Yes it’s still early. Yet in the meantime, it would be naïve to think that the ‘revolution’ was anything more than a social upheaval combined with a coup. It was not a revolution in the sense that a society broke with an old system or that the socially mobile came to replace an obsolete, disfunctional elite. I think that in a number of years there will a new upheaval phase.

Either way, I noticed a positive impact of the 2005 events, especially on people’s perception of power. See, with the ousting of the Akayevs and the liquidation of Bayaman Erkinbayev and other maffia MPs by their own kind (korotshe, shakali pazhirayut drug druga) all these little krutoi potentates have realized that they are not immune or immortal; that the tables can turn quite fast. Even Karimilosevic next door has understood that.

And that is a good thing.