Thorny Path to Independence
Turbulent events in Kyrgyzstan, where the opposition, reviving together with nature in spring, calls for radical political reforms and premature resignation of President Kurmanbek Bakiev, have strangely coincided with the beginning of drastic reforms in neighboring Tajikistan. However, there is nothing strange in this coincidence. It is quite symbolic that the word ‘reform’ is now hanging in the air in both ex-Soviet republics. This way, ruling elites of former Soviet Central Asian republics seem to be summing up the first stage of their independent development which began 15 years ago with the USSR’s collapse. They now hurry to proceed to the second stage which will allow to completely break with the Soviet past.
Here the most intriguing part begins. For it turns out there are at least two patterns or strategies for further development of the independent states at the CIS southern side. First can be nominally termed a ‘Turkmeno-Tajik’ pattern. In this case, ruling former Soviet internationalists appear in the guise of present-day local nationalists. They replace Communist ideology by the ideas based on a bizarre mixture of the chief’s works, Koran, and history textbooks. Those textbooks narrate about the great past in a quite arbitrary way, and this great past wonderfully replaces the future. That is how a new post-Soviet mythology is being created. Its purpose is to become a ferroconcrete foundation for new political power. Meanwhile, the new power makes it clear, on the one hand, that it has thrown off the old skin, and remains authoritarian on the other hand. That is the sense of the ‘reforms’ carried out by late Saparmurat Niyazov in Turkmenistan, and continued by his follower Emomali Rakhmonov in Tajikistan. Actually, not Rakhmonov, but already Rakhmon, it’s time to get used to it. The attributes of this pattern are the irremovability of authorities, the complete lack of political competition and of any movement of air in the society’s life. Thus, it means stability with the minimal level of needs and demands of the society incapable or unwilling to leave its patriarchal-feudal cocoon.
The second pattern, alternative to the ‘Turkmeno-Tajik’ one, may be nominally termed ‘Kyrgyz’. The same oriental, clan society with the same inherent vices throws off old skin in a completely different way. It does not return to its ‘great past’ and does not create a new mythology, like it happens in Turkmenistan and Tajikistan, but prefers to live on a volcano: it dooms itself to instability, easily casts down some cult-figures and lifts up others, creates real political parties and public organizations, has its own independent parliament and not an obedient voting machine.
This pattern, in the long run, leaves more chances for the state and the society to once overcome the developmental disease and to become a normal state, no matter how many blunders the leaders of Kyrgyz ‘tulip revolution’ make now and later, and no matter how many of those revolutions happen.
Sergei Strokan
All the Article in Russian as of Mar. 29, 2007
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