https://baptistnews.com/article/lessons-from-cicero-on-americas-247th-birthday/
This year, the former Soviet Republic of Kazakhstan is shifting from a western-style upper- and lower-chamber Parliament to a single-chamber one. The party-based electoral system is kept intact, though Earlier, neighbouring Kyrgyzstan saw its political parties cast into the shadow with all MPs elected by their respective constituencies on a personal basis. But Kyrgyzstan’s new constitution, as opposed to its Kazakh counterpart, kept the Senate intact. Both nations, though, find themselves on the crossroads between democracy and demagogy – not unlike the ancient Greek city-states where resistance against sophist (read: democratic) public mismanagement led to the rise of the notorious tyrants, which in turn became an open invitation to Socratic-ruled Rome to subdue the entire Hellenic coalition. So far, today’s Romes being Russia and China prefer coexistence over domination regarding Middle Asia. Keeping it that way is the latter’s only subsistence on condition that they follow Britain’s Lord Speaker’s call “Order, order!”

https://njournoud.myportfolio.com/voices-on-central-asia
One could consider, with a bit of anachronism, that Kyrgyzstan’s move looks like a simplified version of Montesquieu’s Socratic trias politica, the Kazakhs are shifting from a bourgeois regime towards a more “democratic” (in the Hellenic sense of the word) one. Both moves have their perspectives as well as their risks. The Kyrgyz move brings legislators closer to their constituencies – though not to communities elsewhere in the country, which bears the risks of estranging local communities from each other and losing toch with national interests. To meet this challenge, though, Kyrgyzstan left its Senate, the Wise Men’s Council that goes back to prehistoric times, in place. In a pretty similar manner, the Chinese empire survived all the storms (including today’s) for some six thousand years.
This safeguard against collective internal and external folly has been removed in Kazakhstan. It leaves only the personality of the head of state as the sole arbiter between small-scale and larger-scale interests. From a momentary point of view, this looks like the most viable option indeed. But the moment Kazakhstan becomes exposed to regional and global rival forces, the gambit needs united popular support in order to remain fireproof. This in turn requires global political comprehension in all layers of society. Stalins’ idea was to achieve this, but it failed because this has to come from the bottom and not from the top, the bottom being biased, unaware and hostile to it.
The mentality “me first, my neighbour later, the nation in the end, the rest of the word never” is inherent to human nature, and has successfully defied Rousseau’s Contrat social through the ages. It has led to political elites teaming up with commons-supported monarchs waging reckless wars against rival imperial domains since the dawning of the ages, from prehistoric tribal clashes to empire-against-empire ones, the latter of which cast their shadows over the world up to our times.

https://marakandatravel.asia/international-festivals-and-events-in-kazakhstan/
Party politics in Kazakhstan have a turbulent history. Before Russia became involved, the Kazakhs, who invaded the plains from their original habitat in the Altai mountains, were a tribal society, with a vague reminiscence of Rome’s grassroots. Each tribe was ruled by a council of elders who in times of crisis named a war chief named khan. On time, crises became so frequent that the khans assumed permanent power – not unlike Rome’s Caesars. The khans regularly came together in a festive gathering named Kurultai – hence name of the country’s new people’s assembly.
As from the XV Century on the Kazakhs started to struggle for independence from the Dhengizid tyrants who ruled over them from Tashkent, followed later first by Tamerlan and still later by the China-backed Dzhoungar federation, the khans ruled first through a triumvirate each of which governed a sub-confederation dubbed zhouz or horde, divided in the Great, the Middle and the Minor Horde – a division that still plays a pivotal role in Kazakhstan’s political and popular hierarchies. Between them, they elected a Great Khan of all Kazakhs, which resembled the Czar of all Russians elected by the country’s medieval feudal princes.
Under the Russian Czars, Kazakhstan was turned into a domain after the example of British India, with elites nominally in power under St.-Petersburg’s tutelage. Party politics in Kazakhstan did not need to be suppressed as it was in Russias since the Kazakh population showed no interest in it. Parties first emerged after the February Revolution but were short-lived and within years after the October Revolution Kazakhstan became integral part of Soviet Russia, only to develop as a member of the USSR in 1936.

