Back in 1989, after a rise through the Communist Party ranks, Karimov became First Secretary of the Uzbekistan Communist Party Central Committee (head of the republic, in other words), then he became the first President of the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic in 1990. He shepherded the country to independence in August of 1991 and was, uh, "elected" President of newly independent Uzbekistan in December of that year. Time was, lots of heads of post-Soviet states were former republic first party secretaries, but those times have passed in much of the post-Soviet space. Not in Uzbekistan, though.
This article goes in-depth about the ways in which Karimov "simply took all the trappings of Soviet Communism-one-party rule, state control of the press, secret surveillance of the populace, five-year plans, government monopolization of the means of production-and converted them, lock, stock and political prison, into a well-oiled banana republic."
Working Definition (a Peace Corps volunteer in Uzbekistan) also talks about the Soviet legacy, but with an interesting twist - he describes how much BETTER it was for the average Uzbek to live under Soviet power than under Karimov's impoverished simulation of Soviet rule.
But the point of this post (yes, now I get to it) is really quite a basic one, and this whole mini-research project was inspired by just one brief comment from Veronica at Neeka's Backlog:
People outside the country know more than those who are stuck inside. Fucking incredible. And so similar to 19 years ago - the Chernobyl situation.Veronica grew up in what was still the Soviet Union (I am pretty sure of that, and I hope she'll correct me if I'm wrong). I spent three years of my childhood in the USSR (my father was on a diplomatic assignment) and was with my family in Leningrad when Chernobyl happened, so the information-deprived environment is familiar to me as well.
How is this all relevant to what's happening in Uzbekistan today? Let me explain. I have been in touch with a blogger in Tashkent who tells me (this is not going to be news to Nathan and the frequent commenters at Registan, and I know it's been publicized in lots of media outlets, but it makes it more real for me to hear it from someone who's actually there) that certain news resources have been blocked or censored selectively for years. And in recent days, the censorship of outside media has extended beyond just Western outlets - even Russian news broadcasts and websites have been censored. He estimates only 15-20% of internet users interested in foreign news reports are able to use proxy servers and other tricks to get around the filters the government has set up, and he notes that of course internet access is not that widespread - and television is "not unlockable."
So, the authorities in Uzbekistan have been doing their best these past few days to prevent news from the outside world from reaching citizens - their goal is something similar to the media environment in the Soviet Union. As I've seen noted somewhere on the internet (I can't for the life of me find it now, though - too many browser windows open and too much navigating around combined with too little sleep), and really it's common sense, it's socially destabilizing to and in the long term bad for any government to prevent people from getting news from trusted and credible public sources (I'm thinking that many if not most Uzbeks realize that UzA does not fall into that category, though given the level of gullibility I've observed among Russians with respect to news reports here, maybe I shouldn't be so sure). This is because they will still get their news from trusted and credible sources, but they'll be private ones with no public feedback mechanism - their neighbors, their relatives, etc. This (1) eradicates people's trust in the government, (2) provides the potential for damaging/destabilizing rumors to spread, and (3) means there is no public forum for people to express views about news they've heard, since all "trusted" news was heard in private.
The excellent AP report about the protesters in Andijan standing up and speaking out - some of them for the first time in years or ever - about the poverty and unemployment which they face daily is a perfect example of pent-up despair boiling over - and the Uzbek authorities spoke volumes with their response about their concern for the well-being of their citizens. The Soviet experience may seem less relevant here - after all, the USSR was pulled apart and its totalitarian government brought down from within by internal elites (that's a gross oversimplification, of course) who eventually recognized it was not a sustainable model.
But in fact it is relevant, if you consider that it was likely elites who sparked the clash in Andijan with their jailbreak (this comment and others at Registan talk about how financial interests are involved here). Remember, where there's political repression and non-democratic rule, there is often corruption and people jockeying non-transparently for the opportunity to stick their mouth in one government trough or another (be it a position with the Customs service somewhere in the Ferghana Valley or a license to drill for oil in, say, Russia). And rival elites can and will use social discontent (just as those elites who have the government on their side will use law enforcement, as apparently happened with the arrests of the now-infamous 23 businessmen) as their instrument in economic disputes. OK, perhaps the comparison to the Soviet Union unravels at this point. I'm a bit tired, I must confess, and complex logical thinking is becoming a challenge. Does anyone want to pick up this train of thought? Or is it hopelessly derailed? Time for one more brief roundup of the Russian-language wires, and then I'm off for the night (don't be alarmed by the time-stamp, I'm actually in London for a few days but still posting on Moscow time).
[Update: on the Soviet thread in all of this, see also the first comment (it has no link of its own) on this Guardian blog roundup]
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