Making sure that any reforms enjoy social support is an urgent problem in societal transformations. This truth has been hard won by history and has rightly taken on the status of an axiom. What makes reforms different from revolutions is that they are limited when it comes to the use of the mechanisms of destruction and suppression. In contrast to revolutions, reforms take account of and make rational use of traditions in the process of modernization. Reforms demand radical change and sometimes even actual demolition of the public's mindset and social behavior. This painful process is going on in Kazakhstan. Numerous sociological surveys have shown that paternalism and militant anticommercialism have been fading from the mass consciousness of people in Kazakhstan, although they continue to engage in a rearguard battle. It is reasonable to say that in economic and political reforms in Kazakhstan, the potential for natural resistance is being overcome by the potential for increasing involvement. But is it reasonable to say the same thing about the reforms in the intellectual sphere? The author attempts to answer this question by means of relatively simple schemas. To assess the perceptions of the broader public as well as participants in scientific and educational activity, the author takes the semantic pair "understood versus accepted." This article examines the mutual understanding of the reforms' organizers and implementers. The judgments cited in this paper are based on representative surveys of the past three years covering all of Kazakhstan, first and foremost on two formalized mass surveys and a series of in-depth interviews with experts and key informants, conducted by BISAM at the behest of the National Center for Scientific and Technical Information in 2006 and 2008; on research developments by Kazakh and Russian sociologists; and on observations and assessments by the author.