This chapter analyzes the specific trajectories that modernization followed in nomadic society during the periods of Tsarist and Soviet rule. For the Kazakhs, modernity revealed its reverse side—colonization. Through the mediation of the Russian Empire, Kazakhstan was exposed to the sociopolitical “pathologies” of Western civilization. Alongside these came the structural deficiencies of the Western model of the state. Under Soviet rule, Kazakh society was subjected to one of modernity’s most extreme political forms: totalitarianism. The author contends that many values typically associated with European modernity – particularly those concerning human rights and civil liberties – were already embedded in nomadic society. These values were not foreign imports but integral to the civilizational paradigm of the steppe. However, they were systematically dismantled by Tsarist colonization. Imperial agents, shaped by Eurocentric and sedentary-centric assumptions as well as racialized hierarchies, failed to recognize the complexity of nomadic legal, social, and economic systems. Soviet modernization took on a distorted and repressive character. It prioritized accelerated industrialization at the expense of law, human rights, and moral order. In doing so, it also erased the cultural foundations and national identities of the colonized peoples.