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Kyrgyzstan
Historical Background
ELEVATED TO THE STATUS of a union republic by Joseph V. Stalin
in 1936, the Kyrgyz Soviet Socialist Republic was until 1990 one
of the poorest, quietest, and most conservative of all the Soviet
republics. It was the Kyrgyz Republic that celebrated the election
of a sheepherder as president of its parliamentary executive committee,
the Presidium, in 1987. Three years later, however, that quiescence
ended, and Kyrgyzstan's history as a separate nation began.
Kyrgyzstan began the new phase of its existence by declaring
independence in August 1991. At that point, it possessed a combination
of useful resources and threatening deficiencies. Geographic location
fits in both categories; landlocked deep inside the Asian continent,
Kyrgyzstan has minimal natural transportation routes available
to serve its economic development, and its isolation has been
an obstacle in the campaign to gain international attention. On
the other hand, Kyrgyzstan also is isolated from most of the Asian
trouble spots (excepting Tajikistan), making national security
a relatively low priority. The natural resources that Kyrgyzstan
possesses--primarily gold, other minerals, and abundant hydroelectric
power--have not been managed well enough to make them an asset
in pulling the republic up from the severe economic shock of leaving
the secure, if limiting, domain of the Soviet Union.
In the mid-1990s, the most ambitious economic and political reform
program in Central Asia caused more frustration than satisfaction
among Kyrgyzstan's citizens, largely because the republic inherited
neither an economic infrastructure nor a political tradition upon
which to base the rapid transitions envisioned by President Askar
Akayev's first idealistic blueprints. Although some elements of
reform (privatization, for example) went into place quickly, the
absence of others (credit from a commercial banking system, for
example) brought the overall system to a halt, causing high unemployment
and frustration. By 1995, democratic reform seemed a victim of
that frustration, as Akayev increasingly sought to use personal
executive power in promoting his policies for economic growth,
a pattern that became typical in the Central Asian countries'
first years of independence.
Since independence Kyrgyzstan has made impressive strides in
some regards such as creating genuinely free news media and fostering
an active political opposition. At the same time, the grim realities
of the country's economic position, which exacerbate the clan-
and family-based political tensions that have always remained
beneath the surface of national life, leave long-term political
and economic prospects clouded at best. Kyrgyzstan has no desire
to return to Russian control, yet economic necessity has forced
the government to look to Moscow for needed financial support
and trade.
Data as of March 1996
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