Stalin's latest victims

The Kyrgyzstani government deserves help in dealing with history’s dangerous legacy

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Readers' comments


Kurt Lessing

I think some commentators have a misconception of democracy.
The democratic bargain goes like this: I get a vote, and in exchange, if I get voted down, I will accept this without turning to ethnic leaders, religous authorities or mafia bosses. You need a fairly homogenous people for this to work. Tribalism is the end of democracy. In Kyrgyzstan as well as Northern Ireland.


I do understand The Economist's sympathy towards liberal movement in Central Asia, sharing belief in democracy myself. However, more reports I see from Kyrgyzstan, higher is my doubt in success of the liberty in this region.

Totally agree with Far-Far-Away's viewpoint - isn't it a little bit naive to think of parliamentary rule as a recipe to boost development of the country?

I do agree parliament guarantees bloodless power transition and correlates with forming of civil society. However, is this really a priority for poor population of Kyrgyzstan?

How many historical examples are there when poor countries developed through liberal system while
1. being far from global trade routes
2. not being backed by some superpower against another (as in case of Japan and Germany)

And on the contrary, there are lots of cases when corrupted failed states revived as strong power through authoritarian modernization (Ataturk, Pinochet, Stalin, etc).

To paraphrase Y. Latynina (russian journalist), I do agree democracy is the aim for post-soviet society. However, it is not a measure at least for poor societies such as Kyrgyzstan. Perhaps, while granting ideologies with attention, one shouldn't forget about things on the ground, the realities.

David Michael

'It would be fine to pin this on Stalin IF the Economist also proclaimed that those killed in ethnic strife in Kashmir, Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, Sudan, Nigeria, etc. were "Queen Victoria's latest victims".'


I suppose it would also be xenophobic to say that Stalin was a very bad man? We can't call a spade a spade because the spade happens to be Georgian? The reason that the victims of the crises you mention are not Queen Victoria's is simply that the legacy of the British Empire is much less straightforward than that of Stalin. Sure, the empire was xenophobic, and sure, it fostered racial and ethnic divisions. But it was not the unified evil vision of one man in the way that the Soviet Union obviously was.

Clearly, Stalin was not at the absolute root of the current crisis in Kyrgyzstan. But we can justifiably say that his role in it was very important and very deliberate.


"[The Kyrgyz interim government] has sometimes seemed more interested in settling scores than in its professed goal of democratic reform."

Sounds like President-elect Aquino in the Philippines.

"But [the government] intends to hold a referendum, which would, if the government’s plan wins public approval, make Kyrgyzstan the only Central Asian parliamentary democracy, with severe constraints on the accumulation of presidential power. That should give ethnic minorities more security than they would have under either an autocratic strongman or a winner-takes-all democratic system."

I take it the last sentence means that the plan is for a proportional system? If Kyrgyzstan is really so multiethnic - it seems to just have two ethnicities which together comprise almost all of the population - then maybe an autocracy would better serve the country. However, within the boundaries of being democratic, it's good they picked a parliamentary model.

Hopefully they were wise enough to make it unicameral. Just a few decades ago, these people were nomads and basic farmers. Their cultures haven't developed in conjunction with advanced civilization and will take a while to catch up. The political structure should match the culture. Keep things simple.


To Far Far Away

I agree with your analysis wholeheartedly, but I must take issue with your claim that democracy has proved an unmitigated disaster in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Please allow me to reprint here what I posted on another thread previously with regard the same epistemological issue.....

The very conception that democracy has been a 'failure' in Iraq or in Afghanistan betrays a peculiarly western bias in expressing spatial reality.

In the west we are often heard to say that democracy is a 'failure' in a particular state (or indeed that China, Iraq, Iran, Kyrgyzstan has been 'lost'). This stems from the predilection, which is common in western thought, toward viewing concepts like democracy as somewhere to which we 'arrive' or somehow something we 'achieve' rather than a continuum along which we remain inconstant and in flux.

At this moment in time Iraq and Afghanistan are MORE democratic than they were... This IS the ONLY point we can make, indeed the only point worth making..

In the west there is a tendency to think as if there is some idealised democratic instance or moment, whereas after having arrived there then term 'democratic' can be applied in full.

Even the US (while continuing to be mostly democratic) remains fluid along a historical continuum becoming more democratic at some points (Civil Rights Act, Brown v Board of Education) and less at others (2004 Presidential election, ongoing gerrymandering of electoral boundaries)

The linear nature of Western thought and expression often leads us into these cul-de-sac's of thinking.... We think that if only we could push a little harder or achieve a little more then perhaps we would arrive at that desired point where thereafter everything would be in a stasis.

