In the past month, the Central Asian country of Kyrgyzstan has experienced a protest movement over unfair parliamentary elections.
On October 16, then-President Jeenbekov, who was rescued from prison during the protests, resigned “for the sake of national peace”. (Japarov) was elected Prime Minister and acting President of Kyrgyzstan.
This was the third unnatural change of power in Kyrgyzstan in 15 years.
Kyrgyzstan is a typical traditional nomadic tribal state in Central Asia, with the Kyrgyz as the dominant ethnic group and a large proportion of other ethnic groups such as Kazakhs, Uzbeks and Russians. It was once one of the 15 member states of the Soviet Union and has an extremely high prevalence of Russian language in the country.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Kyrgyzstan declared its independence on August 31, 1991, and established a presidential system of government; in June 2010, a new draft constitution was adopted, the core of which is the transition from a presidential to a parliamentary system of government. However, the political situation in Kyrgyzstan has been unstable for nearly a decade.
In his opinion, there are profound historical reasons behind Kyrgyzstan’s political instability.
Xu Tao, former director of the Institute of Russian Studies at the China Institute of Modern International Relations, is a doctoral supervisor, a special researcher at the Eurasian Institute of Social Development at the Development Research Center of the State Council, an executive director of the China-Russia Eastern European and Central Asian Society, and an executive director of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization Research Center in China. Photo: courtesy of the interviewee
Xu Tao has had a connection with Central Asia since his youth. Born in Beijing in 1955, he followed his parents, who were transferred to Xinjiang in 1969, and lived and worked in Xinjiang for nearly 20 years, which is the region where China has the closest contacts with Central Asian countries.
When Xu Tao was studying in Xinjiang, many teachers came from the Russian brigade cadres of the founding general Wang Zhen’s army, so Xu Tao studied Russian with them.
After the resumption of college entrance examination, Xu Tao entered the history department of Xinjiang University in 1979.
After graduation, Xu Tao stayed in the university to teach history for seven years, and at Xinjiang University, he also came into contact with many people from Central Asian countries who came for exchanges.
In 1988, Xu Tao was admitted to Fudan University with the first place in Russian language and focused more on country politics and geography and culture. The following year, Fudan University increased the number of study abroad places to the Soviet Union. On the recommendation of his counselor, Xu Tao chose to go to Moscow University, Russia, to pursue a PhD in the direction of Central Asian history.
“The Russians have studied Central Asia very thoroughly,” Xu Tao told All Now in an interview. Therefore, it was a perfect choice for him to go to Russia to study Central Asian culture.
Xu Tao returned to China in 1996 and joined the China Institute of Modern International Relations and has been engaged in Central Asian studies ever since.
In recent years, Xu Tao has conducted in-depth research on Central Asian geopolitics and regional security, regional ethnic and religious issues, and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), and has written many academic books and published more than a hundred papers, including Asia-Pacific Strategic Field, Central Asian Geopolitics: History, Present Situation and Future, and Shanghai Cooperation Organization – New Security Concept and New Mechanism.
At the beginning of the century, Xu Tao was a visiting scholar in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, and from 2008 to 2013, he was a counselor at the Chinese Embassy in Uzbekistan, which gave him a more intuitive understanding of Central Asian countries.
Xu Tao is also interested in the recent political changes in Kyrgyzstan. In his view, Kyrgyzstan is a nation constructed by the Soviet Union, but after the collapse of the Soviet Union, it has left a “wound” that is difficult to heal for the Kyrgyz people. “The collapse of the Soviet Union not only deprived Kyrgyzstan and other CIS countries of economic provision, but also of their strategic self-confidence as a superpower,” He said.
Likewise, Kyrgyzstan is not immune to the West’s campaign to “transform the post-Soviet space,” which began in 2005 with the “Tulip Revolution,” a movement in which many Western non-profit organizations were established. “budding democracy”. The revolution was the first unorthodox change of power in Kyrgyzstan since it became a democracy, forcing the first president out of office and exposing the fragility of democracy in the country.
“For a country with a long history of nomadic pastoralism, they have a very strong tribal politics. The local people identified more with their tribal identity than with their national identity, and even more so after the formation of the nation-state. So after independence, there was an abnormal change of power, sometimes illegal and sometimes violent.” Xu Tao notes, “Without a strong figure to balance the domestic situation, it is difficult for Kyrgyzstan to maintain domestic political stability.”
The following is a conversation between All Now and Xu Tao.
The Constructed Nation
All Now: Can you tell us what you know about Kyrgyzstan? What kind of a country is Kyrgyzstan?
