Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, June 12, 1990 TAG: 9006120459
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A/1 EDITION: EVENING
SOURCE: MORT ROSENBLUM ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: TASHKENT, U.S.S.R. LENGTH: Long
Since the 1920s, when Stalin redrew borders and declared Moslems freed of backwardness, Moscow has considered the five Central Asian republics as much a part of the union as mother Russia.
It was heresy to call them colonies - and outright blasphemy to suggest that they might leave the union.
But now, encouraged by new freedoms, Asians are returning to their mosques, reviving long-dormant traditions and, in their own languages, speaking of themselves as colonized people.
More and more, the question is arising whether a Soviet Union fraught with crises elsewhere can satisfy, and pacify, an increasingly restive region where a slight spark ignites explosion.
Officially, little has changed. Local Communist Party governments, still firmly in control, insist that Central Asia's future lies within the Soviet Union. The Kremlin agrees.
Apart from strategic minerals and rich agricultural land, political imperatives suggest no Soviet government would lightly relinquish its own territory.
Pragmatic Asians realize that separating themselves from the Soviet Union would be as complex as unweaving a Bukhara carpet. But in a turbulent situation no one controls, and few understand, Soviet leaders face hard choices they would rather not confront.
Ethnic rioting between Uzbeks and Kirghizis - set off by a dispute over land - brought thousands of troops into the Fergana Valley, the most densely populated part of the country. Soldiers sprayed gunfire at crowds.
"Moscow does not have enough troops, and it will not be able to manage if anything really blows," said a respected Soviet ethnographer who agreed to speak his mind if assured of anonymity.
Central Asia stretches from the Caspian Sea to China, an area half as big as the United States. Uzbekistan, with 19 million inhabitants, is the third-most populous Soviet republic.
Michael Rywkin, a New York professor raised in the ancient city of Samarkand and author of "Moscow's Muslim Challenge," put it bluntly in a recent interview:
"There are pogroms against Russians. They've left villages and now they're leaving the cities. Soviet leaders face the same dilemma as Charles de Gaulle in Algeria, whether to just get out."
Russians began settling in Tashkent a century ago when czarist troops secured most of the region. After the revolution, Soviet professionals brought education, industry and health care.
Despite official rhetoric about a single people, Europeans and Asians have remained largely separate. A few Asian men have European wives, but almost no Moslem women marry outsiders.
Most Asians say their hostility is not toward the outsiders themselves, but rather the stifling system that condemns them to an alien style of life with few choices.
Economists and sociologists acknowledge that, unless perestroika brings significant and rapid improvement, a rising tide of jobless youth will wash over the government's barriers against desperation.
As more Russians leave, analysts say, industry and services will suffer, making the problem worse.
Young Asians, long silent in fear of reprisal, are speaking out with growing vehemence.
"We don't want Communists or their damned system," said a youth in Samarkand, distraught over impending military service. "They should go peacefully, orderly. But Uzbekistan must be free."
Even party officials worry that the growing tension threatens their traditional values.
In Moscow, Bakhtiyur Khamidov, a senior member of the Uzbek mission to the central government, shook his head sadly at the riots pitting his people against Kirghizis.
"We have always been such a hospitable people; it is in our blood," he said. "You can imagine how bad conditions have gotten for this to have happened."
Khamidov assures that the Communist Party is in control and has an economic plan to overcome the crisis, but others, speaking privately, are far less confident. Many see a widening gulf between Moscow's vision of a seamless state and the realities of Central Asia.
The issue is less about politics than a choice between two diametrically opposed ways of life.
Since the days of the Silk Road, Central Asian Moslems have lived as traders and farmers, shaping their lives around the Koran and the rigors of life at the edge of a fiercely hot desert.
The mosque outranks party headquarters. Lack of meat for guests at a son's wedding feast is cause for lasting shame. Diluting their language means turning their backs on 10 centuries of tradition.
As Uzbeks and Kirghizis fought, Soviet Interior Minister Vadim Bakatin denounced both sides as "cave dwellers." To many Moslems, that was yet another example of uncomprehending imperial hauteur.
When Russians huddled in the forests, any Asian scholar will remind visitors, Samarkand beamed civilization to the world.
Rywkin argues that the Asian republics, historically ruled by conquerors and local emirs, do not have the democratic traditions to seek independence in the manner of the Baltic states.
Rather than a process of negotiation, there will likely be bubbling ferment that will boil over regularly.
by CNB