Haunted: the spectre of revolution is stalking Putin

A spectre is haunting the former Soviet Union — the spectre of people power. Every time it appears, Vladimir Putin leads an unholy alliance of all the reactionary autocrats of the former Soviet space to try to exorcise it. Last week, Putin sent 3,000 Russian paratroopers to Kazakhstan at the request of its president to crush a sudden revolution that left at least 160 protestors and 12 security officers dead.

For the time being, it looks like Putin’s timely intervention — as well as an internet shutdown that paralysed protestors’ ability to coordinate — has successfully quelled the flames. Kazakhstan 2022 has not joined the list of ‘colour revolutions’ that toppled the corrupt, mostly pro-Russian governments in Georgia in 2003, Ukraine in 2004, Kyrgyzstan in 2010, Ukraine (again) in 2014, Armenia in 2018 and Kyrgyzstan (again) in 2020. A combination of swift and ruthless violence against protestors, mass arrests and military help from Moscow has beaten the genie of revolution back into its bottle and saved the regime — just as it did in 2020 when the Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko succeeded in thrashing his opponents into submission.

Nonetheless, the explosion of violence in Kazakhstan must have Putin worried — not only for the present, but for the future of Russia if and when he ever hands over power. Nursultan Nazarbayev, Kazakhstan’s founding president, resigned in 2019 after 28 years. His successor Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, handpicked for his loyalty to the Nazarbayev clan and willingness to obey his old boss, lost control in little more than two. Protestors’ anger was channelled as much at Nazarbayev as at his sock-puppet heir. A Nazarbayev statue in the city of Taldykorgan was pulled down in scenes reminiscent of the fall of Saddam Hussein. And the sock-puppet’s reaction should give Putin food for thought too.