Xu Tao: In the 13th century, when the Kyrgyz were under Mongolian rule, they lived a nomadic life around the Yenisei River and set up the Wantufu. Since the Chu River Valley in northern Kyrgyzstan is flat and surrounded by mountains, suitable for grazing, it became the main living place of the Kyrgyz people. Until the 15th century, the Kyrgyz people were basically formed.
In Chinese history, the ancestors of the Kyrgyz (Kirghiz) used to be called “Fei Kun”, “Jian Kun”, “Qi Bone”, “Hui Bone”, “Mou Jyas”, “Jyas”, “Jilgis”, “Kilgis” and “Brut”, and they were active in the north and northwest of China during the Western Han, Tang and Yuan dynasties.
High mountains, such as the Alatau mountain range, which remains in the western part of the Tianshan Mountains, divide Kyrgyzstan into north and south regions.
Kyrgyzstan is divided into four northern oblasts – including Chukha, Naryn, Issyk-Kul, and Talas oblasts. Three southern oblasts – Jalalabad, Osh, and Batken oblasts.
This has also influenced the political landscape in Kyrgyzstan, where the country’s political power blocs are divided geographically into north and south factions, rather than left and right in the West.
All Now: Central Asia is a geographic concept and has not historically formed a unified nation-state. Your previous view has referred to “Kyrgyzstan as a nation-state constructed by the Soviet Union,” how should this be understood?
Xu Tao: The connection between the Soviet Union and Kyrgyzstan has to begin with Tsarist Russia.
The formation of Tsarist Russia was a process of external expansion, from the Duchy of Kiev Rus to the Duchy of Moscow, over the Ural Mountains, along the Volga River into Kazan, and then from Astrakhan on the Caspian Sea into Central Asia for annexation, and this period began to count from the second half of the 18th century.
After entering Central Asia, Tsarist Russia adopted a divide and rule approach.
In 1822, a Kazakh law was promulgated in Tsarist Russia – the “Statute of the Kyrgyz in Western Siberia”, which collectively referred to the Kazakhs and Kyrgyz as Kyrgyz.
At that time Russia had only a cursory knowledge of the peoples of Central Asia and had become the ruler of Central Asia without a serious study of the ethnic composition of its inhabitants. In addition to the nomadic customs of Central Asia, the people lived in a precarious state, which was not conducive to the division of administrative units by ethnic settlement. At that time the whole of Central Asia was known as the Turkestan Viceroyalty.
At the beginning of the establishment of the Soviet regime in Central Asia after the October Revolution, the region simply changed its name – the Soviet Republic of Turkestan. By 1921, the Central Asian Soviet government was going to hold the first Congress of Turkestan Peasants and Workers, and needed all ethnic groups to send representatives to the Congress.
At this point, the problem began to be realized within the Soviet Union: who to send? In order to prevent uneven and disruptive representation, it is important to identify the ethnic composition of Central Asia.
By 1924, the Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic of Turkestan had implemented ethnic demarcation and split into the five predecessors of modern-day Central Asia.
During this period, the Soviet Union also streamlined and merged the peoples of Central Asia, but the nations of Central Asia remained ethnically diverse, with Kazakhstan, for example, having more than 130 nationalities, Uzbekistan 129 nationalities, and Kyrgyzstan more than 60-70 nationalities.
The Soviet Union’s “Crime and Dream”
All present: what are the historical reasons for the large number of ethnic Uzbeks living in the Osh region of southern Kyrgyzstan, and for the frequent ethnic conflicts between Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan in the Osh region in recent years?
Xu Tao: When it comes to the conflict in Osh, it goes back to the Soviet demarcation of the year. The Soviet government consciously ceded Osh Oblast, where 80% of the population is ethnic Uzbek, to Kyrgyzstan.
Generally speaking, a nation-state should be divided into territories based on the number of a single ethnic group and a settled population, and in this way Osh should be given to Uzbekistan, but the Soviet government did not do so.
The central principle of the administrative division of the country is governance, and territorial divisions should be balanced against each other to avoid internal chaos, which should take precedence over ethnicity, local economy, transportation, and other factors.
In order to prevent the formation of independent states within a single nationality, the Soviet Union did not classify unified nationalities into a single state, but rather drew its boundaries with the lands of other ethnic groups.
The Chinese had similar examples in history, such as the Yuan Dynasty rulers who assigned Hanzhong to Shaanxi Province. Geographically, Hanzhong was already on the south side of the Qinling Mountains, and culturally the Hanzhong people spoke Sichuanese, but due to the topographic advantage of the “difficult Shu Road”, an independent kingdom could have emerged if Hanzhong had been assigned to Sichuan. Therefore, during the Yuan Dynasty, Hanzhong was transferred to Shaanxi Province.
