The introduction provides the contextual and theoretical foundations of the book. It introduces the main argument that the Kazakh Spring is not a movement but a field of political possibilities capable of changing the established political value system. The Kazakh Spring has different actors and ideas connected by the common sense of solidarity and the urge for democratization. The book argues that the Kazakh Spring frames democratization hrough the radical remaking of the rules of the game that define the political in Kazakhstan. This means a consistent demand for the change of formal institutions that the regime has monopolized to sustain its powers and durability, namely, the laws, elections, and bodies of the state such as parliament, local municipal bodies, and public offices, but also free and independent media.

In January 2022, mass protests spread quickly across the whole of Kazakhstan, becoming the largest mass mobilization in the country’s modern history. Prior to these events, Kazakhstan was considered a stable authoritarian regime: President Nursultan Nazarbayev’s thirty-year rule established a system of patronal networks, institutionalized corruption, and authoritarianism that crushed any form of dissent and opposition. What, then, led to this unprecedented mass mobilization, which unified the country’s fourteen regions and three major cities in protest against the regime? This chapter analyses the mass protests through the framework of regime–society relations, arguing that a key failure of the regime built by Nazarbayev is its inability to reconcile the regime’s neoliberal prosperity rhetoric with citizens’ calls for a welfare state. It then explores how a tradition of protests has been developing since 2011 and addresses the structural components of regime (in)stability and how they contributed to violence in the protests.