This century is drastically redrawing the map of old strategic priorities, moving some parts of the world into the shadows and bringing other parts into the limelight. Eurasia has become an arena where the diverse interests of global powers intersect, while small and medium-sized regional countries are turning into the subjects of big policy-making. Yet not everyone is content with a passive role for themselves and the ambitious leaders of a number of states are seeking to make their own game, both with their equals, for instance their neighbors, and with the grand players of international politics – Russia, the U.S., China and the European Union. Uzbek President Islam Karimov is definitely one such leader.

Karimov, the permanent head of an independent Uzbekistan, is the doyen of the entire corps of post-Soviet leaders both in terms of age (he is 72 years old) and time in the presidential office. On March 24, 2010 it will have been twenty years since Uzbekistan’s Supreme Soviet voted to introduce the post of president in the then-Soviet republic and elected Karimov to the job. Prior to that there had been only one president in the Soviet Union – Mikhail Gorbachev – and even that all-Union post had just been introduced at the time. Karimov blazed a path towards the presidency for all other leaders of Soviet republics, formerly ordinary local Communist party bosses who rushed to copy their Uzbek counterpart’s example. Eyewitnesses recall Gorbachev’s displeasure. “On March 29, 1990, during talks in the corridors of the congress of the Soviet Young Communist League, Gorbachev said that Karimov’s move was premature. However, he himself had lost influence on the situation in the republics by that time, so his attitude remained within the boundaries of personal perception,” writes Uzmetronom.com, a website uncensored by the Uzbek authorities.

Islam Karimov has never made it a secret that he does not separate the notions of “Uzbekistan” and “president.” The state that has been built there is in essence his personal project. Karimov’s brainchild has gone through numerous harsh tests over the past two decades, yet now the country is facing its most difficult trial. The fundamental geopolitical shift taking place in the world is forcing him to renounce post-Soviet practices. The challenges are too momentous to be dealt with using the experience of Soviet-era nomenklatura, even if bolstered by the nationalistic vehemence that always goes hand-in-glove with the construction of a new statehood.

CREATION OF THE FORM

“In view of age, I’m approaching the line where I must think more about who will carry on the model of Uzbekistan’s development that I founded in 1991,” President Karimov said more than eight years ago, in January 2002, as he explained the necessity of a referendum on introducing a two-chamber parliament and extending the presidential term from five to seven years.

Since then he seems to have become oblivious to the importance of thinking about a successor. “I’ll live for a long time,” he said once as he was beginning yet another term. His words were taken then as a clear signal to everyone who might aspire to the presidency. It sounded like “You won’t live to see it happen.” Some people did not.

Karimov stopped thinking long ago about assaults from critics on his de facto legalized presidency for life. With the exception of the 1990 elections, he has held presidential elections only three times over the past twenty years – in 1991, 2000 and 2007. His powers were extended in a referendum in 1995 and one more plebiscite – in 2002 – prolonged the constitutional presidential mandate from five to seven years. Three years later it “appeared” that this provision applied to the incumbent head of state, although the questions included in the polling had not implied that.

Back in October 1998 when the author of this article interviewed Karimov, he claimed: “Here in Uzbekistan the constitution clearly fixes the timeframe for the duties of the legislature and the president and we won’t play all these games with a prolongation or curtailment of terms of office, as this would call into question the stability of the constitution itself.” He said then that stability of the constitution guarantees stability in the country as such. Karimov claimed further in the same interview that Uzbekistan had created a system “under which parliamentary and presidential elections are held at practically the same time […] so that the moods of the people when they elect members of parliament should not differ much from the moods or problems they have when electing the president.” “I hope this system will remain for a long time here in Uzbekistan,” he said. His hopes have proven short-lived, since the system slid into history soon after that.

It is worth recalling that Karimov’s remarks were in response to a decision by Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev to hold an early presidential election in January 1999.

One more mishap typical of the Uzbek legal system and demonstrating the way in which “stability of the constitution as a guarantee of stability in the country as such” is understood occurred in 2007. Under the country’s basic law, presidential elections are held the same year that the term of the incumbent president expires – on the first Sunday between December 20 and December 31. The last time Karimov took the presidential oath before that was at a session of parliament on January 21, 2000. This meant that holding an election in December 23 (the first Sunday between December 20 and December 31) would contravene Article 90 of the constitution, which stipulates a seven-year presidential term. Karimov’s powers were thus extended for eleven months.

