Central Asia and the Caucasus 3/29/07 12:35 PM

2003 and 2004 were really important years ….why?

•so many different revolutions
•in 2003 parliament gets voted in in all these countries
oit is a window of time where absolute authority is being challenged,
its compromised
•in 2004 occurs the presidential elections
•in the cases where revolutions were successful the parliament elections were
successful but fraudulent but the presidential vote reflected the public
sentiment
•these first elections were tests to see how effective the soviet union was on
maintaining control
•it takes 12-15 years to develop a group of people that are willing to over
throw the old communist leaders
•the closer you get to the Russian border the harder it is to break away
But first some history
•A long history of Russian empire in these areas from 1690 but real influence
didn’t start till 1890’s
oThey realize that cotton can grow in Kazahkstan > drying of the aral
sea
•All f these areas were too weak to resist Russian imperialism
•Georgia became part in 1890
•Azerbaijan and armenia follow after WWI
•Consolidated soviet power meant new Cyrillic writing systems and closing of
borders
•all of these countries become economically destitute due to russian
imperialism
•soviets had a lot of interests; cotton, trade routes, transiberian railway,
WWII made these areas crucial duing russian industry
•massive amounts of uindustry were moved to eastern Europe to avoid Nazis
•discovery of oil
•1950's Kruzhev starts virgin lands project
osends thousands of Russians to farm this untilled land and it ends up
being complete failure
oalot of this land does eventually get tilled up
•have long industries of anti-imperialism
oAfghanistan
britain tried to control afghanistant to keep India safe
they were very good at keeping the britians out and are able to
really push the british out
1978 the soviet union invades Afghanistan because there is a
coup in afghanistant where the communist take over and
then another coup to assassinate the communist leader then
 Russia gets involved to prevent communism leaving
fghanistan
a strong muslim contingency interested in overtherowing
communism
US gives them funds and weapons to prevent soviet control
The soviets could not defeat the Mujahadin and had to
withdraw
US stopped caring about Afghanistan
Taliban comes into power having been trained by American
military to reconstruct Afghanistan
this becomes known as the "Great Game"
o
3/29/07 12:35 PM
3/29/07 12:35 PM