests drew on decades of dissatisfaction. They united pro-democracy and anti-corruption activists, trade unionists in the petrochemical industries, and people angered by poverty and poor public services. This was not quite a “color revolution” of the kind seen in other parts of the Soviet empire: it was broader, deeper, and less focused, drawing on the country’s thriving civil society, which largely operates outside the formal political system. There was no single leader.
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