Two Stops Past Siberia

The Tulip Revolution: Kyrgyzstan One Year After, Erica Marat

The Tulip Revolution: Kyrgyzstan One Year After, by Erica Marat, commissioned by the Jamestown Foundation, is a must-read for anyone genuinely interested in the nuts-and-bolts details of Kyrgyz politics.

Publish in March 2006, this book is a week by week summary of the events immediately following the 2005 “Tulip” revolution, collected from the news. In March of 2010, it could have been considered an anachronism, but today it’s relevance is entirely renewed.

It’s cast of characters is a crew familiar to anyone following Kyrgyz politics today, from Kurmanbek Bakiev and Roza Otunbaeva, to characters who receive less international press, like Felix Kulov, Omorbek Tekebaev, et al.

In content, it describes a Kyrgyzstan vastly different from the one of April 2010. People were at first profoundly supportive of Mr. Bakiev, and what he planned to do. His own reports overwhelming describe how much money he was going to save from the cleaning of corruption, and all the salaries he was planning to increase. His early rhetoric paints a painful backdrop to the situation today.

Most striking, perhaps, is how quickly Bakiev’s political sincerity seems to fade. Almost immediately, political gamesmanship shadow’s actual progress as respected politicians get muscled out of power, today’s acting prime minister Roza Otunbaeva among them. Furthermore, cultural elements, like people turning to the Kyrgyz epic poem Manas, and Tengirism as new cultural guiding lights have similar manifestations today.

By the end of the book, the reporters have clearly turned on Mr. Bakiev, and summarize their collection with a list of recommendations equally presented to the new government and to the people of Kyrgyzstan. In an eerie portent of things to come, virtually none of  these are heeded, and the recent politics seem to have been effectively the fulfillment of prophecy.

The book itself, while only a slim 150 pages, would be still hard to get through without a deep genuine interest in the details of Central Asian politics.

Those of you who will love this know who you are.