ABSTRACT
In August 1991, the Kirgiz Soviet Socialist Republic declared independence as the sovereign Republic of Kyrgyzstan. Independence was widely unanticipated, but publicly celebrated with as much enthusiasm as if it had been won through popular struggle. Two months after Gorbachev resigned, the new Kyrgyz president, previously a staunch supporter of the liberalizing Soviet state, addressed the United Nations General Assembly, saying, ‘now that the center has collapsed under the weight of the crimes it committed against its own people, there is no holding back the will of the republics which have found their freedom in a bid for political and economic independence’ (Akaev 1991; see also Spector 2004). Sociologists clambered onto the bandwagon, believing then as they did later that ‘in the conditions of an independent Kyrgyzstan . . . the possibility for the gradual development of a national sociology appeared’ (Isaev 1998b).