Human rights activist Djakhongir Shosalimov attempted to call the Constitution Court’s attention to the fact. He never got an answer, although the law obliges the Court to answer citizens’ petitions within a period of ten days. The Uzbek opposition, and many international observers in their wake, sized upon the extra eleven months of Karimov’s stay in office as an illegal usurpation of power. But the presidential administration did not bat an eye, all the more so that the accusations went politely unnoticed by the leading global powers – in Washington, Brussels, Berlin and Moscow.

Whether intentional or not, Karimov himself brought up the collision several months later in February 2008 when he visited Moscow just a month before the presidential election in Russia. Speaking in the Kremlin he said that he had “always advocated a situation where Vladimir Vladimirovich [Putin] would agree to a proposal coming from – among others – him [Karimov] and bring up his candidacy for a third term.” “I feel satisfied before my own consciousness knowing that an option like this could materialize and I am confident that nobody would have any regrets about it in the future,” the Uzbek leader said as he shared his emotions with the audience. “If someone were to say something about it, they would realize everything over time and this would be the most acceptable solution,” he added.

It seemed that everyone sitting in the hall felt somewhat confused, since it was clear that Karimov was speaking more about himself than about Putin. He himself needed a justification for the previous year’s decision to run for a third term in spite of the constitutional ban.

In Uzbekistan Karimov has had no one to report to for quite some time. He had to listen to “instructions from the voters” only once – in the city of Namangan in December 1991. That city in the Fergana Valley in the country’s south has a deeply-rooted Islamic tradition. On the eve of the first election Karimov made a courageous and almost unguarded trip to the city that had been virtually under the full control of the Islamic movement Adolat (Fairness), led by Tohir Yoldoshev and Juma Namangani. The two men would later command the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan.

Karimov later would never admit that he had had to kneel together with other Muslims while Yoldoshev recited a surah from the Koran. The talks were held in the regional committee building of the Communist Party that had been seized by Islamic fundamentalists. Karimov listened to ten demands, including guarantees for declaring Uzbekistan an Islamic state. Whatever one may say, he did fulfill at least one condition – he placed his hands on both the constitution and the Koran when he took the presidential oath.

On the other hand, the Uzbek president no longer needs support to prove the legitimacy of his rule, since he is confident that he is the only person capable of maintaining stability in the country. “Everything closes on me and that’s not accidental,” Karimov told Nezavisimaya Gazeta in 2005. “We’ve gone through a fairly difficult period of development when we had to respond to many knotty challenges of the time, and I simply had to carry all of the burdens on my shoulders,” he said. “Yet the situation will be changing gradually and we must generate a generation of people who will replace us.”

Karimov tried to convince the audience and himself that the formation of a professional two-chamber parliament would furnish the authorities with an instrument enabling them to “strongly foster people’s rule and the foundations of civic society, which will result in the emergence of a democratic state.” The last option would allegedly “rule out the possibility of a dictatorship,” which in turn implied “a tyranny” and “a diktat by one person or by one element of power.” The president dwelt on justice that should be sought and quoted a popular saying that suggests: “Let the one who has power have a conscience and be fair.” Then he uttered a passage that can be viewed as the quintessence of Uzbekistan’s philosophy of state construction: “We’re still creating the form and the main thing is to flesh it out with content. The same way that America has been filling in its constitution with content for over 200 years.” And he immediately issued an instruction to his state apparatus: “These categories of thinking should be assimilated by the members of the new parliament, ministers and judiciary officials.” Uzbekistan’s ruling elite has learned Karimov’s categories by heart over the past twenty years as it realizes that the creation of all of these “democratic institutions” does not go beyond the form. The MPs, ministers and other administrators seem to feel undisturbed in expectation of an order from the top to start molding the content. The task has been set for 200 years after all.

Karimov shared his reflections on “the internal protest potential that has been building up for many years” and on “the importance of a durable contact between the government and the population and the evidence of whether or not they keep up a normal dialogue.” “The worst happens when relations between the authorities and the people come to resemble a conversation of the mute… when the protest moods reach the extreme point, or when the vapor is hot enough to rip off the valves.” He rushed to add: “No kind of America and no kind of Europe are able to target the events correctly if society itself doesn’t crave abrupt changes.”