https://www.akorda.kz/en/kassym-jomart-tokayev-delivers-state-of-the-nation-address-to-the-people-of-kazakhstan-1621043
A turning point, or rather a point of return, came on October 25, 1990, when the Supreme Soviet of Kazakhstan voted for the country’s sovereignty, with an open option to join the new-style Soviet Union the following year. The country’s First Secretary who was no one less than former mining engineer Nursultan Nazarbayev was appointed interim president. The new Union never came into existence because of the military coup attempt in Moscow, upon which most Soviet republics including Kazakhstan declared permanent independence after which Nazarbayev got himself elected as head of state in the first direct polls in the nation’s history. The Communist Party was officially dismantled but rose from its ashes under the name Socialist Party of Kazakhstan.
From there on, the need for change slowly turned into nostalgy and for all the good reasons: factories, markets, mines and oil fields were abandoned, and the population was delivered to unemployment and poverty all across the territory. Only in 1993 a new constitution was adopted but it remained unclear how many honourable members of Parliament had even read it – since the assembly mainly consisted of career politicians with zero desire for change. Factually, Kazakhstan was returning to a situation resembling that under the Czar’s governors – the only difference being that their successors were all too Kazakh…
In spring 1994, a new attempt was made by some fractions in Parliament to revive the public’s interest in politics. The Socialist Party changed its name into Popular Unity Party, with a group of refuznikiy uniting in the Socialist Party, rivalled by the Confederation of Trade Unions (comparable to Britain’s Labour Party), the People’s Congress Party and a number of additional splinter parties. The diversified Parliament that took its seats in 1994 found the same old chaos, however. Strikes and riots broke out all over the country, and in the clashes that followed it was hard to tell who was fighting against whom. The national currency, the tenge, plummeted to hardly more than the paper it was printed on.
It was then that Nazarbayev followed the example of his Russian peer Boris Yeltsin, declaring the previous elections void and himself ruler by decree. New elections were scheduled, this time splitting Parliament up into a Senate and a Lower House, the 67 members of which were elected by constituency, thereby sending political parties to the antechamber, excluding them from elections but preserving their influence over MPs through affiliation. But the riots continued till 1999, and only after moving the capital from Almaty to Akmolinsk (renamed Astana) and turning part of the country’s large state companies over to “private” entrepreneurs, a weird mix of former Soviet officials and parvenus, the sky became clear for the next two decades. Exports resumed, money started flowing in, employment picked up and social security was (insufficiently) restored.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/gallery/2022/jan/06/violent-clashes-in-kazakhstan-amid-fuel-protests-in-pictures
Even though the sting had been taken out, Kazakhstan’s political reforms remained by and large cosmetic. Corporate ownership remained limited to carefully selected elites with only crumbs left for the public to acquire through the stock market. Regional governors had enormous power in their hands with only the President being able to hold them responsible. In all, the state structure maintained the prerogative of playing Adam Smith’s Invisible Hand, and it was only by surviving through small- and medium-size enterprise that citizens could manage to survive – even though authorities kept trying to keep a finger in them through subsidies, tax privileges and other financial “encouragement” measures. The same happened to foreign investors who were flocking in following the 1999 reforms: many of them were to leave or to go up to the highest authorities in the capital to stay in business – which only increased the central government’s grip on the economy,
In all, it had to go wrong sooner or later which in the end it did. In 2022, shortly after President Nazarbayev had retired and handed over his position to his man of confidence, top diplomat Kasim-Joomart Tokayev who consolidated it through hasty elections, that the spark in the powder barrel appeared again and the country flared up in flames, ignited by exiled “dissidents” (read: mobsters) from abroad supported by their host nations and their governments inflamed by the old Cold War fever. As before, political awareness among the public appeared to be short-lived, and was swiftly quenched by new promises from up above.
The current shift in the political framework of Kazakhstan is the direct response to the 2022 events. The challenges the new power house is faced with, though, are not of local or even regional proportions but of a lobal character. “Leftist”, “centrist” and “rightist” ideologies are becoming obsolete and the world is plunging into a whirlpool of ecocentrism and mistrust. The fact that the ongoing struggle for stability is not only taking place in Kazakhstan but also in other former Soviet republics and beyond amply illustrates it all.

