Two Decades Later in Central Asia, Still Awaiting the Revolution

By Sasha Meyer

Western news reports on the revolutions of 1989 have been celebratory. But in Russia the mood has been somber. Russian writers want to know what went wrong. Among them, Sergey Kovalev, a Soviet-era dissident, laments that Soviet dissidents by and large failed to form into an effective political opposition once the Soviet collapse was under way. That thought has been echoed by Aleksandr Podrabinek, who argues that power simply shifted from one group of former apparatchiks to another. Lev Ponomarev distinguishes between two types of dissidents – those who started out the era outside the system, and those who were insiders – and decides that the latter had managerial experience, and it was they who came to power; he cites Aleksandr Yakovlev, Boris Yeltsin and Anatoly Sobchak among them. It is from the confluence of factors raised by all these writers that Russia gets its largely Soviet flavor of governance.

Central Asia, too, has been run the last two decades by such figures – Islam Karimov in Uzbekistan, Nursultan Nazarbaev in Kazakhstan, and so on. The only exception has been Askar Akayev, Kyrgyzstan’s former president. Taking stock of their performance, it’s useful to consider the achievements of what other originally backwater nations achieved in similar two-decade periods of time.

In 1968, South Korea was still a poor country, with a per-capita GDP equal to that of North Korea. Twenty years later, its car makers were selling upscale vehicles in the U.S., the world's most competitive market, and its economy had overtaken Belgium's. Most recently, its Korea Electric Power this week beat out marquee French, Japanese and U.S. consortia to win a contract to build four nuclear power plants in the United Arab Emirates.

In 1986, Vietnam was still reeling from the impact of the wars with China, France, and the U.S. Food shortages were common. A little over two decades later, Vietnam has one of the world's fastest-growing economies. It doesn't just export the usual paraphernalia of international trade: clothing, shoes and appliances. The country is turning into a high-tech hub, hosting IBM's cloud computing facilities and Intel's $1 billion chip-making plant, among others.

In the early 1980s, Turkey had an anemic and quasi-statist economy. Again, a little over 20 years later, Turkish companies make more than half of all TVs sold in Europe. Its apparel such as Mavi jeans are sold at upmarket stores like Nordstrom. Elsewhere, as Hugh Pope writes in Sons of the Conquerors, ”Turkish manufacturers' reputation had grown enough, in fact, that some Chinese clothing designers imitated higher-quality Turkish styles and brands.” The strength goes beyond consumer goods – Turkey has contracted to supply parts for America's F-35, the world’s most advanced jet fighter.

In the meantime, Central Asia has followed a trajectory that resembles Africa's in the years after gaining independence. Passages from Ryszard Kapuscinski's Shadow of the Sun read like today's Central Asia. The gaining of independence, he writes,

“was characterized by a universal optimism, enthusiasm, euphoria. People were convinced that freedom meant a better roof over their heads, a large bowl of rice, a first pair of shoes. A miracle would take place – the multiplying of loaves, fishes, and wine.”

“[But] nothing of the sort occurred. On the contrary. optimism quickly turned to disenchantment and pessimism. The people's bitterness, fury, hatred was now directed against their own elites, who were rapidly and greedily stuffing their pockets.”

“[And] in the years since independence, fundamental human rights were brutally violated by the government. People were denied the right to live in freedom and with mutual respect. They were not allowed to have their own opinions. Organized political gangsterism and the politics of falsehood turned all elections into a farce. Instead of serving the nation, politicians were busy stealing.”

The recent obituary of Omar Bongo, president for life of Gabon, could be a résumé of his Central Asian peers:

Mr Bongo made no distinction between Gabon and his private property. He had ruled there so long, 42 years, that they had become one. It was therefore perfectly natural that an oil company, granted a large concession for coastal drilling, should slip him regular suitcases stuffed with cash. It was natural that $2.6 million in aid money should be used to decorate his private jet, that government funds should pay for the Italian marble cladding his palace, and that his wife Edith's sea-blue Maybach, in which she was driven round Paris, should be paid for with a cheque drawn on the Gabonese treasury. Of the $130 million in his personal accounts at Citibank in New York, it was probable – though Citibank never asked, and nobody ever managed to pin a charge on him – that much of it was derived from the GDP of his country.

The suggestion of fiddling public finances flummoxed and infuriated him. Corruption, he once explained to a reporter, was not an African word. No more was nepotism: He simply looked after his family, supplying them with villas in Nice as well as the ministries of defense and foreign affairs. When French judges in 2009 froze nine of his 70 bank accounts, he was outraged. An attack on him was obviously an attempt to destabilize his country. He was equally indignant when in 2004, after a "Miss Humanity" pageant was held in Libreville, Miss Peru charged him with sexual harassment for summoning her to the palace and, he hoped, to his nifty behind-the-paneling bed. If something was in Gabon, by nature or chance, he evidently had first dibs on it.

To alter the course would be simple. Consider what China did in 1979 – land reform that, by freeing peasants in a largely agricultural society, instantly improved the lot of many, and generated the cash needed to modernize the industry. Not incidentally, it also generated broad public support for the government, and helped to strengthen political stability.

Uzbekistan would achieve a big advance by halting the production of its biggest current crop – cotton – and planting native fruit in its place. Uzbekistan grows cotton – a subtropical, water-thirsty crop – on some 1.5 million hectares in this arid region, earning about $1 billion from exports. On the cost side of the ledger is a massive loss of land to salt, polluted river water unfit even for agricultural use, growing international criticism of child labor during harvest time, and tension with neighbors over water rights from the Amu Darya and Syr Darya. Cotton simply doesn’t pay. As a comparison, Chile earns $1.26 billion from the export of grapes harvested on just 182,000 hectares; it causes no environmental damage, and brings in an additional $1.37 billion from wine exports. All in all, the South American country makes $3.34 billion selling various fruit. Emulating its success in Central Asia should be simple given that the region is home to many varieties of fruit and walnuts. Agribusiness is a serious source of cash even in more advanced economies like Portugal and New Zealand, as well as in high-tech powerhouses like South Korea, which is a top-ten producer of onions. So, far the only place in the neighborhood to adopt this strategy is the neighboring Chinese province of Xinjiang, which exports apples to Kazakhstan and pears to the United States. Xinjiang also exports its products to Mongolia, Japan and Malaysia.

The stumbling block is probably the prevailing mindset among officials in the region. Russian researcher Olga Kryshtanovskaka has found that up to 83% of government positions in Russia are held by former members of the Soviet nomenklatura. The figure for Central Asia is probably higher as its bureaucracy survived the Soviet collapse intact.

Soviet-era writers have been scathing about this upper layer of society, which comprises just 0.1% of the population. Soviet-era writer Michail Voslensky called the nomeklatura “an invisible aristocracy whose reign is more oppressive than that of the czars.” Hungarian essayist György Konrád caustically writes that the nomenklatura often fail economically, trained as they are in a Communist system in which "the more stupid lead the more intelligent, because it has made political reliability a more important job requirement than ability." There is traction to this thinking. For instance, a Western diplomat based in Tajikistan says of local officials in a report by the International Crisis Group, "We are not just dealing with selfishness and greed, but incredible incompetence at all levels.”

The question then is whether there will be new faces in the political elites, and whether they will make a break with Soviet-era attitudes, as has happened in Georgia and to a lesser degree in Ukraine.

Or whether the region will continue to be like Gabon and Egypt – in the former, the new president is the son of the late Omar Bongo; in the latter, the combination of a youthful population bulge and governmental economic incompetence is creating an increasingly religious and conservative society, possibly opening the door to the Pakistani outcome in the longer term.

Book Review: In 1989, Economics, Not Dissidents, Ruled the Day

By Sasha Meyer

A region ruled by dictators who came to power with promises of a great and prosperous future. A cultivated nationalism characterizes governance. Dissidents are small in number, disparate and isolated from society. And political opposition, where it exists, is reluctant to claim political power.

