Central Asia and the Cacasus 29/03/2007 11:35:00

2003 and 2004 were really important years ….why?

• so many different revolutions
• in 2003 parliament gets voted in in all these countries
o it 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
o They 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
o sends thousands of Russians to farm this untilled land and it
ends up being complete failure
o alot of this land does eventually get tilled up
• have long industries of anti-imperialism
o Afghanistan
 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 2fghanistan
 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
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