Paper long abstract:

In October 2020 the world had witnessed the third sudden change of power in Kyrgyzstan since its independence. In 2005, 2010 and 2020 repetitive mass protests led to violent fall of political regimes of Akaev, Bakiev and Jeenbekov. Although these events were more or less similar in conditions contributing to the protest, they were different in the way how the opposition or political elites behaved during them. The aim of this contribution is a critical analysis about the role of political elites during these three ‘revolutions’. This piece underlines a changing role of ‘old’ or ‘traditional’ elites and emergence of ‘new’ or ‘non-traditional’ political elites in Kyrgyzstan as a consequence of failed ‘hopes’ of Tulip and April revolutions and a distrust towards political leadership, in general. This shift of political elites was possible due to anti-old-leadership mood and development of social media technologies. As the study suggests, in Kyrgyzstan, the October protest of 2020 failed to demonstrate a clear leadership among both established ‘old’ and ‘new’ political elites which was eventually ‘grabbed’ by the third group which had the strongest fist. These factors along with others as noted in the paper generated chaotic and spontaneous mobilization in October 2020 and contributed to a rise of a populist leadership. The study is based on 20 in-depth interviews with Kyrgyz political elites and leaders of three revolutions, as well online ethnography (online observation of three Kyrgyz revolutions, including available live-streams) and news sources. The emergence of ‘non-traditional’ elites and mobilization tools, however, does not mean that ‘traditional’ elites and their mobilization tools will disappear, on the contrary, it means that there will be more room for political maneuver.