Using the context of the Kazakh Spring protests (2019–ongoing), Diana T. Kudaibergen addresses how the interplay between a repressive regime and democratization struggles define and shape each other. Combining original interview data, digital ethnography, and contentious politics studies, she argues that the new generation of activists, including Instagram political influencers and renowned public intellectuals, have been able to de-legitimize and counter one of the most resilient authoritarian regimes and inspire mass protests that none of the formalized opposition ever imagined possible in Kazakhstan. 

Whilst taking The Kazakh Spring as a focal point, the panel discussion addresses broader questions about protests and pro-democracy movements in autocracies in Central Asia and Eastern Europe.

The panel is part of the Decolonial Dialogues Workshop that seeks to de-center the focus of Eastern European, Central Asian, and Northern Eurasian studies from a singular emphasis on Russia/Kremlin, instead amplifying diverse voices from these regions. The speakers address the resistance to discursive colonialism or scholarly discourse that reproduces power asymmetries and naturalizes them in people’s minds.