Postcards from Stanland

by David H. Mould

  In the factories of Central Asia, workers continued to show up, but the targets and subsidies from Moscow had ended, and there were few new customers. Some factories tried to adapt to the market economy, but most lacked the money to invest in new equipment and compete for quality and price with industries in other countries. Compared with other Soviet republics, the industrial base of the Kyrgyz SSR was small because Moscow considered the region too remote to become a major industrial producer. However, factories for agricultural processing, textiles, and household goods employed thousands in the Chuy and Fergana Valleys. By the mid-1990s, most had closed. Almost all the canned goods, clothes, shoes, and pots and pans at the bazaar were imported from China and other Asian countries.

  Kyrgyzstan struggled to adopt the reforms that donor countries and the International Monetary Fund said were needed to qualify for loans and aid and to build a market economy. The government abandoned subsidies and price controls, and replaced the Russian ruble with a new currency, the som. The pace of reform caused massive economic dislocation; in one year, inflation ran close to 1,000 percent, devastating people on pensions and fixed incomes. With international support, the government eventually stabilized the currency and brought inflation down to manageable levels, but economic recovery remained slow, and poverty rates increased.

  Official reports tell the story of Kyrgyzstan’s economic collapse in sanitized, bureaucratic terms—the language of economists, policymakers, and development experts. The calculations were at the macro level—cold measurements of Gross Domestic Product, consumer price indexes, output by economic sector, government debt, foreign direct investment. These were often coupled with Pollyanna-like projections about foreign direct investment, government bond auctions and the reform of the financial services sector. In the mid-1990s, it was questionable whether Kyrgyzstan even had a financial services sector to reform. The som had been devalued, inflation remained high, and almost no one trusted the banks to keep their money safe. With few deposits, banks had little money to lend, and when they made loans, it was at ruinous 30 percent interest rates. If you wanted to start a new business, you asked your family to lend or give you the money. Even the loan sharks at the bazaar charged less interest than the banks.

  The economic statistics were sometimes based on questionable data. One year the government, in an attempt to convince foreign donors and investors that the economy was picking up, declared that the unemployment rate had dropped below 10 percent for the first time since independence. Even government supporters were incredulous. It turned out that in its sample the statistical agency had included every tout hawking cigarettes, pirated cassettes, and homebrew on the streets as a “self-employed market vendor.” The real rate was probably at least 40 percent.

  None of the reports and statistics told the human stories of dislocation, especially for industrial workers. Their skills were not needed in the new economy, and there were few opportunities for retraining. Some left for Russia, hoping to find jobs, but the situation in many Russian regions was as bad as in Central Asia. A few started private businesses or worked as drivers. Some just gave up. It was not only the loss of income, devastating though that was. It was the loss of purpose, dignity, and respect. They had been the breadwinners for their families; now they had no jobs and no prospects. In some families, women became the main wage earners, which led some husbands to feel their loss of status more intensely. Back in the good old days, industrial workers could afford a bottle of vodka or cognac for a party or holiday celebration. Now some turned to the bottle to try to forget their plight. Official reports on the economy do not figure in the social costs of alcoholism, depression, broken marriages, domestic violence, and suicides. It is not surprising that the engineers, miners, and steelworkers denounced Gorbachev as a traitor and cursed a future that seemed to offer them nothing.

  At the Osh Bazaar

  A man walks into a shop and asks, “Don’t you have any fish?” The shop assistant replies, “You’ve got it wrong. This is a butcher’s—we don’t have any meat. They don’t have any fish in the fish shop across the street!”

  In the Soviet era, all shops—from the Tsum central department store to the small corner store—were state-owned and -operated and numbered, with fixed prices and limited selection. Shoppers complained of long lines and surly customer service. In some areas, seasonal shortages of basic foodstuffs—bread, meat, dairy products, fruits, and vegetables—were common.

