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Tajikistan
Political Parties
As long as Tajikistan was a Soviet republic, political power
resided in the Communist Party of Tajikistan, not in the state.
Until 1991 the party was an integral part of the CPSU, subordinate
to the central party leadership. In the years before independence,
several opposition parties appeared with various agendas. Since
the civil war, the opposition's official participation has been
limited severely, although some parties remain active abroad.
Communist Party of Tajikistan
During the 1920s, Tajik communist party membership increased
substantially. But in the following decades, the percentage of
Tajik membership in the Communist Party of Tajikistan rose and
fell with the cycle of purges and revitalizations. Throughout
the Soviet period, however, Russians retained dominant positions.
For example, the top position of party first secretary was reserved
for an individual of the titular ethnic group of the republic,
but the powerful position of second secretary always belonged
to a Russian or a member of another European nationality.
In the mid-1980s, the Communist Party of Tajikistan had nearly
123,000 members, of whom about two-thirds represented urban regions,
with subordinate provincial, district, and municipal organizations
in all jurisdictions. The Communist Youth League (Komsomol), which
provided most of the future party members, had more than 550,000
members in 1991. The end of the Soviet era witnessed a waning
of interest in party membership, however, despite the privileges
and opportunities the party could offer. By 1989 many districts
were losing members much faster than new members could be recruited.
In August 1991, the failure of the coup by hard-liners in Moscow
against President Gorbachev left the Communist Party of Tajikistan
even less popular and more vulnerable than it had been before.
However, although it was suspended in 1991, the party in Tajikistan
was able to retain its property during its suspension. Just before
sanctions were imposed, the party changed the adjective in its
name from communist to socialist . In December
1991, the party reassumed its original name and began a vigorous
campaign to recapture its earlier monopoly of power.
After the civil war, the communist party remained the country's
largest party, although its membership was far smaller than it
had been in the late Soviet era. In the early 1990s, the party
rebuilt its organizational network, from the primary party organizations
in the workplace to the countrywide leadership. Communist candidates
did well in the legislative elections of 1995, although they did
not win an outright majority.
Opposition Parties
The end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s saw the
open establishment of opposition parties representing a variety
of secular and religious views. In 1991 and 1992, these groups
engaged in an increasingly bitter power struggle with those who
wanted to preserve the old order in substance, if not in name.
By the summer of 1992, the battle had escalated into an open civil
war that would claim tens of thousands of lives.
A branch of the Islamic Rebirth Party (IRP) was established
in Tajikistan in 1990 with an initial membership of about 10,000.
The Tajikikistan IRP was established as an open organization,
although it was rumored to have existed underground since the
late 1970s. The IRP received legal recognition as a political
party in the changed political climate that existed after the
1991 Moscow coup attempt. Despite its links to the party of the
same name with branches throughout the Soviet Union, the Tajikistan
IRP focused explicitly on republic-level politics and national
identity rather than supranational issues. When the antireformists
gained power in December 1992, they again banned the IRP. At that
point, the party claimed 20,000 members, but no impartial figures
were available for either the size of its membership or the extent
of its public support. After the civil war, the party changed
its name to the Movement for Islamic Revival.
Two other parties, the Democratic Party and Rastokhez (Rebirth),
also were banned, with the result that no opposition party has
had official sanction since early 1993. The Democratic Party,
which has a secular, nationalist, and generally pro-Western agenda,
was founded by intellectuals in 1990 and modeled on the contemporaneous
parliamentary democratization movement in Moscow. In 1995 the
party moved its headquarters from Tehran to Moscow. Although the
government nominally lifted its ban on the Democratic Party in
1995, in practice the party remains powerless inside the republic.
In early 1996, it joined several other parties in signing an agreement
of reconciliation with the Dushanbe government.
Like the Democratic Party, Rastokhez was founded in 1990 with
substantial support from the intellectual community; its visibility
as an opposition popular front made Rastokhez a scapegoat for
the February 1990 demonstrations and riots in Dushanbe (see Transition
to Post-Soviet Government, this ch.). In 1992 Rastokhez, the Democratic
Party, and another party, La"li Badakhshon, played an important
role in the opposition movement that forced President Nabiyev
to resign. The leadership of the much-weakened Rastokhez movement
also made peace with the Dushanbe regime early in 1996.
La"li Badakhshon is a secularist, democratic group that was
founded in 1991. The chief aim of the party, which represents
mainly Pamiris, is greater autonomy for the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous
Province. La"li Badakhshon joined with the other three opposition
groups in the demonstrations of spring 1992.
Since the civil war, several new political parties have functioned
legally in Tajikistan. Some are organized around interest groups
such as businessmen, some around powerful individuals such as
former prime minister Abdumalik Abdullojanov. All of these parties
lack the means to influence the political process, however. For
instance, the most important of them, Abdullojanov's Popular Unity
Party, was prevented by the government from mounting an effective
campaign in the legislative elections of February 1995.
Data as of March 1996
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