Thread by @Volod_Ishchenko

Some theory-driven and comparative thoughts on violence, geography, and political regime in #Kazakhstan uprising. There is no actual "youth bulge", it's not from the peripheries to the capital, the "authoritarian modernization" is overrated.

The Kazakhstan uprising very quickly escalated to violence in comparison with most other post-Soviet revolutions. The younger is the population, the likelier is political violence in the country. The median age in Kazakhstan - 32. In Russia, Ukraine, Belarus: 40-41.

But Kazakhstan is younger because of the kids under 14, not because of the "youth bulge" of 15-24 - a large number of frustrated youth of the "combat age" without jobs and career prospects fitting their ambitions - one of the key factors in revolutions and violent uprisings.

Like other post-Soviet states, Central Asia suffered a sharp decline in birth rates in the 1990s and only later did they return back to the rates of the booming 80s generation. This is an important difference from the Arabic countries in 2011 with over 50% of the population <25.

Demography may have something to do with predominant nonviolence in Belarusian, Ukrainian, Russian protests. But it does not make the violence of the Kazakh uprising self-evident. I would be attentive to the role of organized violent groups.

In the "European" part of ex-USSR, the most intense revolutionary events happened in the capitals (with an exception of Ukr. where the uprising in the West was no less important than Kiev events but the protests in the capital were certainly the largest).
journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.11…

However, the Kazakh uprising is not really along with the "Third World" model - revolting "periphery" and mostly quiet capital until the very end as it may seem. The cities with the most intense events these days are among the richest in the country.

They lost control over the largest ex-capital city after a couple of days of violent but not-so-large protests and requested help from foreign armies. The deployed CSTO forces are not large, nothing close to actually occupying the huge country.