  An underground retail sector existed alongside the state-run shops. Prices were higher, but the quality was better, and some items were simply not sold in state-run stores. For Levis or Marlboros, you needed to talk to the guy in the leather jacket who hung around behind the Palace of Culture. In agricultural regions such as the Fergana Valley, some city dwellers had dachas where they grew apples, apricots, peaches, and cherries, and raised vegetables; they canned for the winter months and sold surplus to neighbors and friends. The police periodically cracked down on the underground economy, especially when it involved large shipments of alcohol, cigarettes, or consumer electronics. But it was not worth the effort to stop a babushka selling tomatoes or strawberry jam to her neighbors in the apartment block, or even to stop the production and sale of moonshine called samogon (translated literally as “self-run”), the homemade distilled alcoholic concoction usually made from sugar, beets, potatoes, bread, or fruit.

  In many ways, the state shops were a Potemkin Village—impressive facades, with empty shelves inside. And so the Soviets quietly allowed business in the informal economy to keep running, especially at the bazaars. In Osh, the massive Jayma bazaar which sprawls along the western bank of the Ak-Burra River, winding up dozens of side streets and alleys, had been one of the great markets on the Silk Road since medieval times. Today, it is open seven days a week, and thronged on Friday and Sunday, the traditional market days. It is still primarily an agricultural market, with slaughterhouses and warehouses. One section is piled high with bales of hay; in another, live chickens are sold; in another, raw cotton and wool; nearby, blacksmiths forge horseshoes, nails, stovepipes, cooking pots, and traditional Uzbek ornamental knives. In the summer, the market bulges with fresh produce—peaches, apricots, oranges, cherries, grapes, melons, and vegetables. Even in winter, apples, pears, figs, pomegranates, potatoes, onions, and carrots are abundant, and dried apricots, raisins, pistachios, almonds, and walnuts are sold year round. Uzgen rice—the main ingredient of the Uzbek national dish plov, a lamb pilaf with carrots, onions, and hot peppers—is sold from open bags. Lipioshki (flatbread) is baked in tandoori ovens. Butter comes by the slab, sugar in huge yellow crystalline lumps. Shashlyk (marinated mutton or beef kebabs, served with vinegary onions), laghman (a Uighur spicy noodle and vegetable soup), manti (dumplings stuffed with diced lamb and onion), and samsa (pastry filled with spicy meat or vegetables) are sold from stalls.

  Even for a seasoned traveler, the sights, sounds, and crush of people can be overwhelming. Ear-splitting commercials for local businesses blast out over the tinny speakers of the public address system, forcing the bootleg music vendors to crank up the volume on their boom boxes, playing the latest Turkish and Chinese pop hits. In the auto section, there’s a brisk trade in used alternators, batteries, worn belts and tires; engine oil, sold in mason jars, looks as if it’s already serviced a fleet of diesel buses. Although traditional silk, wool, and cotton fabrics are sold, the garment district has largely been taken over by vendors hawking cheap imports from India, Pakistan, Iran, and Turkey with fake (and often misspelled) designer labels. The unofficial money exchanges do brisk business. For the brave investor, there was even a financial services sector, of sorts—a group of burly men with shaven heads dressed in trainers hawking share certificates for newly privatized companies.

  Leaving Kyrgyzstan

  Three days before Christmas in 1995, I took the flight north from Osh to Bishkek to report in to USIS, and then fly back to the United States. After three weeks, I left the city with mixed fee
lings. I looked forward to spending the holidays with Stephanie, but worried about the future of the Osh Media Resource Center. And I felt a bond with the people with whom I had worked, who had helped me begin to understand their country and culture and the challenges they faced. I had no idea of whether I would ever see Kyrgyzstan again. Little did I know that, less than a year later, I would be returning to Osh. This time it was not on a Yak-40, but in a beat-up Lada with a case of vodka in the trunk.

  three

  How Do You Say “Rump Roast”?

  The Twelve Suitcases

  In June 1996, the news I had been waiting for finally came. I would be going back to Kyrgyzstan in September for a one-year Fulbright Fellowship to teach journalism and mass communication at the state university in Bishkek, guest-lecture at other universities, and work with journalists and the new commercial TV stations that were starting up. Stephanie gamely agreed to join me for the year.

