ABSTRACT
The years following Mikhail Gorbachev's virtual declaration of war on the Uzbek elites at the Twenty-Seventh Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in February 1986 witnessed a progressive hardening of Uzbekistan's resistance to central authority. This chapter illustrates milestones in the changing power relationship and political climate of the critical years 1986–1989. In February 1989, a storm of controversy with ethnic overtones was stirred by Uzbekistan's Moscow-appointed First Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs (MVD), General Eduard Alekseevich Didorenko, who had already made himself a target of Uzbek resentment. S. I. Yigitaliev described the role of the Uzbek Supreme Court during his four years as its chairman in clearing those who had been wrongfully accused. Yigitaliev said that his defense of justice had put him on a collision course with Tel'man Khorenovich Gdlyan and other Moscow representatives in the republic.
