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 feelings. 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.
