Uzbek Independence
Central Asia had not sought the dissolution of the Union: the republics were net recipients of subsidy, and Uzbekistan's referendum in March 1991 returned a large majority for preserving it. Independence arrived as a consequence of decisions taken in Moscow, Kyiv and Minsk. Karimov, who had backed the August coup plotters equivocally, moved quickly to nationalise the local party structure, replacing Marxism-Leninism with an Uzbek national ideology built around Amir Timur while retaining the security services, the state cotton monopoly and the practice of forced labour at harvest. The cotton system was the Soviet legacy that mattered most materially: irrigation for the monoculture had already reduced the Aral Sea to a fraction of its volume, a collapse that continued after independence. Political opposition was suppressed early, most visibly in the crushing of protests at Andijan in 2005. Uzbekistan balanced between Russia, China and, after 2001, the United States, while remaining outside any of their security architectures.
- Year: 1991 CE
- Category: Political
