I believe that authoritarianism as a political system must be assessed not in the abstract terms but in an individual historic context.Peter the I or Josef Stalin were dictators, too, but the first made it to history as "the Great" while the second, albeit he did shed a lot of his people's blood, took the USSR with a wooden plow and left it with ballistic missiles and nuclear bombs. Lee Kuan Yew who had turned Singapore into an "Asian tiger" was a dictator as well. From the recent times, we can recall Mikhail Saakashvili whose methods for eliminating the lower-level corruption in Georgia were by no means democratic in nature.Therefore, the first question we in Kazakhstan should ask today is not the one about Nazarbayev's successor in power (this is a minor aspect) but the one about the political inheritance that he will leave. In other words, the question is this. Have Kazakhstan as a state and the Kazakhs as a people become more developed, able to meet competition, resilient then they were at the time of the future Leader of the Nation's ascend to power?Speaking of Nursultan Nazarbayev's authoritarianism, one should recall that the process of the power conversion in his hands had started after the collapse of the USSR, in the period of the social confusion and was a reaction to it. The coup d'etat performed by Nazarbayev in 1994-1995 allowed him to conduct the rapid and crucial socio-economic reforms. Yes, they were harsh and undemocratic but necessary in those circumstances. As someone who used to be one of the active participants and organizers of the agricultural and electrical energy reforms, I can vouch for that.However, starting from about 1998, Nazarbayev's authoritarianism, from a positive, began to turn into a negative. I believe the key role in this process belonged to the intensification of the state power conversion into the personal capital of Nazarbayev and his immediate circle, a development that was starting to gain momentum at that time. Apart from that, the oil prices were growing, the extraction of hydrocarbons was on the rise; therefore, there was something to divide and appropriate.By the looks of it, it was during that period that Nursultan Nazarbayev underwent the final refocusing on the seizure and confinement of state power in his own hands. It was then when the state apparatus, once again, became a tool for fighting political opponents.This would not have happened had it not been for the country's readiness (inherited from the USSR and, prior to that, from the Russian Empire) to accept such turns of events. In view of this, one should be a little apprehensive when hearing the idea that it is enough to switch from the super-presidential system to the presidential-parliamentary or the parliamentary ones to make things right. I personally believe that, after Nazarbayev's passing (it is now clear that, voluntarily, he will never agree to really surrender his powers), nothing will change in Kazakhstan in a crucial way.In my opinion, it is not so much the form of the political system that is crucial for Kazakhstan today as the launch of political competition in the country. We need a high-quality economic development to form (create) a significant stratum of independent people capable of becoming the country's human and financial resources to be used for the launch of such mechanism.One of Nazarbayev's major crimes against history and the people, in my opinion, lies the fact that, having seized the power while concentrating it in his own hands, killing, imprisoning and exiling those who did not agree with him, he had monopolized the state to the maximal degree. And now the only way to "tear" him and his circle off the power is to destroy the state as it is or to critically enfeeble it.The problem of the political system created by Nazarbayev and his circle lies in the fact that any force capable (or suspected of being capable) of encroaching upon their almost unlimited power is viewed as an enemy. As a result, everyone becomes one – the relatives pushed out of the immediate circle, the former associates who chose to depart just in case, the current allies prepared or aspiring to become power successors or contenders, the religious groups denouncing the existing state.The catastrophic developments of today result from the state privatization by a single political group. Note that they are catastrophic not only for the elite but for the country in general. Because, in sync with the ruling elite's degradation, moral decay, the loss of professional skills, the state apparatus and the state system are decaying and losing their qualifications, too.Apart from that, the number of the state's enemies is rising, and the state starts regarding even a minimal political and civil activity as unlawful actions against it trying to limit such activities, establish control over them, purge them completely. Thus trampling over the public domain in a definitive way.In the meantime, Kazakhstan needs people for its true reformation and an improvement of its competitive abilities. The absence of the human capital is one of the country's major problems. As a result, when solving the national-scale tasks, today's authoritarian political system and super-presidential vertical are forced to rely on the state apparatus and the general passivity of the people.However, this can work only in an age of stability when we are talking about the redistribution of the surplus product and its consumption. As soon as we start talking about the real (not on-paper) reforms with the massive participation of businesses and large groups of the population that go hand in hand with the local initiative, the authorities have nothing to lean on. Because one can only lean on something that can offer resistance, and nothing of the kind has been left in the country.And so, we have a catch-22 situation. Nazarbayev and his circle have seized the political power pushing way from it not only the general public but a significant part of the regional elite. With that, they have control of the state apparatus and are extremely keen on preserving the authoritarian political system and the super-presidential vertical.The existing order can be overturn by a revolution whose main task will lie in the destruction of the old political system via removing the ruling circles from power and bringing new ones into it (as in Uzbekistan's case) or via bringing up to the political foreground large masses of people (as in Ukraine's case).In the last case, due to the objective factors, the driving forces of the revolution will be, first of all, Kazakh-speaking and second, highly Islamized.The thing is that, in Kazakhstan, the people's marginalization process is invariably accompanied by their Islamization and vise versa. This is an unavoidable and, in its way, justified defense reaction of the people in the age of globalization, informatization, scientific and technological progress. It is a way to save themselves in the context of savage capitalism, political despotism and social dead-end. In this sense, today's Kazakhstan is no different than the Arab East. Yes, our starting point at the time of the USSR collapse was much better but now this is all in the past thanks, among other things, to the massive outflow of the non-Kazakh-speaking population, the decaying education, healthcare and social welfare systems.In other words, Kazakhstan is to undergo the same developments that took place in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya. From history's standpoint, this is a step backwards and it is to become even more serious due to the fact that Kazakhstan is situated in the region bordering Afghanistan and the Russian Caucasus. Apart from that, we will be unavoidably pulled into the wrangles over which model of form of Islam is the right one.Of course, there is hope that the politization of Islam in Kazakhstan will happen much faster than in the Arab countries and be relatively painless thanks to the infamous tolerance of the Kazakhs. Either way, big problems are awaiting us. In other words, if our goal is not to throw down Nazarbayev and to destroy the system he created but to ensure the accelerated socio-economic and political development of Kazakhstan according to the European democratic model, the revolution is not the best option.This means that the country is in a desperate need of reforms even though it is not a guarantee that they will be at all possible to implement due to the "embronzing" of not only Nursultan Nazarbayev and his circle but the entire Kazakh ruling elite. Especially in the absence of understanding and trust between the state and he society when the productive forces have grown weak and the domestic business is going south, when we are losing not only in terms of productivity but in terms of the quality and the cost of labor force as well.In my opinion, Kazakhstan today simply does not have the resources to conceive, launch and carry out these reforms. The only hope is that, in time, a group of people may form within the ruling elite that will realize – something needs to be done in order to simply survive.Logic suggests that, today, Kazakhstan needs an autocrat who, by using the advantages of the unlimited power and the possibility to maintain control over the state apparatus and the political system, could launch the socio-economic and political reforms from the top. These reforms must aim to develop the domestic production to such a degree, quality and efficiency that, in the course of five-seven years would allow: