Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
of the different nationalities, and each with long-standing claims to the
land. Everyone had to admit that only a strong central government could
keep order on such a map. The present face of Central Asia is a product
of this 'divide and rule' technique.
Dilip Hiro's
Inside
Central Asia
gives
perhaps the best
general introduc-
tion to the recent
(and not so
recent) political
history of the
modern Central
Asian republics.
World War II
'The Great Patriotic War Against Fascist Germany' galvanised the whole
USSR and in the course of the war Central Asia was drawn further into
the Soviet fold. Economically the region lost ground from 1941 to 1945
but a sizeable boost came in the form of industrial enterprises arriv-
ing ready-to-assemble in train cars: evacuated from the war-threatened
parts of the USSR, they were relocated to the remote safety of Central
Asia. They remained there after the war and kept on producing.
For many wartime draftees, WWII presented an opportunity to es-
cape the oppressive Stalinist state. One Central Asian scholar claims that
more than half of the 1.5 million Central Asians mobilised in the war
deserted. Large numbers of them, as well as prisoners of war, actually
turned their coats and fought for the Germans against the Soviets.
Agriculture
The tsarist pattern for the Central Asian economy had been over-
whelmingly agricultural; so it was with the Soviets. Each republic was
'encouraged' to specialise in a limited range of products, which made
their individual economies dependent on the Soviet whole. Tajik SSR
built the world's fourth-largest aluminium plant but all the aluminium
had to be brought in from outside the region.
The Uzbek SSR soon supplied no less than 64% of Soviet cotton, mak-
ing the USSR the world's second-largest cotton producer after the USA.
Into the cotton bowl poured the diverted waters of the Syr-Darya and
Amu-Darya, while downstream the Aral Sea was left to dry up. Over the
cotton-scape was spread a whole list of noxious agricultural chemicals,
which have wound up polluting waters, blowing around in dust storms,
and causing serious health problems for residents of the area.
Another noxious effect of cotton monoculture was what's known as
the 'cotton affair' of the Brezhnev years. A huge ring of corrupt officials
habitually over-reported cotton production, swindling Moscow out of bil-
lions of roubles. When the lid finally blew off in the early 1980s, 2600
participants were arrested and more than 50,000 were kicked out of of-
fice, including Brezhnev's own son-in-law.
In 1954 the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev launched the Virgin
Lands campaign. The purpose was to jolt agricultural production, espe-
cially of wheat, to new levels. The method was to put Kazakh SSR's enor-
mous steppes under the plough and resettle huge numbers of Russians
During WWII mil-
lions of Koreans,
Volga Germans,
Poles, Chechens
and others whom
Stalin suspected
might aid the
enemy were de-
ported from the
borderlands and
forcibly relocated
en masse. They
now form sizeable
minorities in all
the Central Asian
republics.
1954
Virgin lands campaign
in Kazakhstan leads to
Slav immigration and,
eventually, massive
environmental degra-
dation.
1961
Four years after the
Sputnik satellite, Yuri
Gagarin blasts of from
the Baykonur Cosmo-
drome in Kazakhstan to
become the irst man in
space. The irst women
in space sets of three
years later.
1966
Tashkent is levelled in
earthquake, leaving
300,000 homeless.
Plans for a new So-
viet showcase city are
drawn up.
1959-82
Rule of Sharaf Rashidov
ushers in an era of
corruption and cotton-
related scandal in So-
viet Uzbekistan, though
many locals praise him
for promoting Uzbek
regional interests and
nationalism.