This leads to all of our frustrations and all of our disappointments since of course we can never 'get there' (as 'there' does not exist) or 'get it right' (because 'right' remains forever relative).

So while your critique of the application of democracy in the first instance is correct, your analysis of the current state of democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan is skewed by the unconscious bias of inherent in your thinking

What about Bob

from article ""Better to pursue multi-ethnic harmony within Stalin’s hateful legacy than to redraw the map.""

Why is it better?

Democracy has proven time and time again to lead to violence, repression, and ethnic cleansing for countries not ready for Democracy.

Sorry to burt your bubble, but democracy is not always the answer.

go read the essay by Robert D. Kaplan, which was written back in 1997... for someone who with more honors than myself with the same opinion.



Talk about xenophobia.


I agree, except I think that, to keep from going bankrupt, we should just take all their oil, natural gas, and minerals. Oh, and while we're at it we should build some very large military bases and install new leadership in the countries. After that, we'll pull an Israel and start settling our people on their land. Okay, maybe just men. Kill the men and children, take over the women. BAM! New society :) If we're gonna be imperialist, we might as well go all the way. Isn't it funny how when it comes to my rights (as an American), I demand freedom and ownership priviliges, but when it comes to those sad people in far off regions, I'll just run up in there with a gun AND TAKE IT!


Well... sounds like plenty cause for another invasion! And conviniently our US army is already in the region. Boy, there sure are a lot of failed regimes around in the remote hell-holes of the world. After we're done with central asia, we can move on south to the middle east, and then southwest onto the horn of africa. Basically, we can keep sawing peace and democracy with fire and brimstone untill we are completely bankrupt.


@Economist: the article is well-written and informative, but your notion that democracy is some kind of magical ointment that can heal the wounds in the region seems, particularly in light of recent history, a bit overly idealistic. "Democracy" has thus far been an unmitigated disaster in Iraq. If it is doing any good in Afghanistan, one would need a microscope to find the evidence. A few years ago the Palestinian territories took advantage of some semblance of democracy to put Hamas in power. Russian democracy has been backsliding for many years, and China has become one of the world's two strongest countries with hardly any democratic reforms.

Democracy is not some kind of export commodity that can simply be airmailed into a country and expected to function properly. It is a complex societal system with numerous prerequisites, few of which seem to exist in Central Asia. Furthermore, these requirements cannot be developed overnight. Consider, as anecdotal evidence, the first date listed in my high school US history textbook: 1215. That was the date the Magna Carta issued. It was also the beginning of American democracy, even though the latter did not begin to take shape until many centuries later.

Tobin Q

Uncle Joe is up to his usual mischief-making, isn't he. And the Economist just keeps doing what it does best - insulting its readers' intelligence.


If there is any problem in central Asia, it's because of Russia (or Stalin?). Right Mr. Economist?

If hundreds have lost lives in Kyrgyzstan because of Stalin, how many lives have been lost in Balkans or Palestine or Iraq and so on? Was that also the doing of Stalin?

Come'on..any nation gets in to such conflict when it's leaders are incapable & powerless in handling the different sets/ethnicities of people. There is no one to blame but that nation itself!


So Russia has refused to help after a genocide has been commited..funny how when it was Georgia in question, and an exagerrated 'genocide' was also taking place, their tanks rolled straight in to 'assist'..I wonder why


Stalin is not the only one who has ruled that region.
Indeed, the current ruler is the Unitied States.


Help this barbaric government of Kyrgyzstan? Are you kidding me?

Did The Economist bother itself doing a little research on how this government came to power in April? Ms. Roza Otombaeva and her team organized and armed a mob, one similar to those in southern Kyrgyzstan, which then attacked the Kyrgyz Presidential building and national guard with bazucas and AK-47s. The Economist author, please do all of us a favour and look up the photos from your own archive!

This government didn't try to change the power vertical through peaceful means. Why do you think Kyrgyz in the South became so angry about the new status quo in the first place? Because Northern clan leaders retook the power from a Southerner (Bakiev) without asking anybody's opinion on this.

If The Economist could do us another favour and read local reports in local Kyrgyz and Uzbek languages, it would find that the whole chain of violence started in Jalalabat right after local Uzbek community had voiced their support for the Northern clan, the new bosses. Entire Uzbek townships were burned down for their "bitrayal" of the Southern Kyrgyz interests.

