Amazing how quickly a protest can become a revolution in some parts of the world.
People may get very frustrated with democratic governments, but the mechanisms that well established democracies have for the peaceful transfer of power offer a much needed release valve on this sort of pressure.
But it takes time to establish the foundations for this. Heck, the US had been around for most of a century and still had a failed revolution (well, it's called a the Civil War, but that's mostly because it failed. I'm sure if the US South had won, they would have viewed it very much as a successful revolution in the same way the original colonies did when they seceded from Great Britain. Yes, there are subtle differences-- Great Britain was somewhat of an absentee overseer, and colonies are not quite the same as states. Admittedly this makes the gray area resolve closer to Civil War.)
The price hike was part of a government schedule to liberalize gas prices. But they were so dumb or ignorant that they've set the date in 1/1/2022, in the winter, which also happened to occur in the middle of an energy crisis. Kazahstan, being economically dependent on China is having problems with 12% unemplyment and the jobless youth has radicalised. People took to the streets to protest peacefully and requested theat the price hikes ar reversed, the resignation of the government and demanded that the former president, Nazarbayev, leaves and that the 1993 constitution is restored. The acting president Tokayev, used the protests to dismiss Nazarbayev and his allies in the government and the secret service and sieze the whole power for himself. This is when the protests turned violent. The acts of violence were most probably perpetrated by secret service factions loyal to the former president aided by criminal gangs and maybe also radicalised youth is involved. Tokayev ordered a state of emergency but the military and the security forces would not act on his orders, mainly because they take order from the former president whom Tokayev has ilegally dismissed. In a desperate attempt, Tokayev has requested outside help from the CSTO, which is mainly Russia, claiming that outside terrorist forces are trying to overthrow the social order. The key word is outside, because otherwise the CSTO cannot intervene in the internal affairs of another state. When the CSTO stepped in and sent troops, the Kazah military and security forces started to comply with the acting president's orders. Now Tokayev is basically at the mercy of the Kremlin and Putin will quite probably ask for favours in return. There is doubt that anything was planned except for the gas hike. It appears that the actors involved just siezed the opportunity to act in their favour. This is how transfer of power occurs in autocracies, sometimes even when it's carefully planned years in advance. For context, Nazarbayev hand picked Tokayev to be his sucessor but retained important attributes of power, for life, by changing the consitution in 2019.
The people don't have first world problems which they complain about from a chair on the internet.
They live harsh lives with zero perspectives and are somewhat grateful the government doesn't turn more violent or oppressive .
Then some event triggers a no point of return scenario where the people fear prison or death less than the potential future.
[0] https://wits.worldbank.org/CountryProfile/en/Country/WLD/Yea...
Presumably, per capita it's number one.
[1] This tiny country feeds the world - https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/article/holland-...
Still, we grow a very large amount of food, especially relative to the size of the country. We're the 9th largest potato producer [0] in the world, despite being a tiny country both population and size wise, because we have the highest yields in the world. Someone downthread linked a NatGeo article explaining more [1] but we have far higher yields, several times higher than any other country, on many crops, such as chilies, green peppers, cucumbers etc.
[0] the very helpful FAOSTAT is excellent for things like this: https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/QCL
[1] https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/article/holland-...
This does not only apply to the US, with the January 6. "insurrection", it even happened in places like Germany [0] and recently Romania [1].
It's a combination of entitlement, and 2 years of pandemic forcing many people, and their businesses, into dire economic situations.
Such dire economic situations can trigger regime change anywhere, completely regardless of "democratic institutions" or all these other nice sounding words.
Because most people don't really want that much; As long as they have a job that allows them to put a roof over their, and their families heads, and food on their tables, that long the vast majority of people couldn't care less if the government they live under is considered "democratic" or "authoritarian".
These are way too high and abstract concepts for the vast majority of people to care about. They are too busy with every day live, working to pay rent and getting food on the table.
But what happens if they don't have the work anymore to pay for rent and get food on the table? Then they will take to the streets, they will demand change, completely regardless of what kind of regime they live under.
Even the Roman Empire already knew this; panem et ludos
Give people enough bread and circuses, and they couldn't care less about what happens on the higher levels above them or how they are being wronged in rather intangible ways.
[0] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-53964147
[1] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/12/21/romanians-protesti...
...but regardless of who may be have helped organize this sudden protest/coup, it's important to remember that Russian politicians have recently made comments about taking back land given to Kazakhstan during the Soviet days. The northern portions of the country hold the 25% of the Kazakh population that is ethnic-Russian - which includes much of the area just up to the capital of Nur-Sultan, also in the north.
https://thediplomat.com/2021/04/is-northern-kazakhstan-at-ri...