THE ANDIJAN TURNS

Where did all these wise conclusions disappear to three and a half months later when the “overheated boiler” exploded in Andijan, where the authorities had failed to heed the voice of the people demanding justice and fair treatment by the officials? The sentence that the authorities passed on the popular rebellion, albeit somewhat controllable, was unequivocal: all the people who took to the streets in protest against the unabated arbitrariness of local bosses were categorized as “terrorists and criminals trained in camps outside Uzbekistan and paid by its enemies.” All the journalists and human rights activists who told the world about the manslaughter organized in Andijan by the Uzbek forces of law and order were portrayed as “the stooges of Western secret services.”

Karimov, who visited Andijan at the time, claimed: “Not a single peaceful civilian was killed there, just gangsters. Firearms were always near their bodies.”

The official death toll of 187 that the authorities made public several days after the tragedy was never corrected afterwards. Either the government in Uzbekistan never makes any mistakes and was able to establish the exact number of casualties right at the peak of events or else it is afraid to name the actual number of the dead. In the meantime, human rights activists and independent observers say that no less than 500 people were killed in Andijan.

Islam Karimov has never recognized any mistakes on the part of the authorities, including the regional bosses in Andijan. This is quite logical: if “everything closes on him” he bears personal responsibility for everything. Karimov’s personal authority simply cannot be subject to doubt.

Yet the rest of the world was shocked. Even Moscow, which traditionally did not let itself criticize its CIS allies except for Georgia and Ukraine, aired notes of criticism. “A complicated social and economic situation and a certain weakness of state power… plus the presence of the Islamic factor and people’s discontent with living standards predetermines the volatility of the situation,” Moscow-based Mayak radio said on May 15, 2005, quoting Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Valery Loshchinin. It is true, though, that the tone of assessments changed after a telephone conversation between Karimov and Vladimir Putin. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who admitted that “many civilians died as a result of an incursion into Uzbekistan and we don’t have information about how this happened,” threw the responsibility on external forces. “It’s important to conduct a most thorough investigation over who gathered the group of people and told them to create a situation of this kind in Uzbekistan,” he said. These words were targeted at the external factor, but if you think about them, they could also have been addressed to the people who had been steering the country for many years.

The events in Andijan brought about a sharp turn in Uzbekistan’s foreign policy. The UN General Assembly issued a resolution condemning the government’s reluctance to view the incident from any other angle than that of the country’s internal affair. Tashkent vehemently turned down U.S. and EU demands to conduct an independent international investigation of the May 2005 tragedy. Washington and Brussels implemented sanctions against Uzbekistan, accusing its leadership of the disproportionate use of force while suppressing unrest. In contrast, Moscow and Beijing met the situation with understanding at the top level and that is why China was the first country Karimov visited after May 25.

The Uzbek authorities retaliated to Washington’s harsh reaction by forcing the U.S. to pull its troops out of the Karshi-Khanabad military base that was set up in September 2001 in the run-up to the campaign in Afghanistan. As regards Russia’s support, Tashkent had to pay for it. The withdrawal of the U.S. forces was followed by the signing on November 14, 2005, of a Russian-Uzbek agreement on an allied relationship that envisions the reciprocal allotment of military installations. In January 2006, Uzbekistan joined the Eurasian Economic Community (EurAsEC) and finally, after a long t?te-a-t?te meeting with Vladimir Putin in Sochi in August 2006, Karimov signed a protocol On the Resumption of Uzbekistan’s Membership in the CIS Collective Security Treaty Organization. Karimov signed the document after it was ratified by parliament.

It must be said, however, that the word ‘resumption’ is somewhat inappropriate, since Uzbekistan has never been a member in the strictest sense of the word. The CSTO formally came into existence in 2002, but three years before that Uzbekistan – along with Azerbaijan and Georgia – had refused to sign a protocol on prolonging its affiliation with an organization uniting the countries that signed the May 1992 Tashkent Treaty on Collective Security in the CIS. The Uzbek leadership explained the decision then by its disapproval of Russia’s policies in the South Caucasus (unilateral supplies of weapons to Armenia) and Central Asia (the increased Russian military presence in Tajikistan), as well as Moscow’s willingness to attend a unified position among CIS countries on all the issues – from NATO expansion to the situation in Kosovo to the war against Iraq. “Why should we unite again under one cap?” Karimov asked with indignation. “We’re a sovereign country and we have our own position on each issue.”

