Four days earlier, in a speech broadcast on national television, Mr Nazarbayev appeared determined to see off protests which had spread from Atyrau in west Kazakhstan, to Semey in the east and Kyzylorda in the south. He described the protesters as saboteurs who risked wrecking the country.

But with more protests planned, a clearly shaken Mr Nazarbayev told his government on Thursday that the plans would be delayed from their initial introduction on July 1 until the start of next year and, even then, only if the public agreed with the plans.

“The mechanisms and rules of the adopted law were not widely discussed with the public. The anxiety and concerns of the people are justified in many ways,” he said, according to a video posted on Facebook by his press office.

Analysts will either interpret this climb down as a humiliation for the 75-year-old leader who some say is increasingly out of touch with ordinary Kazakhs as they grapple with the frustrations of an economic downturn, or they will describe it as a masterstroke by an experienced leader able to paint himself as The- Father-of-the-People.

Certainly, Mr Nazarbayev was quick to blame others for the debacle.

He specifically said that economy minister Yerbolat Dossayev and agriculture minister Asylzhan Mamytbekov had failed to fulfil their brief.

“It should have been explained to the population that didn’t understand that there was no talk of any sale of our agricultural lands,” he said. “This means we failed to explain this point and to target those parts of the population which were concerned.”

Mr Dossayev resigned immediately and Mr Mamytbekov, the following day.

On the streets of Almaty it was easy to find people who were against the prospect of land reforms. “Renting land is wrong. Just wrong. It is the blood and sweat of our ancestors,” said Daniyar, a student.

By contrast, it wasn’t possible to find anybody who supported the proposed land reforms.

The first and largest rally was held in the western city of Atyrau, when around 1,000 demonstrators gathered to protest against a law which they say would allow foreigners to buy their land. Smaller protests, with a few dozen protesters, were held over the following days in Aktobe, Semey and Aktau.

The amended law is due to come into force in July.

“We are thousands here today, but if they start seizing and selling our land, we will be millions,” one of the speakers at the Atyrau protest said.

Importantly, most of the people at the protests were speaking Kazakh, rather than Russian. Kazakh is prevalent in poorer, more rural sections of Kazakhstan’s society. It is particularly widely spoken in the west of the country, in and around Atyrau, Aktobe and Aktau.

Some analysts said that the protests may have been part of a wider nationalist movement encouraged by the authorities to give a veneer of political discourse without posing any real threat to the elite. Both local governments and officials in Astana dismissed the claim that the new land code would give out land to foreigners.

At a meeting in Astana, President Nursultan Nazarbayev said: “The issue regarding selling land to foreign citizens is out of question. All talks regarding this issue are groundless. Those who heat up these rumours should be brought to justice.”

As The Bulletin went to press, police in Almaty had detained a handful of other activists who had planned a press conference against the new land code.