A HISTORY OF INNER ASIA

Summary and conclusion
We can summarize the transformations that took place in Inner Asia
during the last decade in the following manner: the five Soviet republics
of Central Asia have attained a double liberation – from colonial domination
and from Communism; Mongolia, already independent, from
Communism; Sinkiang, however, has experienced neither – except that
Marxist-Leninist dogma has acquired a different ring in pragmatic
China.
Mikhail Gorbachev’s accession to power, we have suggested, greatly
accelerated and modified a process that otherwise might still be the
property of political scientists and Kremlinologists forecasting the
future.A special feature of the Gorbachev years – 1985 to 1991 – were
several cross-currents that clashed in Central Asia and created a unique
political and cultural climate.This climate could be labeled “Central
Asian Spring,” for during those few years its citizens attained a degree
of internal freedom unheard of before.This freedom has been considerably
reduced since then – in other words, since the republics became
independent.
Gorbachev’s campaign against “corruption” in Central Asia was
overshadowed, from a historian’s vantage point, by yet another attempt
to stave off nationalism there.It might have succeeded – for a time – if
this statesman had had recourse to the formidable coercive apparatus of
the Soviet state which was still in place at the time of his accession.
Glasnost and perestroika declawed this apparatus, and the Central Asians,
instead of withdrawing into a shell of sullen or sycophantic submission
as they had been wont to do, counterattacked.By 1989 they had won
the first and most critical round.In the short span of two to three years,
they put Moscow on the defensive, accusing it of the evils of colonial
conquest and exploitation, of destroying their countries’ environment
and people’s health, of forcing on them a falsified version of their
history.
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