Freedom House has published its new Nations in Transit report. It is a several indicies-based analysis and rating of the countries, which were supposed to move from authoritarianism to democracy. However, many of the post-Soviet countries have obviously stopped in their movement, or even started active rollback to the “old good” methods of Soviet censorship, intolerance to the dissent and monoparty system. And it’s most of all applicable to the countries that are rich in hydrocarbons.

“National leaders in these countries appear not to understand that improving accountability will provide what citizens want - prosperity and rule of law - and would give states more options internationally,” says the report’s executive editor Jeannette Goehring - “They are taking advantage of high energy prices by building authoritarian regimes”.

Kazakhstan, as well as Russia, Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan, has again deteriorated his position in the ranking - now it’s fourth from the bottom, unequivocally categorized as a “consolidated authoritarian regime”. Kazakhstan’s average democracy index has been consecutively falling since 1999 - from с 5.5 to 6.39. According to the FH methodology, 7 stands for the worst repressive state, and 1 testifies to the freest one. Only Belarus, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan appear to be worse than Kazakhstan.