The January uprising in Kazakhstan, and particularly in Almaty, was the most notable event in the living memory of most Kazakhstanis. In his address to the extraordinary session of the CSTO [Collective Security Treaty Organisation], the president, Kasym-Jomart Tokayev, described it as “the heaviest crisis in the whole 30-year history of independence”. This was the first time that the bourgeois regime of modern Kazakhstan has ever faced such a threat.