That sounds like a profile of Central Asia today. But in fact, it's Eastern Europe in 1989, as described in Uncivil Society, a new book co-authored by Princeton professors Stephen Kotkin and Jan T. Gross. Both are the authors of previous, excellent works set in the former Soviet space in 2001 – Kotkin’s Armageddon Averted and Gross’s Neighbors (the latter a finalist for the National Book Award) – and they again soar in this slim format.

Again, the strength of Kotkin’s and Gross’ narrative is that it stakes interesting new ground, but does so on the basis of facts and figures, and not philosophy or theory. The authors’ premise is that the 1989 revolutions in Eastern Europe were accidents, triggered by small, random events. Contrary to conventional wisdom, they argue, dissidents were marginal in the march of events – indeed, the idea that there was any significant opposition to communism “falls into the realm of fiction.” Instead, energized by the poor economic performance of the communist governments, each country’s population spontaneously self-mobilized. As for “the opposition,” such individuals were reluctant to take power, and were pushed into it by the people, the authors conclude. As much as anyone, the Communist regimes themselves were responsible for what happened: They ignored the public mood and belatedly replaced an odious leader with a newer face (Germany); they negotiated an exit (Poland); they bolstered the opposition in order to have a negotiating partner (Hungary); or they were the victim of an internal coup (Romania).

These events are a good illustration of Mohandas Gandhi’s belief that the obstacle to freedom is not coercion by the ruling order (always a tiny minority), but cooperation on the part of the ruled (always a vast majority). In 1989, widespread and deepening economic dissatisfaction removed this obstacle.

Uncivil Society offers up a rich picture of what happened and why: Dissidents were heroic and the governments not so. But it was when the economic fiasco became undeniably obvious to the man on the street that the regimes came down.

But what does all of this mean for other regions, in particular Central Asia? For dissident bloggers, opposition websites and broadcasters like Radio Liberty that wish to see greater political openness, getting out the word of a governments' dismal economic record erodes its public legitimacy.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev inadvertently captured the situation in Central Asia in his much-reported Nov. 12 speech on Russia’s economy. As the Economist put it:”His diagnosis is relentless: a primitive, commodity-based economy that cannot create prosperity; the lack of reforms; and all-pervasive corruption.”

This dreadful performance is particularly evident when compared with the achievements of others. Starkly, former comrades Hanoi and Beijing have produced growing and sustainable prosperity through manufacturing-led exports. Meanwhile, while the Central Asian leaders insist that freer politics will produce deadly instability, Ukraine and Georgia have demonstrated the self-interested hollowness of the claim – in both, competitive if chaotic politics accompany robust economic growth. Georgia’s Mikheil Saakashvili, though branded by some as reckless, irrational, and megalomaniacal, has proven that a bloated Soviet-style bureaucracy and endemic corruption – two ills that afflict Central Asia – can be sharply curtailed within just a couple of years. Elsewhere, Turkey and Indonesia illustrate that being Turkic or Muslim and having an accountable government are not mutually exclusive.

Micro-economics resonate. Unlike political issues such as civil liberties and democracy – abstractions to many, and confused with the chaos of the post-perestroika years – economics are understood from Peoria to Khojand. As Kotkin and Gross suggest, authorities learn to shrug off negative press on civil liberties. But economic malperformance and malfeasance aren’t as easily ignored. For example, it's difficult to explain why the Kyrgyz government won’t get out of the way of Aidai Asangulova, a young designer who employs eleven women, and whose hand-made scarves are a huge success at the Takashimaya department store in New York. Her customers want more. Yet Ms. Asangulova is unable to expand because the local financial police keep auditing her in order to squeeze out “a share.”

Andrey Illarionov is showing the way. On his blog, this former adviser to Vladimir Putin draws on facts and statistics, eschewing emotions or a sense of desperation, in harsh and brutal analyses of Russia’s economic performance. The result is an effective and popular critique of Kremlin policy.