Now, to please and ease this southern crowd, the new government is letting them to carry out an ethnic cleansing against misfortunate Uzbeks. This is exactly why Ms. Roza Otombaeva and whole her team are still sitting in the northern capital Bishkek, waiting for the southern clans to calm down. She issued a statement yesterday, where she mentioned not a single word of apology to Uzbeks, 200,000 of whom have left their homes because of this barbaric orgy of destruction.

Just today, Human Rights Watch, a well-respected international human rights organization, published a report that says that the humantirian aid dispatched to Kyrgyz government by the international community is being distributed only to ethnic Kyrgyz and that entire Uzbek communities were denied any piece of this chunk of food.

What is really horrifying in this report is a case when an Uzbek woman was raped in front of her infant baby by a group of Kyrgyz military men when she went to ask for the humanitarian aid. Her baby was missing. This happened DURING the Kyrgyz-imposed cerfuw time BY the Kyrgyz military. Let's not even mention what's happening to Uzbek males.

So, you are saying UN peacekeepers? Did Ms. Otombaeva ask UN or US or EU for help? No. She doesn't want any Western observers to wittness Kyrgyz atrocities. She asked Russia and Moscow-led groupings because they are convenient -- they wouldn't expose Kyrgyzstan's shameful secrets -- they are all in the same ship. The whole movement to attract UN peacekeeping mission to Kyrgyzstan is driven by the Bishkek-based grassroots. Interim Kyrgyz government, on the contrary, is claiming that everything is under control, which is lie.

This government, which came to the power with blood in its hands, will never call anybody for responsibility. They will blame ousted president Bakiev, his family, external forces, snipers from Afghanistan or Chili, perhaps even aliens from another planet JUST BECAUSE they cannot admit to anybody or themselves that they, in reality, are just a banch of barbaric criminals.


"Stalin divided it into a patchwork of states whose borders were designed to fracture races and smash nationalism.."

From Königsberg (NOW Known as Kaliningrad since 1945) on to the Crimean Peninsula, to the South & North Caucasus [Armenia/Nagorno-Karabakh + Georgia + Chechneya + ..], on to Central Asia this has been the case!

The Ugly Side (US) of Humanity, this Tragic Tribal-War in Kyrgyzstan, is just the most recent REMINDER!!

ALL Borders are Artificial, Fake & Man-Made.......

Peace, Love & Respecet.


headline of this article suggest that Economist did not take lightly to criticism of the first article "Stalin's harvest" and doggedly continues with its editorial line to blame long deceased Stalin for current trouble.

By the way readers can search for another new article "Stalin's Harvest" on Economist website, it's much bigger and better written than the first article under the same headline.


It would seem that everyone will get get what they want out of the Kyrgyzstan situation..... on the backs of the victims as usual.

The Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan regimes will hold back on committing themselves to aid and assistance to extract maximum anti-democracy propaganda opportunities and reinforce the need for strong leadership over democratic ideals.

Medvedev will get to say 'I told you so'

The US while remaining relatively mute in the interests of maintaining the Mani airbase in the north of the country, will call for aid and relief to be internationalised through the UN to check Russian opportunities to increase their post conflict influence.

Russia will remain relatively mute though also calling for internationalist aid and relief: 1. to check any further encroachment of the US into the region and 2. betting that the such aid will be slow and inadequate they could step in to cynically alleviate further suffering and thus strengthen their claim to their supposed sphere of influence.

If a peacekeeping force (as opposed to an intervention force) is called for under the auspices of the UN or the CSTO, the Russians will claim the right to lead it and again try and bolster their claim to regional hegemony and great power status

Everyone will wait (has waited?) until the violence has subsided before intervening.

The victims of course will pay the price for all of this.

Jai Prakash Sharma

The Kyrgyzstan situation does seem to be a cumulative result of inter-ethnic rivalry between the majority Kyrgyz and minority Uzbeks, and a long spell of authoritarian rule, sustained through personalised control of power and denial of democratic rights to the people, particularly the ethnic minorities, compounded further by external interference of outside powers. The anti-Uzbek violence that began in Osh is engulfing rest of the Kyrgyz regions with taking the form of an organised ethnic cleansing and anti-Uzbek pogrom, clearly with the official backing from the rogue elements of government and the military. It also does reflect an intense power struggle between the ousted president Kurmanbek S. Bakiyev and the shaky ruling coalition led by Roza Otunbayeva, who wrested control over power by igniting popular unrest. The worsening Kyrgyz situation does seem to have potential to escalate into a violent ethnic strife, that if not arrested might shake up the whole of the Central Asia, already an explosive and volatile region, and the centre of global power rivalry. An urgent intervention by the UN and the international community, therefore, is called for in Kyrgyzstan, in order to prevent the crisis from further escalation.



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