Uzbekistan’s joining EurAsEC and the “resumption” of its membership in the CSTO was met by many with a mixture of skepticism and enthusiasm. Its regional neighbors, above all Tajikistan, hoped this would lead to the opening of their borders with Uzbekistan for the free movement of commodities and people. Tashkent had promised to sign relevant agreements in the framework of EurAsEC by the end of 2006, but this has not taken place to date. Moreover, some sections of the border still remain mined. Tashkent said in November 2008, less than three years after joining EurAsEC, that it was suspending its membership in that organization. Karimov explained this position by saying that EurAsEC’s operations overlapped in many ways with those of the CIS and the CSTO. Also, it had contradictions with other members regarding the Customs Union, Karimov said.

There is a different explanation for this move, too. It had become clear by the end of 2008 that the EU was getting ready to lift the sanctions it had imposed on Uzbekistan in the wake of the Andijan events, and signs appeared of a thaw in relations with Washington, which inspired hope for an improvement in relations with the West on the whole. Consequently, Tashkent had to decrease its slant towards Moscow in a bid to restore the balance.

As for the “resumption” of Uzbekistan's membership in the CSTO, one would see quite clearly in two years’ time, or at the beginning of 2009, that this had been a forced move on the part of Tashkent taken amid a complicated geopolitical situation after the events in Andijan. Uzbekistan refused to take part in the setting up of the Collective Rapid Reaction Force (CRRF) in the format of the CSTO when the organization decided to set it up at Russia’s initiative. Specifically, Uzbek officials found it impossible to agree to the principle of decision-making on deployment of the CRRF by a majority vote rather than by a consensus. This reaction, though, was quite natural if one recalls the level of hostility between Uzbekistan and neighboring countries. Hypothetically, a majority of CRRF countries may want to use armed units to interfere in developments inside Uzbekistan.

GOOD-NEIGHBORLINESS IS STILL A DREAM

The pitiful experience of Tashkent’s membership in EurAsEC was not a surprise. Most officials, and not only Russian ones, thought that Uzbekistan’s accession would bring all regional problems into the organization, as Tashkent had not built relations of trust with any of its neighboring countries over the two decades of its post-Soviet existence. There are numerous reasons for this. The lack of experience for an independent existence among the former Soviet Central Asian republics within the borders randomly drawn by the Soviet government was augmented with ethnic egotism. One of the acute problems of the region is the integrated economic and water-distribution complex that was built during the Soviet era and that is extremely difficult to split into five independent parts. The difficulties could be settled in some manner were it not for a subjective but crucial factor – a rather thorny record of Karimov’s personal relations with the leaders of practically all Central Asian countries (this refers to a lesser degree to President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow, who recently came to power in Turkmenistan).

The vast majority of experts believe that a real opportunity for cooperation will surface no sooner than the rule of the incumbent leaders of Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan becomes an asset of the past. Until then, Tashkent will continue responding with a categorical “No” to any integration proposals. For instance, Karimov said in Astana in April 2008 in response to the Kazakh president’s proposal to set up a Central Asian Union that the potential of the member-states “should be comparable at least to some degree.” Besides, he said, “the politics and guidelines the leaders of the states promulgate should be comparable but not conflicting with each other, especially when it comes down to reforms and the envisioning of national development prospects.”

The validity of these statements can hardly be challenged and yet the “politics and guidelines” promulgated by the leaders of regional countries, given all the differences of their economic potentials, differ mostly as to the degree of authoritarianism. Regimes of this type have practically zero negotiability as they destroy the culture of discussion. Instead, they cultivate reciprocal suspicions and spy mania. A ridiculous, but quite typical, feature of the atmosphere generated in Uzbekistan is the long jail terms for espionage for Tajikistan that were issued a couple of years ago to women who wormed out Uzbek defense secrets “under the guise of prostitutes.” The situation in Tajikistan mirrors that of Uzbekistan. In February 2010, the Uzbek authorities passed an unexpected decision limiting visits by Kyrgyz citizens to no more than once every three months.

MENTALITY AND POLITICS

At the president’s behest, the Uzbeks have developed a habit of making references to the age-old mentality of the Uzbek people as a substantiation of current policy. A recent example is the court case of the famous Uzbek photographer and documentary filmmaker Umida Akhmedova. The case had a resounding international impact. The accusations against her claimed that her films The Burden of Virginity and Men and Women in Rites and Rituals, as well as her book of photographs Women and Men: From Dawn to Sunset, slandered and insulted the Uzbek nation. Akhmedova showed in her film the tragedies women suffer due to the centuries-old tradition of hanging up in public the sheets stained with virginal blood after the wedding night.

