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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Tajikistan
Index
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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