Kyrgyzstan: one man and one man only…

https://www.fpri.org/article/2024/04/kyrgyzstan-central-asias-island-of-democracy-sinks-into-authoritarianism/
The most striking example in this regard, though following a different scenario and a different timetable, is neighbouring Kyrgyzstan. The roots of its sociopolitical structure bears similarities to those of the Kazakhs, even though they go back to prehistoric times. Originally, the Kyrgyz, who then lived on the banks of the river Yenisei in Central Siberia, were ruled by a council of elders, with military leaders being appointed only in times of danger. After the gradual displacement from their birthground to their present mountain dwellings, the Kyrgyz were divided into tribes and clans, administered by elected manaps. In time, the latter got monarchic tendencies and turned into established usurpers, keeping succession in the family.
This situation persisted until the Bolshevik Revolution, which in Kyrgyzstan took place in January 1918. But the changes were by and large in name only: the manaps of old were now called people’s commissaries, which led to their constraint following the breakup of the USSR, after which a new super-manap under the title President took control of the domestic political framework. This was Askar Akayev who made a good start until his affection for friends and relatives started to prevail and made him seek support from them rather than Parliament.
This in turn awakened old rivalries among the population and abroad – in particular in America and Western Europe where Cold War nostalgy had never entirely disappeared. For the Americans, Kyrgyzstan had become the main supply line to continue their intervention in the Afghan civil war after having been excluded from Uzbekistan and Pakistan. In Kyrgyzstan, Akayev became more and more dependent on Moscow to keep the place in order – just as his predecessors in the mid-XIX Century had sought protection from St.-Petersburg for exactly the same reason.
In all, staging a countrywide revolt was easy, and the opportunity was too good to let it go. In spring 2005, the bubble burst and Akayev fled the country, leaving power in the hands of an obscure family clan, the Bakiyevs, from Jalalabad in the central-west of the country. Followed half a decade of sheer terror reminiscent of Soviet Russia under Stalin, with frequently shifting governments and parliaments, a free hand for crime syndicates on the ground and a widening gap between wealthy elites and starving masses.

From presidential to parliamentary and back

https://centrasia.institute/kyrgyzstans-president-opens-first-session-of-new-parliament.html
It was in such a Chicago-like environment that the population rose in revolt again – this time on its own initiative. At first attempt to storm the House of Parliament (Kyrgyzstan’s Bastille, symbol of power) government security forces with the help of American snipers turned the central square of Bishkek into a bloodbath. A second attack was more successful and Bakiyev and family fled to their fief in the hinterland. A march on Bishkek was nipped in the bud and Kurmanbek Bakiyev fled to Minsk, where Belarus’ President Alexander Lukashenko vowed to keep him as long as he would not think of doing anything stupid. His son Maxim took refuge in London where he joined the company of ousted African butcher-presidents swimming in stolen cash. Back in Kyrgyzstan, the old guard converted the state structure into a parliamentary-presidential power framework after the French example.
This lasted until 2022, when the current head of state Sadyr Dzhaparov broke out of jail where he spent time after a conviction for kidnapping (an accusation he claimed to be forged), took power by force and declared Kyrgyzstan a presidential republic after the American model. As noted before, with the latest general elections political parties were cast aside and Parliament continued with all the President’s men in the Upper House and the neighbourhoods’ champions in the Lower House.
With the new framework in place, the Kyrgyz people have adopted an attitude of wait-and-see. What will happen after the presidential (re-)elections this coming January depends much of what happens on the ground in the meantime. Overexpensive and/or badly functioning public utilities such as power and internet have been the spark that lit the fire in two all-out revolutions, the difference being that the first one was provoked from the outside (read: America) whereas the second one came from within and was therefore drenched in blood.
The simple fact of the matter is that in general the bulk of any population only accepts the notion of nationhood within limits and those limits are determined by their stomachs and their desire for privacy. The desire to go out and explore is a burden that only exceptional individuals, collectively known as elites, wish to carry. Their aspiration is to cast off the herd spirit in the human being and revive the ancient hunter-adventurer spirit instead. The crowds honour those who succeed and mercilessly punish those who fail – whether their achievements are scientific, mental or political makes no difference.
At work in Friedrich Nietzsche’s Sklavenmoral here is Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s adagium “be good and stay quiet and you will be left in peace though never happy” or to put in more crudely “live in peace, die in peace”. This refers to the double meaning of freedom: liberty to vegetate for most, liberty to spread one’s wings for some. If the Austrian philosopher were still alive he might well have turned present-day Middle Asia into a laboratory to make his case…

