Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables and Figures
- Map of Central Asia
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Note on Transliteration
- 1 An Introduction to Political Development and Transition in Central Asia
- 2 Clan Politics and Regime Transition in Central Asia: A Framework for Understanding Politics in Clan-Based Societies
- 3 Colonialism to Stalinism: The Dynamic between Clans and the State
- 4 The Informal Politics of Central Asia: From Brezhnev through Gorbachev
- 5 Transition from Above or Below? (1990–1991)
- 6 Central Asia's Transition (1991–1995)
- 7 Central Asia's Regime Transformation (1995–2004): Part I
- 8 Central Asia's Regime Transformation (1995–2004): Part II
- 9 Positive and Negative Political Trajectories in Clan-Based Societies
- 10 Conclusions
- Epilogue
- Appendix
- Index
5 - Transition from Above or Below? (1990–1991)
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 July 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables and Figures
- Map of Central Asia
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Note on Transliteration
- 1 An Introduction to Political Development and Transition in Central Asia
- 2 Clan Politics and Regime Transition in Central Asia: A Framework for Understanding Politics in Clan-Based Societies
- 3 Colonialism to Stalinism: The Dynamic between Clans and the State
- 4 The Informal Politics of Central Asia: From Brezhnev through Gorbachev
- 5 Transition from Above or Below? (1990–1991)
- 6 Central Asia's Transition (1991–1995)
- 7 Central Asia's Regime Transformation (1995–2004): Part I
- 8 Central Asia's Regime Transformation (1995–2004): Part II
- 9 Positive and Negative Political Trajectories in Clan-Based Societies
- 10 Conclusions
- Epilogue
- Appendix
- Index
Summary
We wanted democracy and freedom. We read Jefferson and Madison. We knew more about democracy than Americans. We knew your history better than you. Yes, all that was forbidden, we read. And then we followed Sakharov, who led the way.
An Uzbek intellectual and former political activist, Tashkent, 1997The year 1991 meant different things to different people and groups in Central Asia. To some, like this Uzbek activist, it meant a chance for democracy. To others, it meant freedom from Soviet colonization, Russian dominance, or scientific atheism, and to many others it primarily meant an end to subsidies. Indeed, Central Asia experienced a far more complicated transition than states that had undergone this process in earlier waves of regime change in other regions of the world. Chapter 4 demonstrated that the nature and timing of the political pacts in the Central Asian cases were only the first element marking these cases as different from transitions in Latin America, Southern Europe, or even in Poland and Hungary, their former communist neighbors. The multilayered and multiphased nature of the Central Asian transitions, like those of the Eastern European and other post-Soviet cases, involved several almost simultaneous political processes – not only political liberalization, but also independence, decolonization, and nation and state building. At the same time, the Central Asian transitions were far less driven by mass ideological movements for democracy or nationalism than those in the Eastern European states or in the other former Soviet republics.
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- Clan Politics and Regime Transition in Central Asia , pp. 135 - 168Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2006
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