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The place where Bashkortostan's opposition chose to stage its demonstration in Moscow on 7 April had a certain significance. Protesters met on Lubyanka Square in front of Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) building and near a monument to the victims of Stalin-era political repression.
They were calling on the federal authorities to dismiss Murtaza Rakhimov from his post as president of Bashkortostan. The authoritarian Rakhimov has ruled the Muslim-majority republic in the South Ural mountains since 1993.
One of the protesters held a placard reading "Rakhimov's regime is arbitrary, corrupt, and violent." A handful wore striped uniforms supposed to represent those worn by prisoners in Nazi concentration camps.
Airat Dilmukhametov, leader of the Bashkir National Front, one of the republic's more radical opposition movements, told RFE/RL that Rakhimov has presided over a dictatorship where human rights are regularly violated.
"Over the past 15 years there have been many cases of death, murder, poisoning, car crashes, torture, illegal punishment," Dilmukhametov said. "A dictatorship has been established [in Bashkortostan]. This is why people are disappointed and many of them are scared."
The Bashkir opposition also accuses Rakhimov of corruption. It charges that the oil companies controlled by Rakhimov's son, Ural, have mismanaged millions of dollars through tax evasion.
The demands of the Bashkir opposition, however, are likely to fall on deaf ears. Dilmukhametov said he has little hope that Rakhimov, who was reelected president in 2003 with the support of Russian President Vladimir Putin, will be sacked. The Kremlin is widely regarded as turning a blind eye to Rakhimov's alleged abuses in return for his loyalty.
Unrest in Bashkortostan has been growing since police detained and injured several hundred people in a violent sweep of the town of Blagoveshchensk in December 2004.
Rights groups say more than 1,000 people were arrested and taken to police stations, where they were reportedly beaten and humiliated.
Dilmukhametov said he hopes the recent protest will draw Moscow's attention to the republic's problems in the face of growing unrest. "We are doing this [protesting] in order for our conscience to be clear in case the situation in Bashkortostan takes a different turn," Dilmukhametov said. "We are now warning the public and the federal leadership. This is one of our last warnings."
Dilmukhametov told RFE/RL the opposition movement in his republic was inspired by the recent mass protests that recently toppled the government in Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan.
Boris Kagarlitskii, a political analyst who heads Moscow's Institute for Globalization Studies, said he believes the Russian authorities will ignore the protest. But he argued that Bashkortostan's government is not viable and that the crisis could eventually destabilize the Kremlin.
"If you don't sacrifice Rakhimov, if you do not react to the demands of the opposition, which I think is going to be the case, then the movement will radicalize," Kagarlitskii said. "From being a movement against a local leader it will become a movement against Moscow as well."
According to the Bashkir opposition, Rakhimov's government has spared no effort to try to sabotage the protest.
Opposition leaders were delayed for five hour on 8 April after additional security checks at the airport in Ufa, the capital of Bashkortostan. The oppositionists said the checks were ordered by the Bashkir government.
They said airport officials also tried to confiscate boxes containing the lists of over 150,000 signatures in support of Rakhimov's dismissal. The boxes were later delivered to Putin's administration by the protesters in Moscow.
The Bashkir government was swift to fend off the allegations and branded the protest an attempt at undermining it.
NOTE TO READERS: Youth movements played a critical role in recent revolutions in Georgia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan, while new groups are appearing in Russia and Central Asia, much to the dismay of leaders there. "The Power of Youth" is an ongoing RFE/RL webpage that looks at the rise of political youth movements. See http://www.rferl.org/specials/youth/
The outcome of Kyrgyzstan's revolution is much less clear than its causes. While opposition leaders managed to restore some degree of order after looting gripped Bishkek on the night of 24 March, they have had more difficulty consolidating and legitimizing their newfound power. After some confusion, the newly elected parliament was sworn in as the legitimate legislature, although alleged violations in elections to that very body had sparked the protests that eventually led to President Askar Akaev's downfall.