Freedom: an issue of give and take

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/seneca-age-tiktok-revisiting-pursuit-wealth-fame-power-anas-alaswad
The remaining question is what benefits people expect from authorities brought to power by their own virtues or by protection from outside. If it were up to Rome’s philosopher Lucius Annaeus Seneca, a contemporary of Christ living in another world and whose thoughts remarkably differ from those preached in the catholic gospel, public satisfaction can only obtained by the greatest gift of them all which is free will rather than by obedience. In chapter XVI of his work De vita beata, de beneficiis, de ira et de clementia [https://www.gutenberg.org/files/56075/56075-h/56075-h.htm] he relates: “If a benefit be forced upon me, as from a tyrant, or a superior, where it may be dangerous to refuse, this is rather obeying than receiving, where the necessity destroys the choice. The way to know what I have a mind to do, is to leave me at liberty whether I will do it or not; but it is yet a benefit, if a man does me good in spite of my teeth; as it is none, if I do any man good against my will. A man may both hate and yet receive a benefit at the same time; the money is never the worse, because a fool that is not read in coins refuses to take it. If the thing be good for the receiver, and so intended, no matter how ill it is taken. Nay, the receiver may be obliged, and not know it; but there can be no benefit which is unknown to the giver. Neither will I, upon any terms, receive a benefit from a worthy person that may do him a mischief: it is the part of an enemy to save himself by doing another man harm.”
Anyone wielding power over a society of any size or composition ignoring this will feel the backlash in the end as Seneca describes further down (chapter XIX/XX): “Ingratitude is of all the crimes, that which we are to account the most venial in others, and the most unpardonable in ourselves. It is impious to the highest degree; for it makes us fight against our children and our altars. There are, there ever were, and there ever will be criminals of all sorts, as murderers, tyrants, thieves, adulterers, traitors, robbers and sacrilegious persons; but there is hardly any notorious crime without a mixture of ingratitude. It disunites mankind, and breaks the very pillars of society; and yet so far is this prodigious wickedness from being any wonder to us, that even thankfulness itself were much the greater of the two; for men are deterred from it by labor, expense, laziness, business; or else diverted from it by lust, envy, ambition, pride, levity, rashness, fear; nay, by the very shame of confessing what they have received. And the unthankful man has nothing to say for himself all this while, for there needs neither pains or fortune for the discharge of his duty, beside the inward anxiety and torment when a man’s conscience makes him afraid of his own thoughts.”
Yet further down, the author warns that no governor of any kind or background should consider himself a benefactor if he (or she) grants his (or her) subjects either collective or personal freedom as follows: “To speak against the ungrateful is to rail against mankind, for even those that complain are guilty: nor do I speak only of those that do not live up to the strict rule of virtue; but mankind itself is degenerated and lost. We live unthankfully in this world, and we go struggling and murmuring out of it, dissatisfied with our lot, whereas we should be grateful for the blessings we have enjoyed. […] Liberty is the thing which they are perpetually a-wishing, and never come to obtain: a thing never to be bought nor sold, but a man must ask it of himself, and give it to himself.” At the time, the only one who understood what this was all about was Rome’s “mad emperor” Caligula, who out of comprehension instead of having Seneca executed allowed him to commit suicide…