Read: Kazakhstan’s president is tired of his country’s name ending in ‘stan’

Still, this election is being watched closely—just perhaps not by pro-democracy activists in the West. How to hand over power is a common problem for authoritarian regimes, and the process does not always go according to plan. By overseeing his own transition while retaining significant power, Nazarbayev signaled that he would be attempting an important experiment in how to modernize an autocratic system, which his fellow strongmen—notably those in the former Soviet space, such as Belarus, Tajikistan, and in particular, Russia—might be looking to borrow from.

“There is always lots of learning among dictators,” Andrea Kendall-Taylor, a former senior U.S. intelligence analyst focused on Russia and Eurasia and now a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, told me. “Kazakhstan’s neighbors will be following closely to see what works.”

The most immediate ramifications of Kazakhstan’s experiment may be in Russia, where Vladimir Putin will need to decide on a path forward before 2024, when he finishes his second consecutive term as president, the maximum allowed by the constitution. According to Kendall-Taylor, Putin’s options are to choose a successor, amend the constitution, or abolish term limits altogether, like Chinese President Xi Jinping. Putin toyed with a division of power in 2008, when he and Dmitry Medvedev switched roles as prime minister and president. The key difference is that the upcoming decision may be Putin’s final play—the Russian leader will be in his 70s by the time his second term finishes. As two former Soviet countries with similar economies, comparable GDP per capita, and personalized political systems, Kazakhstan and Russia share a great deal, making the current transition an important test case for the Kremlin.

While the Kazakh regime’s hold on power remains firm, the news of Nazarbayev’s resignation has sparked an outpouring of dissent, a rarity in this country, where the rights to assembly and free speech are heavily curtailed. Kazakh authorities have reacted heavy-handedly, breaking up protests, arresting activists even for minor demonstrations, and blocking news and social-media websites. “I think the government miscalculated,” Paul Stronski, a former director for Russia and Central Asia on the U.S. National Security Council who is now a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told me. “Society is changing, and the government will have to adapt or face some serious problems.”

Nazarbayev is not the first leader in the former Soviet world to attempt an orchestrated leadership change. An ailing Boris Yeltsin successfully handed power to Putin, then his prime minister, in 2000. Heydar Aliyev, the former president of Azerbaijan, also pulled off a power transfer, to his son, in 2003. But the region has plenty of examples where things have gone wrong: Disputed elections in Georgia and Ukraine in 2003 and 2004, respectively, resulted in Mikheil Saakashvili and Viktor Yushchenko emerging victorious, despite their predecessors supporting rivals. In Kyrgyzstan, Sooronbay Jeenbekov was elected president in 2017 with the backing of his predecessor, only to quickly dismantle the former leader’s power base.