The appeal to the topic of social protest in this article was based on the real events that shook Kazakhstan in January 2022. Starting in 2020 a three-year research project to study the protest potential in Kazakhstan, we could not imagine that our work would be so relevant. Reflecting on the topic of the January events, many Kazakh experts pointed to the socio-economic factor as their forerunner. Is it so? Having access to long term series of sociological data and being able to conduct a comparative analysis of the ten-year data, we tried to illustrate how the social moods of Kazakhstanis changed, their readiness for active actions and motives to participate in mass protests. Analysis of the data showed that in 2021 there was a noticeable decline in positive assessments of the economic situation – in both the country and families. There were expectations of discontent manifestations: more than 40 of Kazakhstanis in 2021 spoke about the likelihood of protests both in the country and in their place of residence. Moreover, the older age groups expected protests of socio-economic nature, while the young – protests of political nature. We came to the conclusion that by 2022 there were obvious signs of increasing protest activity on the basis of socio-economic instability, which received an additional impetus during the period of coronavirus restrictions, in Kazakhstan. But they were not enough to activate the masses for the January 2022 riots.