The Internet, of course, makes his job easier. As Vladimir Bukovsky, a Soviet-era dissident, has said: ”I think, had we had the Internet in the 1960s, the Soviet power would have collapsed in the 1970!”

The Oil and Glory Interview: Charles Clover on the Siloviki's Possibly Lesser Role

The conventional wisdom is that the foundation of Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's power is the siloviki, the current and former intelligence and military officers who have been drawn into powerful political and commercial positions over the last decade. That's why I was surprised by a long piece last week by Charles Clover, the Financial Times' Moscow bureau chief and one of the clearest reporters on Russia. In it, Clover -- my former roommate in Almaty and Tashkent during the 1990s -- reports finding a diminishment in the siloviki's influence. Clover agreed to flesh out his conclusions for O&G. Here is the interview:

O&G: Charles, your latest long piece is decidedly contrarian. You report that Russia's siloviki – who others routinely describe as the ascendant power – actually hit their apex in 2007, and appear to be on the wane. Is that your takeaway? And if so, why do you think that's the case?

Clover: I should probably say in the spirit of full disclosure that I set out to write about how the siloviki are getting stronger – but when I started asking people who keep track of these things, some quoted, some anonymous, most said that actually things have reversed a bit. Now, whether this is a temporary or a permanent trend is of course an open question – I don’t know the answer, and I hope I put enough caveats to that effect in the piece! But I do think the siloviki may have gotten too powerful for their own good, and other groups are trying to cut them down to size. Putin, in appointing [President Dmitry] Medvedev as president, seems to have intended perhaps to rein in the siloviki a bit – his attitude is unclear. It’s useful to remember that in the 1990s, everyone thought the oligarchs were the ascendant power in the land – of course they are still very powerful, but they did not take over the state.

Q: Even so, you do not seem convinced that the siloviki's retrenchment necessarily equates to a greater responsiveness to the public at large, what you call "civil society." Why is that the case?

A: Russia's liberals are not a whole lot more liberal than the siloviki, and I think any 'thaw' will not be a very ambitious one. Nonetheless, there is a sense that things might have gone too far in the direction of autocracy, and Russians by and large want to live in a more normal country.

Q: President Medvedev has made what, compared with the government's previous attitude, are some bold decisions in the Sergei Magnitsky case. Do you yourself regard these as surprising or bold decisions? Do they signal anything larger? What's the context?

A: I think all we can do is wait and see where things go. Yes the developments are surprising, and seem to indicate a shift in the mentality at the Kremlin. There also does seem to be a struggle within law enforcement agencies over this case in particular – though it’s a bit inside baseball to write about this yet. The context is useful to keep in mind though – Russia for the first time in years needs to borrow abroad and is trying to attract foreign investment, so it needs to be seen to be doing something about this case involving a huge portfolio investor, Hermitage Capital. I'm not sure if all they are doing is trying to be seen to do something, or actually doing something though.

Q: Ultimately is this shift significant in terms of how Russians live, and how foreign governments interact with Russia? For instance, are we likely to see a soft-and-cuddly Gazprom? Or friendship break out with Georgia?

A: As I said, I don’t see Russia's "liberals" as much more liberal than the conservatives, though that is a whole different article to write. And I don’t think the siloviki are going to be entirely pushed out of course, just reduced a bit. I doubt Gazprom will start giving out free gas and I don’t expect to see [Georgian President Mikheil] Saakashvili getting invited to the Kremlin any time soon.

Q: You describe Putin's circle of "Orthodox Chekists," referring to their regular audiences with a conservative Russian Orthodox monk named Archimandrite Tikhon Shevkunov. What's the takeaway from this relationship?

A: Kind of like the Bush White House and the religious right – It’s hard to tell how much of this is PR and spin, and how much is genuine ideological sympathy. Archimandrite Tikhon leads a very conservative wing of the Orthodox church, and I think the church generally supports conservative political figures on ideological grounds.