  Fulbright scholar awards are typically made in the spring. That leaves enough time to apply for an academic leave, find a renter and pet-sitter, sort out the bills and bank accounts, and figure out what to pack. Unfortunately in 1996, politics intervened. I really can’t blame House Speaker Newt Gingrich, the Republican Congress, or President Bill Clinton. They were fighting over the federal budget and funding for Medicare, education, and the environment. Sending me to Kyrgyzstan did not require raising the federal debt limit. Nevertheless, the two government shutdowns (six days in November 1995 and twenty-two days in December 1995–January 1996) had a knock-on effect as spending bills and appropriations were delayed. Among the casualties was the Council for the International Exchange of Scholars (CIES), which administers the Fulbright Program. My Fulbright had been approved, the program officer assured me, but CIES did not yet have the money. I should certainly not do anything foolish, such as rent the house or buy an air ticket, until funding was confirmed.

  When it was, CIES hurriedly arranged an orientation session in Washington, DC, for scholars and student awardees heading for Asia. It was standing-room only for India and China but less than a dozen gathered for the Central Asia briefing. It had taken a couple of years for the Fulbright program to get going in Central Asia, so few scholars and students had been there. An anthropologist who had done research in Kyrgyzstan presented a slide show of ancient sites and talked about nomadic culture and oral traditions. A nursing professor who had been in Uzbekistan talked about her attempts to educate her students about bad cholesterol. Her teaching included public health movies; the students’ favorite was called Killer Fat. No one discussed the higher education system, told us what to pack, or what we could buy at the bazaar in January.

  In the mid-1990s, there were few resources for Westerners who were going to live in Central Asia for an extended period. For historical background, I could read about the Great Game with evocative descriptions of mountains and steppe by British and Russian explorers and military envoys. However, I was planning to arrive in Bishkek by plane, not on horseback from Delhi with wagons, porters, and formal greetings from the viceroy to the local khan. There were books on the Soviet era, but in the early 1990s, before the blossoming of Central Asia scholarship, there were few studies of the region in the post-Soviet era. Today, it seems that every Peace Corps volunteer teaching English in a Kyrgyz village blogs about the experience, but there were no such tales in 1996. Thankfully, the first edition of the Lonely Planet Guide came out in summer 1996, just in time to help us plan the trip.

  Because new luggage is a target for thieves, we decided to travel with beat-up, yet sturdy, suitcases. We added to our collection of well-worn travel pieces with some thrift store $2 specials. Then we worked on packing lists. We simply didn’t know what to expect, so it all went in—winter and summer clothes, books and papers, aspirins and antibiotics, Ziploc bags, duct tape, a pressure cooker, cookbooks, and the contents of the kitchen spice rack. Someone had told Stephanie there was no basil in Kyrgyzstan; instead, it was one of the first things she saw at the bazaar. The Fulbright grant included a generous excess baggage allowance. It is almost embarrassing to admit, but we exceeded it. When everything was assembled, we had twelve suitcases—a total of 490 pounds.

  Our flight from Washington to Frankfurt was delayed, and the Delta agent said we would not make the connection in Istanbul for the Turkish Airlines flight to Bishkek; we would have to wait two days for the next flight. The only option was to fly via Moscow to Almaty in Kazakhstan, and make the last part of the trip by road. The agent booked us on Transaero, a new Russian private airline.

  We staggered up to the Transaero check-in in Frankfurt, our bodies sagging from the five heavy carry-on bags. “That looks like more than five kilos,” said the agent. “Oh, they’re not heavy, I’m just weak,” said Stephanie in her excellent German, trying to disguise her panting. A dispute was averted by the news that we had been bumped up to business class where there was no carry-on limit. We settled down for a glass of champagne, and wondered how we’d make the transfer to the Almaty flight in Moscow.

  Moscow’s Sheremetyevo is, in my experience, one of the least welcoming airports in the world (unless you’re Edward Snowden, and you have to hole up in the transit area) with overpriced (even by airport standards) shops and restaurants, and few seats for transit passengers. In 1996, the arrivals hall was a soulless room with faded Soviet-era decor. Because we were taking another Transaero flight, we expected our luggage to be transferred. Our hearts sank when the first of our twelve bags emerged on the carousel. As we heaved them off the belt, other passengers stepped in to help. One pulled another bag off the carousel and added it to our stack. “Not ours,” said Stephanie. “Oh, we thought they were all yours,” the passenger replied with a wry smile.

