ABSTRACT
Chapter 2 described how the unexpected breakup of the USSR left the Central Asian states without experience in managing their own affairs, but with an infrastructure of educated manpower and of industrial and agricultural facilities, however depreciated and arbitrarily developed. Since its independence from the Soviet Union in late 1991, the Republic of Uzbekistan has taken a gradual, state-directed path to economic development, rather similar to its neighboring states. Although development of democracy, based on the rule of law and civil rights, is also part of Uzbekistan’s declared goal, in practice the regime has so far assumed an autocratic character with strong executive power in the hands of the President, Islam A. Karimov, formerly executive president of the Supreme Soviet of the Uzbekistan SSR.2 As we shall see in Chapters 5 and 6, the establishment of super-presidential, authoritarian regimes with considerable corruption and limitation of human rights has marked all the Central Asian states since independence, though with significant variations owing to their different material opportunities and ethnic compositions. All the new states of Central Asia quite naturally devoted their first energies to assuring their integrity and continuity. Karimov’s gradualist policy prevented the economic crises which afflicted Russia, Ukraine, and some other CIS countries, where the state did not or could not control asset-stripping, organized crime, ethnic violence, and capital flight.
