"We demand change!" cried Kazakhstan's All National Social Democratic Party (OSDP) leader Bolat Abilov at Saturday's unsanctioned opposition rally in Almaty. His party is protesting the results of parliamentary elections on January 15 which OSCE monitors declared flawed. The OSDP failed to win a seat.
I was reminded of Kino's Peremen (Changes), an iconic Soviet hit from 1986 that presaged the end of the USSR. "We demand change," went the song.
Slow progress since then was the view among the several hundred who had gathered in the minus-12 degree temperature snowy Almaty. Some even drew comparisons with 1937 - the start of Stalinist repression - and Kazakhstan in 2012.
Such views are not widely held, but fear is commonplace when it comes to political dissent.
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