Rumer, a specialist at Harvard on the Soviet economy, provides a crisp but thorough and very convincing survey of current economic conditions in the four Muslim republics of Kirghizia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.
The author paints a picture of almost classic colonialism, whereby the colony ships raw goods to the imperial center. Take cotton: on orders from Moscow, the entire economy of Central Asia is sacrificed to increase the cotton crop; as a result, it constitutes two-thirds of the region's economic output. But the Central Asians are not allowed to process the cotton or manufacture products from it; an astonishing 96 percent of the raw cotton is sent out of the region for processing.
One particularly fascinating consequence of colonial-style rule is the appearance of organized crime. Here is just one statistic: criminal investigations conducted in the mid-1980s resulted in convictions of 98 percent of the heads of oblast offices in the Uzbek Ministry of Internal Affairs.
Rumer predicts that Central Asia's economic problems will, for the foreseeable future, "continue to worsen," the region will fall "further and further" behind the rest of the USSR, and the result will be yet deeper dissatisfaction with Moscow's policy. Having already "lost a firm grip" on Central Asia, Moscow would seem to have little chance to hold on to the region for much longer.