Akhmedova’s camera exposed not only the official happiness on Uzbek faces, but also their hard and far from happy daily life. The judges established that the details of the private lives of individuals were insulting to the whole nation, which incidentally consists of the very same individuals. International public protests saved Akhmedova from a prison term – the court found her guilty of all the offenses she was charged with, but granted her amnesty because it was the 18th anniversary of Uzbekistan’s independence. Quite in line with the Soviet tradition, which the ideologists of the Uzbek regime reject so rigorously, the artist was charged with parasitism – she allegedly “did not engage in socially useful labor.”

As the country’s main ideologist, the president sees his task in rebuffing the influences contradicting the Uzbek ethnic mentality and the people promulgating them. Whom official Tashkent has in mind can be seen from the official explanation given in 2008 for the ban on Igor Vorontsov, a representative of Human Rights Watch, to return to Uzbekistan and get accreditation. The authorities claimed Vorontsov was “unfamiliar with the Uzbek people’s mentality and was unable to estimate the reforms carried out by the country’s authorities.” Unofficially, the organization received a tip from Tashkent saying the authorities might consider a different candidacy, but he or she “should not be an ethnic Russian.”

The sensitive ethnic issue often emerges under the most unexpected pretexts. You may get the impression that it pertains to the personal emotional experiences of the president, an extraordinary, temperamental and sincere person (if the notion of “sincerity” applies to a professional politician at all) rather than to interstate relations. “The Empire [the Soviet government] looked at us as if we were second-rate people,” Karimov said in an interview. He remembers perfectly well how humiliating the so-called Uzbek cotton case, exposed by Moscow-based investigators Telman Gdlyan and Nikolai Ivanov at the end of the 1980s, was for public opinion in Uzbekistan. Many years ago Karimov told the author of this article that the events related to the case produced a profoundly traumatic impression on him back then. Along with this, he complained that accusations of Russophobia were deeply insulting to him. “I grew up amid Russian culture, I attended a Russian school and I could recite Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin by heart.” Karimov only began to speak fluent Uzbek once he became president.

Russia’s long-time popular pop singer Iosif Kobzon told me how Karimov explained the banning of his concerts in Uzbekistan. “Your songs make me feel as if I were a Soviet man again and I don’t want that.” At a ceremony in Tashkent in January 2010, when the Oath to the Motherland monument was unveiled in central Tashkent in place of the Monument to the Defenders of the Southern Frontiers of the Motherland, the president said that the old monument, built in 1975 to mark the 30th anniversary of victory over Nazism, “reflected the ideology of the old regime.” On the contrary, the new, purely Uzbek monument, the design of which was produced with Karimov’s personal involvement, “will remain here forever and unto the ages of ages.”

The dismantling of a monument to Soviet soldiers in Tashkent on a November night last year got resounding coverage in the Russian media. Moscow decided to stay away from official condemnations – contrary to what it did in similar situations in Estonia and Georgia, but the pro-Kremlin youth movement Nashi picketed the Uzbek embassy in Moscow. The situation forced the Uzbek ambassador to Russia to make a statement that the old monument had been taken down for reconstruction and that it would be returned in early May when post-Soviet countries would be celebrating the 65th anniversary of the victory of Nazism. Barely two months had passed, however, when the obvious was confirmed – the ambassador’s promises were but a mere diplomatic hitch aimed at cooling off the scandal that had started gathering pace in Russia.

One can only wonder what Karimov was guided by when he launched this demarche. There may be many root causes – from displeasure over a somewhat vague and disloyal stance that Moscow had taken on the fresh water supply and energy problems of the Central Asian region to irritation with the Russian leadership’s indifference towards Uzbek initiatives on a peace settlement in Afghanistan.

Tashkent has always found the Afghan issue to be sensitive and central in terms of formulating its foreign policy course. Karimov considers himself a savant of Afghan realities and he tries to demonstrate his knowledge in conversations with any high-ranking official. His last initiative was aired at the NATO summit in Bucharest in 2008. It suggested a resumption of activity of the contact group on Afghanistan in the Six-Plus-Two format (Afghanistan’s neighbors or friends – Iran, China, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Russia and the U.S.) and its subsequent transformation into a Six-Plus-Three formula (with the inclusion of NATO). The idea did not get any clear support, above all due to the absence of Afghanistan itself in it, although the Afghan government is recognized by the rest of the world. One cannot rule out that by putting forward this initiative Tashkent sought to reaffirm its role of a major country in the transit of cargo to Afghanistan and a party claiming to have special interests in Afghanistan’s north.