A new presidential election is tentatively set for June, and five candidates have already thrown their hats in the ring. Meanwhile, the interim government of acting President Kurmanbek Bakiev, a former prime minister and prominent opposition leader, has been somewhat slow off the mark. It has been hampered by a less-than-transparent approach to appointments, apparent infighting, and an inability thus far to articulate policy changes that would mark a clean break with the Akaev era. The situation is still fluid, however, and any verdict on the postrevolutionary government would be premature.
It should be noted that events in Kyrgyzstan differ from events in Georgia and Ukraine in several crucial respects. Protesters in Kyrgyzstan united against the figure of President Akaev, but they did not rally behind a single opposition leader, as Georgians rallied behind Mikheil Saakashvili and Ukrainians behind Viktor Yushchenko. Also, Kyrgyzstan's geopolitical orientation was never at issue. President Akaev made efforts to maintain solid relations with both Russia and the United States, and Kyrgyzstan hosts both a Russian and a U.S. military base. One of the Kyrgyz opposition's first statements upon assuming power was that this policy will continue. During events in Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin publicly supported presidential candidate Viktor Yanukovych, who made a "pro-Russian orientation" one of the planks of his platform. The Russian position on events in Kyrgyzstan was much more restrained, and key opposition figures such as Bakiev and Roza Otunbaeva traveled to Moscow in the lead-up to parliamentary elections for talks with Russian officials.
With events in Kyrgyzstan still very much in flux, the eventual consequences for the rest of Central Asia will likely take some time to emerge. For now, the fall of Akaev has emboldened domestic opposition movements, especially in Kazakhstan, and unsettled current rulers.
Nevertheless, events in Kyrgyzstan cannot simply be extrapolated to the rest of the region. Tajikistan, for example, held parliamentary elections at the same time as Kyrgyzstan, and international observers found those elections to be similarly flawed; yet no protests resulted. Kazakhstan's September parliamentary elections produced a solidly pro-government majority amid opposition allegations of fraud and guardedly negative assessments by international observers; yet no upheaval resulted. Other factors play a role as well -- Tajikistan's bloody civil war in the 1990s continues to exert a sobering influence on domestic politics, and Kazakhstan's far-flung geography and comparative economic prosperity militate against an exact repetition of the Kyrgyz scenario.
Still, both Kazakhstan and, to a lesser extent, Tajikistan fall under the general rubric of managed democracies, with significant state-sponsored stage-managing of the political process and a resulting failure to provide viable venues for the discussion and resolution of pressing problems.
The evidence from Georgia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan indicates that when managed democracy fails, its failure can quickly become catastrophic for the existing rulers. The implications could prove especially relevant to Kazakhstan's upcoming presidential elections, for which the opposition has already selected a single candidate to oppose long-ruling President Nursultan Nazarbaev.
A failure of managed democracy is much less likely in Uzbekistan or Turkmenistan, if only because there is much less democracy to fail. Turkmenistan is an isolationist, neo-Stalinist dictatorship that obeys laws peculiar to that political genre, rendering any discussion of life after "president-for-life" Saparmurat Niyazov highly speculative. Uzbek President Islam Karimov maintains a tight hold on power, and reformist initiatives have been few and far between in Uzbekistan. But recent reports from Uzbekistan point to a dangerous combination of rising social tensions as a result of economic hardship and an authoritarian government intent on maintaining the status quo (see "Taking to the Streets in Uzbekistan," rferl.org, 28 September 2004). This comes against a backdrop of rancorous debates over the extent of the Islamist threat in Uzbekistan, with the government and its supporters claiming that a real threat necessitates harsh measures and critics charging that repression is fueling extremism and creating dangers where none need exist (see "Terror in Uzbekistan," rferl.org, 20 August 2004). The Uzbek pot has simmered stubbornly for years in the face of predictions that it will soon boil over. But its contents are indeed explosive, and turmoil in Central Asia's most populous country could have grave consequences for the region.
Beyond Central Asia, the proven failure of managed democracy in three post-Soviet countries could betoken an uneasy future for the largest and most important managed democracy of all: Russia. In Russia, we find many of the features of this flawed system in its classic form: state control over national television, a virtual political environment increasingly bereft of viable channels for communication between government and governed, and a squabble-prone elite that bends the mechanisms of the state to its own ends, often rendering them useless for legitimate purposes. The point is not that Russia, or any other country, is "next" in a parade of democratic revolutions. Rather, the cautionary moral of this story is that the ongoing breakdown of managed democracy bodes ill for the stability of all countries, including Russia, where this dubious experiment continues in willful ignorance of the lessons of Georgia, Ukraine, and now Kyrgyzstan.
