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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Kyrgyzstan
Index
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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