Ten Years After the Soviet Breakup: Disillusionment in the Caucasus and Central Asia

When the Soviet Union fell into shards, it was as if Western liberal democracy--at least on the level of words--suddenly vaulted far to the east, into the traditional heartland of "Oriental despotism."

Ten years later, all the countries of the Caucasus and Central Asia now have parliaments, elected presidents, and (Turkmenistan excepted) multiple parties. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) extends across the steppes two-thirds of the way to the Yellow Sea, and the North Atlantic Cooperation Council includes the homeland of Genghis Khan. When Western forms sprang eastwards, so did the hopes of Western democrats and the interest of Western businesses in the Caspian basin. Today, however, in response to the region's authoritarianism, corruption, and limited oil, disillusionment has set in. It is an appropriate moment to take stock.

A serious taxonomy of Caucasian and Central Asian regimes must separate out three political patterns. In the first, which predominates in most of the region, the ruler is a powerful president who typically was the Communist first secretary during Soviet days. There is no effective power sharing, whether with parliaments, local governments, or indepen-dent judiciaries. (Tajikistan is a special case. The Russian government forced its local allies into a fragile power-sharing agreement with Islamist guerrilla fighters.)

Yet despite these elements of continuity, there are striking differences from Soviet times. First, the major role that the "center" in Moscow played in the government of the republics has disappeared. Because the center had directed most of the economy, the selection of officials, foreign policy, and the military and KGB, its replacement by the independent republics represents a major achievement of state-building. Second, although these republics typically have government parties, these are personal followings with none of the organizational or ideological capacities of the old Communist Party. Government parties no longer carry out provincial and city administration, and the distrust of all ideology is pervasive. This is the situation in Armenia; Azerbaijan and its secessionist Nagorno-Karabakh region; Georgia and its three "entities" of Abkhazia, Ajara, and South Ossetia; and Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan.

The countries we are considering are very different from the democ-ratizing societies of Southern Europe, the Southern Cone, and Central America that faced inherited tastes for ideological extremism, authority, and violence. The reaction to Communist politicization of life has bred an exhausted tolerance and moderation suspicious of all authority. In the absence of efforts to organize and mobilize society, or to disguise the nature of rule, there is a yawning chasm between the rulers and the ruled.

Third, the basis for free elections provided by civil society, a free press, and a real multiparty system is at best no more than partly present in the southern states of the former USSR. While presidents and parliaments alike are chosen through multiparty elections, chicanery and vote-rigging are common. Parties other than successors to the Communist Party are mostly small and focused on personalities. A February 2001 poll showed Azerbaijanis thinking, by 57 to 26 percent, that voting did not give them "a say in how the government runs things." ¹

Yet in none of these states are elections a mere formality. There are always opposition parties and movements, generally headed by ousted officials, but sometimes by real democrats. One president, Armenia's already unpopular Levon Ter-Petrosian, demonstrated that there can be too much election fraud when he was forced out by the armed forces in early 1998. In my judgment, no president in any of these lands who does not reach office through a multicandidate election will be judged legitimate. Thus, while all of these countries do not qualify as what Larry Diamond calls "electoral democracies," some are more than just "pseudo-democracies." I will argue that the weakness of the state and the presence of democratic culture often allow the diversity of society to intrude into political space.

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