NOTE TO READERS: Youth movements played a critical role in recent revolutions in Georgia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan, while new groups are appearing in Russia and Central Asia, much to the dismay of leaders there. "The Power of Youth" is an ongoing RFE/RL webpage that looks at the rise of political youth movements. See http://www.rferl.org/specials/youth/
UKRAINIAN PRESIDENT SIGNS ORDER TO WITHDRAW TROOPS FROM IRAQ. Viktor Yushchenko has signed a decree authorizing the withdrawal of Ukrainian peacekeepers from Iraq by the end of 2005, Interfax and UNIAN reported. According to the decree, the Ukrainian government will approve within two months a program for long-term cooperation with Iraq that will include projects on oil and gas development and energy transportation. Last month, Yushchenko told U.S. journalists that Ukraine might withdraw its entire military contingent from Iraq by mid-October (see "RFE/RL Newsline," 1 April 2005). JAC
MELNYCHENKO TAPES ARRIVE IN KYIV COURTESY OF RUSSIAN OLIGARCH. Two close associates of former Russian oligarch Boris Berezovskii, Aleksandr Goldfarb and Yurii Felshtynskiy, arrived in Kyiv on 13 April to give testimony in the case of slain journalist Heorhiy Gongadze, Ukrainian media reported. Goldfarb, who is head of the Civil Liberties Fund, told Interfax that he was bringing "recording devices, decoded recordings, and supplementary documents of [former presidential body guard Mykola] Melnychenko." Melnychenko made secret tapes in the office of former President Leonid Kuchma, including one that some believe implicates Kuchma in Gongadze's killing. According to the "Ukrayinska pravda" website (http://www.pravda.com.ua), Goldfarb said, "Our lawyers believe these materials are sufficient for the 'Kuchma conversations' to be included in the criminal case and used as evidence." Kuchma has claimed that the tapes are fake and were part of a plot to depose him (see "RFE/RL Belarus and Ukraine Report," 23 March 2005) JAC
UKRAINIAN PRIME MINISTER'S TRIP TO RUSSIA POSTPONED AT LAST MINUTE. A planned visit by Ukrainian Prime Minister Yuliya Tymoshenko to Moscow set for 15-16 April has been postponed, Ukrainian news agencies reported on 13 April. The Ukrainian government said Tymoshenko's visit was delayed because President Yushchenko told her to tackle urgent problems associated with the spring sowing campaign and rising fuel prices. However, Ukrainian Economics Minister Serhiy Teryokhin said earlier that the visit was put off because of the recent remarks of Russian Prosecutor-General Vladimir Ustinov, "Ukrayinska pravda"' reported. Ustinov said on 12 April that Tymoshenko could come to Russia in accordance with international legislation and protocol, but he said charges against her have not been dropped and she is still on the wanted list. Last January, Ustinov said that a Russian court could issue an arrest warrant for Tymoshenko and in that case she could be detained by police if she traveled to Russia (see "RFE/RL Newsline," 27 January 2005). JAC
The outcome of Kyrgyzstan's revolution is much less clear than its causes. While opposition leaders managed to restore some degree of order after looting gripped Bishkek on the night of 24 March, they have had more difficulty consolidating and legitimizing their newfound power. After some confusion, the newly elected parliament was sworn in as the legitimate legislature, although alleged violations in elections to that very body had sparked the protests that eventually led to President Askar Akaev's downfall.
A new presidential election is tentatively set for June, and five candidates have already thrown their hats in the ring. Meanwhile, the interim government of acting President Kurmanbek Bakiev, a former prime minister and prominent opposition leader, has been somewhat slow off the mark. It has been hampered by a less-than-transparent approach to appointments, apparent infighting, and an inability thus far to articulate policy changes that would mark a clean break with the Akaev era. The situation is still fluid, however, and any verdict on the postrevolutionary government would be premature.