Q: You also say that Igor Sechin – who has seemed fairly influential in a lot of matters including politics and oil – as assuming less influence in his role as a deputy prime minister. Is title so important? Has Sechin's influence truly waned? After all, he still runs Rosneft.

A: I totally agree with your premise – I don't think title is so important. What is important, however, is access to Putin, which Sechin in his previous incarnation had every day – he controlled access to the president and that was his main "resource,” as a former senior Kremlin official put it in a conversation with me. Today, he doesn't have such access, as his position requires a lot of travel, and he has other responsibilities. He remains immensely powerful, but in a more limited sphere – energy. He is not the universal figure he was in the Kremlin.

Q: What does this phenomenon signal about Putinism, the long projected arc of Putin's influence into the next couple of decades?

A: I think I talked about this in the piece (I hope that part didn’t get cut). I think Putin certainly continues to play the hegemonic role in Russian politics. But equally he is a skilled politician who knows that he cannot allow any one faction in government to get too big, as this would threaten his own ability to play the most powerful role. I think if the siloviki see a decline, it is likely Putin's own decision.

The Oil and Glory Interview: Hugh Pope on the Armenia-Turkey Rapprochment

In October, Armenia and Turkey signed protocols that -- if ratified by their respective parliaments -- will open their shared border and in multiple ways normalize relations between the two traditional antagonists. Given the region's numerous nationalist rivalries, the move has triggered much thinking on what it means, and what else is possible. Hugh Pope, a friend and former colleague at The Wall Street Journal and now director of the Turkish project for the International Crisis Group, is one of the best authorities on the greater Turkic world. Hugh has a new book coming out -- Dining With al-Qaeda -- that sounds like a keeper. In exchange for dinner at my home last week, he kindly agreed to address some of the burning questions on the Armenia-Turkey accord.


O&G: Will the Turkish and Armenian parliaments ratify the agreement?

Pope: The parliaments will ratify the agreement on the protocols (normalization of diplomatic relations and opening the border) if Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan and Armenian President Sargsyan recommend them to. The most interesting aspect of the protocols is in fact how little dispute there is between the two governments about the actual contents. The main problem is domestic, mainly from political opposition (on both sides to different extents), the diaspora reaction (for Armenia) and the Azerbaijani factor (for Turkey, which has a shared ethnic relationship with Azeris and cheap gas from Baku). All these three problems can be overcome if the two leaders can demonstrate the same firm political will that they have done in the past.

Turkey must also look to its own needs, delinking its policy from full association with Azerbaijan's own perception of its short-term interests. In fact, the protocols are a good way to help spread stability in the region, which will be in Azerbaijan's long term interest, and Turkey’s keeping the border closed since 1993 has done nothing to solve Nagorno-Karabakh. Similarly, Armenia must distance itself from the nostalgic desires of members of the diaspora and some of its own population, who seek to keep alive territorial claims on Turkey by not recognizing the international border. Outside support is also vital, and continues, and this is also a source of hope that ratification will go ahead.

Q: Step back, Hugh. What is the significance of the agreement regionally, historically and so on, whether or not it is ratified? Are you surprised?

A: The protocols represent the best chance for two traumatized peoples to achieve closure on the politicized debate whether to recognize as genocide the destruction of much of the Ottoman Armenian population and the trauma of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and its accompanying displacement and massacres. Both sides have tried the all-out nationalist narrative, and it has not healed the wounds of history.

The second significance is the positive example being set by the Turkish government since 2002 to grapple with subjects that until recently were completely taboo and to overcome historical problems. They’ve gone a long way to fixing their problems with Syria, Iraq and the Iraqi Kurds, and are also working on an opening to Turkey’s own Kurds and on finding a settlement for the divided island of Cyprus.

The dynamics supporting Turkey-Armenia convergence are strong, I believe. The agreement on the protocols is the latest and broadest indication of a process that started in 2000 with the first meeting of Turkish and Armenian academics in the US. This was followed by meetings by retired officials and senior academics in the Turkish-Armenian Reconciliation Commission, and then in years of secret talks between Turkish and Armenian diplomats.