  There were no luggage carts, but Stephanie spotted a man with a dolly. “U menya dvenatsat’ chemodanov (I have twelve suitcases),” she announced. He broke into a smile; I was half expecting cartoon-like dollar signs to pop up in his eyes. Somehow, he loaded all twelve cases onto the dolly. It was a short walk to the terminal, but we felt he well deserved his $20. The Transaero agent was not welcoming. “You must pay $500 for excess luggage,” she said. We showed her the receipt from Delta. “That was in Washington. Now you are in Moscow. You must pay,” she insisted. We refused. Supervisors were called. The Delta paperwork was scrutinized, discussed, held up to the light, photocopied. Eventually, the agent gave up. “Have a nice trip,” she said, handing us our boarding cards.

  In Almaty, we emerged from the arrivals hall into a clutch of tough-looking characters shouting “taxi, taxi.” The words “dvenatsat’ chemodanov’” and “Bishkek” gave us instant celebrity status, with drivers competing for what would definitely be the best-paying fare of the day. We needed two cars and decided to travel separately so that we could keep an eye on the luggage; we had been counting bags at each transit point. I rode in a comfortable, dented Mercedes; Stephanie had a more challenging trip in a right-hand-drive Toyota. No one has ever explained to me how right-hand-drive Japanese cars manufactured for the domestic market ended up in Central Asia in the 1990s, but they were pretty common, and among the more dangerous vehicles on the road. The two cars weaved through the midday city traffic, avoiding collisions by important inches. At one stoplight, the Toyota pulled up on the right side of the Mercedes. Stephanie and I wound down the windows, held hands for a moment, and glanced nervously at each other. “Have a safe trip, darling,” I said, without any sense of irony. Out on the two-lane highway to Bishkek, her driver kept pulling out to pass trucks and buses. “Nyet, nyet,” shouted Stephanie, who was always the first to see the approaching vehicle. The Toyota swerved back into the right-hand lane before the driver attempted his next suicidal maneuver.

  The highway parallels the northern slope of the Zailiysky Ala Too range, a branch of the Tian Shan, running southwest along the treeless plain before dipping south through a serpentine pass to the Chuy Valley and Bishkek. Bathed in the late afternoon sun, the mountains, some with snow
-capped peaks, were spectacular. Our adventure had begun.

  The Mountains Are Always South

  The first permanent settlement on the Chuy River at the site of present-day Bishkek was a clay fort built by the khan of Khokand in 1825 along one of the Silk Road routes across the Tian Shan. By the 1860s, the khanate was facing a double threat—the tsar’s armies advancing from the north and west, and Kyrgyz tribes who resented Khokand’s taxes and military conscription. The fort was in a strategic location on the road from Verniy (now Almaty) to Tashkent. In 1860, it fell to a Russian force after a seven-day siege, but the Russians inexplicably returned to Verniy, leaving the location undefended, and Khokand sent troops to rebuild the fort. In 1862, Kyrgyz horsemen joined a Russian force of 1,400 troops with cannon to retake the fort. After a ten-day siege, it fell again. This time, the Russians stayed, and the town of Pishpek was founded sixteen years later. The fertile soil of the Chuy Valley attracted Russian and Ukrainian settlers, swelling the population of the region.

  As with many places in Central Asia, the name of the city changed with the prevailing ideological winds. There’s an unresolved debate over the origin of Pishpek, its first name. In Kyrgyz, pishpek or bishkek describes the wooden instrument used to churn fermented mare’s milk (kumys). As Lonely Planet remarks, “Numerous legends—some quaint, some rude—explain how a town came to be named for a wooden plunger.” A more prosaic version has it that pishpek is a corruption of a more ancient name that means the “place below the mountains.”1 The issue became moot in 1926 when the Soviets changed the name to Frunze, in honor of the Red Army commander, Mikhail Vasilevich Frunze, who was born there in 1885. After the 1917 revolution, Frunze led forces in the civil war, eventually being given command of the Eastern Front. In Central Asia, he recaptured Khiva and Bukhara, driving the White Army out of the region and the basmachi guerrillas into the mountains. Although his death in 1925—from an excessive dose of chloroform during routine surgery—was suspicious, raising speculation that Stalin was involved, Frunze retained his place in Soviet iconography, with a military academy, rifle division, two metro stations (in Moscow and St. Petersburg), and a battleship named for him, as well as the town of his birth.