It should be noted that events in Kyrgyzstan differ from events in Georgia and Ukraine in several crucial respects. Protesters in Kyrgyzstan united against the figure of President Akaev, but they did not rally behind a single opposition leader, as Georgians rallied behind Mikheil Saakashvili and Ukrainians behind Viktor Yushchenko. Also, Kyrgyzstan's geopolitical orientation was never at issue. President Akaev made efforts to maintain solid relations with both Russia and the United States, and Kyrgyzstan hosts both a Russian and a U.S. military base. One of the Kyrgyz opposition's first statements upon assuming power was that this policy will continue. During events in Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin publicly supported presidential candidate Viktor Yanukovych, who made a "pro-Russian orientation" one of the planks of his platform. The Russian position on events in Kyrgyzstan was much more restrained, and key opposition figures such as Bakiev and Roza Otunbaeva traveled to Moscow in the lead-up to parliamentary elections for talks with Russian officials.
With events in Kyrgyzstan still very much in flux, the eventual consequences for the rest of Central Asia will likely take some time to emerge. For now, the fall of Akaev has emboldened domestic opposition movements, especially in Kazakhstan, and unsettled current rulers.
Nevertheless, events in Kyrgyzstan cannot simply be extrapolated to the rest of the region. Tajikistan, for example, held parliamentary elections at the same time as Kyrgyzstan, and international observers found those elections to be similarly flawed; yet no protests resulted. Kazakhstan's September parliamentary elections produced a solidly pro-government majority amid opposition allegations of fraud and guardedly negative assessments by international observers; yet no upheaval resulted. Other factors play a role as well -- Tajikistan's bloody civil war in the 1990s continues to exert a sobering influence on domestic politics, and Kazakhstan's far-flung geography and comparative economic prosperity militate against an exact repetition of the Kyrgyz scenario.
Still, both Kazakhstan and, to a lesser extent, Tajikistan fall under the general rubric of managed democracies, with significant state-sponsored stage-managing of the political process and a resulting failure to provide viable venues for the discussion and resolution of pressing problems.
The evidence from Georgia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan indicates that when managed democracy fails, its failure can quickly become catastrophic for the existing rulers. The implications could prove especially relevant to Kazakhstan's upcoming presidential elections, for which the opposition has already selected a single candidate to oppose long-ruling President Nursultan Nazarbaev.
A failure of managed democracy is much less likely in Uzbekistan or Turkmenistan, if only because there is much less democracy to fail. Turkmenistan is an isolationist, neo-Stalinist dictatorship that obeys laws peculiar to that political genre, rendering any discussion of life after "president-for-life" Saparmurat Niyazov highly speculative. Uzbek President Islam Karimov maintains a tight hold on power, and reformist initiatives have been few and far between in Uzbekistan. But recent reports from Uzbekistan point to a dangerous combination of rising social tensions as a result of economic hardship and an authoritarian government intent on maintaining the status quo (see "Taking to the Streets in Uzbekistan," rferl.org, 28 September 2004). This comes against a backdrop of rancorous debates over the extent of the Islamist threat in Uzbekistan, with the government and its supporters claiming that a real threat necessitates harsh measures and critics charging that repression is fueling extremism and creating dangers where none need exist (see "Terror in Uzbekistan," rferl.org, 20 August 2004). The Uzbek pot has simmered stubbornly for years in the face of predictions that it will soon boil over. But its contents are indeed explosive, and turmoil in Central Asia's most populous country could have grave consequences for the region.
Beyond Central Asia, the proven failure of managed democracy in three post-Soviet countries could betoken an uneasy future for the largest and most important managed democracy of all: Russia. In Russia, we find many of the features of this flawed system in its classic form: state control over national television, a virtual political environment increasingly bereft of viable channels for communication between government and governed, and a squabble-prone elite that bends the mechanisms of the state to its own ends, often rendering them useless for legitimate purposes. The point is not that Russia, or any other country, is "next" in a parade of democratic revolutions. Rather, the cautionary moral of this story is that the ongoing breakdown of managed democracy bodes ill for the stability of all countries, including Russia, where this dubious experiment continues in willful ignorance of the lessons of Georgia, Ukraine, and now Kyrgyzstan.