In Turkey, this bilateral process has been accompanied and even led by the great 2005 meeting of Turkish academics rejecting the old denialist narrative about the Ottoman-era massacres of Armenians in the First World War, and the wave of regret and awareness in Turkey that followed the murder of Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink in 2007. In Armenia and the diaspora, there has been some reaching out to Turkey too, as increasingly more people believe that dialogue can bring greater Turkish appreciation of the pain suffered by Ottoman Armenians during the World War I, an apology, and perhaps some compensation.

Opening the issues of the pre-1923 period is a Pandora’s box for Turkey, however. A significant portion of the population of modern Turkey is descended from Muslims driven bloodily out of the Balkans, the Caucasus and the Middle East as the Ottoman Empire collapsed, resulting in family dramas that up to now have rarely been discussed. Although often only tangentially related to the Armenian question, it make some Turks ask, what about our own traumas?

Q: Does the agreement say anything about the times in which we live? For instance, could we expect other stubborn animosities to cool for the sake of pragmatism?

A: The agreement on the protocols do show unfortunately that it takes a long time to heal the wounds of conflict and massacre, especially when one side is much weaker, when territory is contested and when the two sides have no joint project with which to help the healing process (impossible between Turkey and Armenia as states during the Soviet period, of course).

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the agreement was the beneficial effect of Russia, France and the U.S. working together. Of course, Moscow and Washington have different objectives, but they both support Turkey-Armenian normalization, and if their foreign ministers hadn’t been in Zurich on Aug. 30, the signing of the protocols may never have happened.

Q: What type of reaction do you expect from Azerbaijan? If a military one, would its performance on the battlefield be better than in the early 1990s? And whatever the case, wouldn't such an Azeri reaction scuttle the deal?

A: Great powers must make it very clear to all sides that any renewal of hostilities to try to derail the ratification of the protocols is unacceptable. Azerbaijan is currently working hard to legitimize its right to territorial integrity, while its president is frequently talking about the use of force to regain lost territories. Clearly, the Azerbaijani army is better armed and better trained than in the early 1990s, when it only had barely-coordinated militias. But Armenian and Karabakh Armenian forces control the high ground, they have had nearly two decades to dig in, and have everything to lose.

Any military offensive would be risky for the Azerbaijani government. Firstly, it might not succeed, and any reversal would be politically disastrous. Any attempt to reclaim territory by force is likely to be met by a massive military response and lead to a rapid extension of the conflict throughout the region. Secondly, the world would identify Azerbaijan as the initiator of hostilities, whereas it currently has some sympathy as the loser from the 1992-1994 Nagorno-Karabakh conflict -- that is, defending its territory integrity according to international law.

The worst problem is that a military flare-up could happen without anyone actually deliberately choosing the time. Some 3,000 people have been killed in and around Nagorno-Karabakh since the 1994 ceasefire. Bored, armed young men are within 20 meters of each other in places, snipers are active, and the international observer mission is tiny and weak. Bellicose rhetoric influences people’s minds, and raises the risk of a renewed outbreak of violence.

Q: Do you expect a deal settling Nagorno-Karabakh, and if so what will it look like? If not, why not?

A: The Madrid principles laid down by the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Minsk Group, co-chaired by the U.S., Russia and France, are still the best roadmap anyone has for settling the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. These foresee the return of occupied territories around Nagorno-Karabakh; interim status for Nagorno-Karabakh itself; a mechanism to decide the final status of Nagorno-Karabakh; a secure corridor between Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh; the return of displaced persons; and international peacekeepers and security guarantees.

The Turkish activism of this year has energized the Minsk process somewhat, and at times it seemed as though a deal might be possible. Unfortunately, the core issue – the future status of Nagorno-Karabakh, the procedure leading up to that final status, and whether it will have the right to secede from Azerbaijan even in a distant future – has proved just too raw and political a subject for either government to make compromises on.