Such was the case with Soviet demarcations, such as the northern Tajik city of Khujand, which is also predominantly ethnic Uzbek but is now the second largest city in Tajikistan.
During the Soviet era, there was a certain degree of centralized governance of the member States, and they were held in check against each other in terms of territorial division. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, however, the member states became independent states and began to consider their own territorial sovereignty and their own territorial claims, which led to conflicts.
All now: are there other points of dispute in Osh oblast than ethnic conflicts?
Xu Tao: Resources are the fundamentals of a nation’s prosperity. The living condition of nomads is not conducive to the development of national culture. They spend the whole day on horseback, have no fixed residence, and cannot produce handicrafts and other cultural bearers. The tribal chiefs want a settled agricultural land.
The main conflict between Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan is over the Fergana Basin, which is rich in water resources and is also located in the southern Osh region, bordering western Uzbekistan.
Under the Persian Empire, the Fergana Basin, the “land of fish and rice”, was fed by the snowy waters of the Tian Shan Mountains and the meltwater of the glaciers of the Pamir Plateau. A unified empire could mobilize manpower and build a good irrigation system. The land was fertile, the water resources were abundant, and the region survived.
Historically in Central Asia, no matter which nomads dominated, the Fergana Basin was the fat meat that was targeted. This granary could support an entire empire, and it was not only the center of Central Asian rivalry, but also a cultural destination in ancient Central Asia.
All now: as I understand it, the capital of Kyrgyzstan, Bishkek, is more developed in industry and commerce, while agriculture is more developed in the south. In fact, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, many Central Asian countries followed Yeltsin’s “shock therapy”, and most of them are still not in a good economic situation, is there a reason for this?
Xu Tao: In fact, Kyrgyzstan’s north-south economic development is extremely uneven. The northern capital, Bishkek, has a vast Chu River plain suitable for settlement, while the southern mountains make up 80-90% of the country, with only one pitiful river valley. The north is more modern, the south more primitive.
Gold mines are one of Kyrgyzstan’s few natural resources, the largest in the country being the Kurtom gold mine, but various governments have been corrupt and enriched, and ownership of most gold mines has been sold to developed countries. As a result, Kyrgyzstan’s local economy is not doing well.
The export of labor and re-export trade are important sources of Kyrgyzstan’s economy. Situated in the center of Central Asia, Kyrgyzstan is mainly engaged in re-export trade to other Central Asian countries and Russia.
One third of the country’s 6 million workers are out of the country, and 1 million of them are going to Russia. This year, due to the neo-crown epidemic blocked the original economic sources, the construction sites in many countries stopped work, Kyrgyzstan’s migrant workers were forced to return home and trade could not be transshipped, which had a great impact on the economy.
According to the data, Kyrgyzstan’s unemployment rate in the first quarter of 2020 is as high as 21%, and the external debt is as high as 4.6 billion U.S. dollars.
All now: a big reason for Kyrgyzstan’s poor economic performance after independence is that after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Kyrgyzstan could not have an independent and autonomous economic system because it did not have a well-developed industrial system and manufacturing base. What kind of economic support had been given to Kyrgyzstan during the Soviet period?
Xu Tao: Kyrgyzstan is an agricultural country, and the Soviet Union built an agricultural machinery factory in Kyrgyzstan to meet the needs of the whole of Central Asia, mainly engaged in the production of tractors and harvesters.
In the system at that time, the engines of the plant came from Ukraine, steel from Kazakhstan, rubber tires from Georgia or imported from the socialist countries of Southeast Asia, very convenient. Now, however, the source of industrial supply has disappeared, economic support has disappeared, and the factory has declined.
A similar situation prevailed in the Central Asian countries after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Tajikistan, for example, has a much smaller land area, but is rich in minerals and has an abundance of electrical energy. The Soviets built an aluminum plant in Kharkov, Tajikistan, on the outskirts of the capital, Dushanbe. It could accommodate 10,000 people during the Soviet era, but by the time I visited in early 2002, it had dwindled to about 1,000 workers.
So, for now, many Central Asian countries are preoccupied with natural resources, land and water.
All Now: By talking to Kyrgyz people and browsing through literature, I find that the older generation is still nostalgic for the Soviet era, is this a national wound from the collapse of the Soviet Union?
Xu Tao: It’s a complicated subject, and many people in Central Asian countries are reluctant to be independent because they don’t want the Soviet Union to break up. The same goes for officials within the countries, who, although they need power, cannot do without the constant supply from the Soviet Union.