Quite possibly the demarche with the monument signaled another turn in foreign policy, this time towards the West. First, the complete lifting of sanctions by the EU last autumn could not but inspire the Uzbek president. Second, cooperation with the U.S. on the Afghan problem is picking up pace. Tashkent is getting commercial orders for building railways in northern Afghanistan and has been invited to join other projects too.

There was an intriguing coincidence in time. On the eve of the January 12 speech at the unveiling of the Oath to the Motherland monument where Karimov rebuked “the ideology of the old regime,” he signed a plan of action for strengthening Uzbek-U.S. cooperation in 2010. The meticulously specified list of 31 items envisions measures “in the sphere of politics, security, economic development, human dimension and in ensuring peace and stability in Afghanistan.” The document provides for visits to Tashkent by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, members of Congress and U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke. Uzbek officers will train in the United States, and some U.S. military hardware will be shipped to Tashkent. Consultations will be held on repealing the Jackson-Vanik amendment as regards Uzbekistan. On top of all that, Tashkent will assist the U.S. in the latter’s participation in the summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) that Uzbekistan will host in June.

The last item spotlights the evolution that has occurred in Uzbek-U.S. relations since the SCO summit in 2005 in Astana where the member states, backed by Karimov’s strong support, demanded unambiguously that the U.S. pull its military bases out of Central Asia. Given the fact that Uzbekistan has the SCO’s rotating presidency this year, its plans to throw a rope to the U.S. may challenge Beijing, especially if one recalls the aggravation of Chinese-U.S. tensions.

Incidentally, Uzbekistan’s presidency strangely coincided with the absence of the SCO Secretary General, former Kyrgyz Foreign Minister Muratbek Imanaliev, from a high-level international conference on Afghanistan that was held in London at the end of January. Uzbek Foreign Minister Vladimir Norov did not turn up there either. Unlike the Iranian government that ignored the conference as well, the Uzbek authorities did not offer any explanations at all.

The next day, after the media had published the plan for Uzbek-U.S. cooperation signed by Karimov, U.S. Ambassador Richard Norland had to make it clear that Secretary of State Clinton was not going to visit Uzbekistan – if ever – on the dates specified by Karimov. Another few days passed and the Uzbek Justice Ministry removed the almost strictly confidential plan from its open database where the document had been mysteriously uploaded.

* * *

“Islam Karimov is a typical Central Asian politician. His sophisticated mind of a discerning psychologist, ability for subtle mathematical calculus and the will that paralyzes the suite combine with the limitless personal ambitions of an individual who is confident of his historic mission. Hence Tamerlane as the historical symbol of today’s Uzbekistan,” the well-known Uzbek journalist Sergei Yezhkov writes about Karimov. “Over the past twenty years, powers from both the West and East have more than once stumbled over Karimov. He does not let anyone step over him. He makes them reckon with himself and with the country he stands at the helm of.”

“A classical tactic of Karimov’s foreign policy: he first brings relations with an inconvenient partner to the boiling (freezing) point and then comes up with an initiative to cool them off to an acceptable level, or to warm them up to it,” Yezhkov writes.

However, it is well known both from physics and human experience that a sharp change in temperature badly affects the things subjected to it and may bring about a lethal finale.

A truly historic responsibility rests with the generation of leaders to whom Islam Karimov belongs. The unexpected breakup of a huge empire forced the leaders of the newly independent states to seek methods of survival for themselves and for their nations. Looking back it is easy to find deficiencies and fatal blunders, yet it is far more difficult to make correct decisions during a general collapse. They created what they could, drawing on their own experience, knowledge and understanding of the ongoing developments.

But the post-Soviet era has come to an end. Global politics is getting less and less controllable and this poses an unprecedented intellectual challenge to all countries and their leaders. The countries that fairly recently were called “the newly independent states” are again facing the problem of survival – in a completely different environment and due to totally different challenges. Previous experience, especially as peculiar as that characteristic of Soviet-era leaders, is not just useless; it is often detrimental for an appropriate perception of reality. Particularly if an equal sign is placed between Personality and Statehood.