Kazakhstan, from ties with Moscow to street protests: the decline of the autocrat Nazarbayev

Today the “sultan of light” lies on the cold pavement of the main square of Taldykorgan, the capital of the Almaty region. It is only the bronze bust of the former dictator, broken in two: the same end as the thousands of statues of Lenin demolished in the collapsing USSR over thirty years ago. A mocking short-circuit of history, one might say, given that it was on the rubble of the Soviet Union that Nursultan Nazarbayev built his career as an absolute autocrat of Kazakhstan.