Another reason is that after the collapse, the political and strategic confidence of these Central Asian countries as superpowers disappeared. The Central Asian countries used to face the world on the shoulders of the Soviet Union, and after the breakup their worldview that they all felt part of the Soviet Union collapsed.
When I went to Uzbekistan, I was mainly responsible for culture and education, and sometimes I could see the Soviet influence on Central Asia, Tashkent in Uzbekistan was the 4th largest city during the Soviet era, after Moscow, Leningrad (St. Petersburg) and Kiev.
During the Tsarist Russian era was the overall governance of Central Asia, and the University of Tashkent in Uzbekistan was the third largest university in the Soviet Union, larger than the University of Kiev in Ukraine. After independence, the University of Tashkent was divided into a dozen universities according to agriculture, hydrology, and economics.
In terms of culture, the western front of the Soviet Union during World War II was bitterly fought, the Belarusian-Ukrainian generation was devastated, and much of the fine cultural products of the time were transferred to Central Asia and a thriving cultural base was formed.
Perhaps this sentiment hit the older generation of Central Asians harder, but for now, the second and third generations have grown up since the breakup, and there have been significant changes within the countries.
Tribal power
All: Kyrgyzstan’s political landscape is divided not by left and right, but by the geographic location of the north and south, and the appointment of the President after independence has been based on “north-south rotation”. Why is this the case?
Koh Tao: Due to geopolitical and historical traditions, Kyrgyzstan is divided into political factions based on north and south.
The first president, Akayev, was a native of Chukho, the north, Bakiyev, who came to power in the 2005 tulip revolution, was a native of Jalalabad, the south, and the president who came to power in 2010 was Atambaev, a native of Chukho, the north. And President Genbekov, who just resigned, is from Osh oblast in the south, almost always alternating between north and south.
The Kyrgyz state’s own ethnicity, with a very deep tribal political culture, is present and functions in modern social politics. Every regime change is played out in the political arena by north-south interest groups, or tribal groups.
All now: the outside world says that Kyrgyzstan is the most active of the five Central Asian countries in emulating Western democracy, and the most typical specimen to study. But the country’s democracy is not quite what it seems, with a man out of prison becoming prime minister and president, and why there have been three unnatural changes of power in 15 years.
Xu Tao: After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, a presidential system was common in the independent Central Asian countries.
In Kyrgyzstan, the elements of a presidential system are indeed legally fulfilled. For example, the president is the supreme ruler of the country, and the legal dimension is that the president has the right to dissolve the parliament if there is a disagreement between the president and the parliament or between the president and the government. The prime minister of a country is nominated by the parliament and appointed by the president, and the president has the right to remove the prime minister from office.
Also, in order to avoid excessive presidential powers, in June 2010, the new draft constitution of the country was adopted, the core of which is the transition from a presidential to a parliamentary system of government. The new Constitution clearly divides and balances the legislative, executive and judicial powers of the State, and stipulates that the President is only a symbol of the State’s authority, acts as an arbiter in the political life of the country, and serves a non-renewable six-year term of office. Parliament is unicameral and has not only legislative and cabinet powers, but also financial powers, and parliamentary elections are held every five years.
However, for a nation with a long history of nomadic pastoralism, this people did not develop a unified and mature national outlook, and their tribal political culture was very strong. The local people identified more with their tribal identity than with their national identity, and even more so after the formation of the nation-state. After independence, there was an abnormal change of power, sometimes illegal and sometimes violent.
It is as if, when a clan leader rises up, everyone obeys unconditionally, and once the power is gone, the new leader quickly replaces his predecessor, and the process can be brutal and bloody; it is itself a society with a strong clan political culture. Even later, some Kyrgyz remained very sympathetic to the authoritarian regime of the Soviet Union.
All Now: on October 26, Zaparov, who became acting president, publicly stated that he would step down from the presidency at the end of December to participate as a civilian in next year’s presidential election on January 10. What do you think?
KHUTO: I don’t know how long Zaparov will be in power. According to the laws of Central Asian countries in general, acting presidents are not eligible to run in elections, but there is precedent for Central Asian politicians to use a variety of tactics to gain power as well. One thing is certain, however, it will be difficult to maintain domestic political stability without a powerful figure to balance the situation.
All Now: Actually, several countries in Central Asia have been unstable lately.
KUHTAO: At the moment, there is a basic agreement among the five Central Asian states that, in the midst of the overall world turmoil, there is an urgent need for stability first and foremost. These incumbent leaders understand this very well. Many of the factors between Central Asia are transnational and interdependent, and successive national upheavals are not beneficial to all parties.
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