Photograph by Flickr user Josef Stuefer (CC-usage).

Editor’s note: Five years ago this week the people of Kyrgyzstan overthrew their president in what was hailed by the international media as the “Tulip Revolution”. Yet, was the revolution successful, or for that matter, all that much of a revolution at all? neweurasia’s “professional ideologue” Averroes examines conditions before and after the uprising, and discusses what it may mean not only for Kyrgyzstan, but the broader former Soviet Union.

What’s in a name?  That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet…  — William Shakespeare

When the Tulip Revolution happened, the international media devoured the story.  The Western pundits proclaimed the dawn of a new liberal democratic era in Kyrgyzstan; their Russian counterparts tacitly agreed, fearing the uprising’s spread to other former Soviet republics in the region.  Even neweurasia‘s venerable Schwartz was subject to some romantic notions of sweeping change and so on (sorry boss).  It turns out everyone was wrong.

What’s in a name?

Okay, I have an axe to grind with the Westerners in particular.  In the early stages of the revolution, their talking heads variously referred to the unrest as the “Pink”, “Lemon”, “Silk”, and “Daffodil Revolution”.  Ironically, it was the moniker “Tulip Revolution”, fearfully coined by Akayev himself, that ultimately came to signify the events of that day.

But this name game was no accident.  It was intended to evoke similarities between the Kyrgyz with the nonviolent “Rose” and “Orange Revolutions” in Georgia and the Ukraine, respectively, in 2004, not to mention the “Bulldozer Revolution” in Serbia in 2000.  Their names were in turn inspired by the “Velvet Revolution” in Czechoslovakia in 1989.  Together with the Tulip Revolution and the subsequent “Cedar Revolution” in Lebanon, also in 2005, these uprisings constituted what the media proclaimed as the “Colour Revolutions”.

The Colour Revolutions all shared in common their occurrence within ex-socialist countries, fraudulent elections as the catalyst, and single persons, typically the presiding presidents, as their focal points.  They all entailed mass protests that were mostly of a nonviolent character and which culminated in the installation of a popular alternative as the head of government.

In the eyes of the media, especially in the United States but also from within the countries (and including not a few revolutionaries themselves) the uprisings comprised evidence of the inevitable march of Westernization.  The peoples of the world, it was said, were hungry for Western-style liberal democracy and free markets, and they were once more taking their political destinies into their own hands, forcibly removing the last lingering vestiges of Socialist rule.

You have to remember that this is all during the height of Bush’s global war on terror and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.  The neo-cons believed in a dynamo theory version of Francis Fukuyama’s “End of History“:

What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.

Locke this was not

Yet, such metaphysical concerns were far from the minds of the revolutionaries in Ala-Too Square.  neweurasia‘s Ben Paarmann, at the time writing Thinking East, believed that in fact the people of Kyrgyzstan were frustrated precisely by the opposite — what they perceived as the systemic failures of Westernization.  He wrote a very prescient article entitled, “The Sinking Island of Democracy?” and I think he was almost alone among observers to make the following diagnosis:

The new leadership of Kyrgyzstan, led by the former president of the Kyrgyz Academy of Science, Askar Akaev, demonstrated a pragmatic understanding of the nation’s immediate prospectives after independence. The Akaev administration understood that unlike Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan is not gifted with abundant hydrocarbon resources or cotton wealth, and hence, the opportunity of a sudden economic boom and foreign investment was very unlikely. Reinvigorating Kyrgyz commercial life, which was in decrepit condition following the collapse of the Soviet command economy of state-owned conglomerates, was therefore inexorably linked to Western goodwill.

Thus, Kyrgyzstan followed an agenda of liberalization, both in political structure (electoral democracy) and economics (the free market), while presenting itself as a model for its authoritarian neighbours. This choice by the Akaev administration initially proved to be Kyrgyzstan’s major ‘cash guarantee.’ ‘The vibrant civil society that emerged earned the country the tag of Central Asia’s ‘island of democracy,’ and with reputation came a steady flow of soft loans from international organisations.

Yet, ultimately the implementation of neoliberal policies did not bring about the desired economic growth rates. Soon, the relatively high living standards became impossible to sustain. As a good ‘pupil’ among post-Soviet Union transition countries, Kyrgyzstan set out in 1991 with no debt at all. A decade later the country found itself with a GDP halved and levels of poverty soaring. Today, about the half of the population lives on less than £100 a year.

There was palpable fury toward the gross hypocrisies of the free market.  The nouveaux riches enjoyed deluxe German cars and Akaev’s clan consolidated control not only over the government, but the markets (on and off the books), too.  The mint pumped out somoni to finance the government’s enormous debt and to maintain the struggling social welfare system.  Yet, this only served to screw up the currency and devalue in real terms salaries and pensions, which were already shaky since the end of Soviet subsidization.  The country was being run more and more like a mafia, prompting Ben to remark,

Although Kyrgyzstan has been able to successfully present itself as the most moderate and liberal among the five Central Asian republics…  obviously any praise for the Kyrgyz model has been increasingly undeserved.  The reason why Kyrgyzstan has been blessed with such a sparkling reputation is the decrepit condition of its neighbours.

I’ve been attacking liberalism as an ideology a lot in recent posts, so let me be clear by what I mean: the ideology of reducing state intervention in the economy by way of privatization.   The goal is to restructure citizens’ relationships with the state and with each other with the intention of making them more self-reliant, both individually and as a mass in the form of what’s commonly called “civil society“.   The problem is that liberalism was originally designed for advanced industrialized societies that already had pre-existing democratic traditions both institutionally and culturally.  They simply don’t work in places like Central Asia, where the social contract has been collectivist for centuries.

If you don’t believe me, read, “The Impact of Neoliberal Reforms on State-Society Relations: Coping Without Communism in Central Asia” by Kelly McMann, a report presented to the American Political Science Association only a few months after the uprising in Bishkek.  McMann demonstrates how liberalization actually increases citizens’ dependency upon governments.  The problem is a government like Kyrgyzstan is a beggar in terms of liquid cash, assets, and resources, and it doesn’t help when its political class behaves the way it does (just ask neweurasia’s Mirsulzshan).

The hard numbers

So, did the Tulip Revolution effect substantial material change in either the average Kyrgyz’s quality of life or government?   The statistics may at first seem positive.  For example, according to Freedom House’s  most recent Nations In Transit report, which covers the period 1999 to 2009 and ranks countries on a scale of 1 to 7, gives governance an incrementally increased score of 5.5 to 6.50.  But civil society growth has stagnated at 4.5 and 4.7.  And what about corruption?  It has held steady at 6, actually increasing to 6.25 last year.  This discrepancy between politics and life is either a contradition or indicative of the peculiar pattern development and Westernization is taking in Kyrgyzstan.

It gets more interesting when we look at the status of the press.  Independent media actually got better under the Akaev period, from a score of 5 to 6, only to oscilate since the Tulip Revolution between 5.75 and 6.25.   Now consider the Press Freedom Index, which is compiled annually by the watchdog group Reporters Without Borders (RSF).  Kyrgyzstan, which ranked 111 out 167 in 2005, dropped to 125 out of 175 in 2009.  Were that not enough, although the country had already been sliding before the Tulip Revolution, it dove to 123 out of 168 in 2006, the first full year of the Bakiev regime.

In other words, the conditions that Ben described in 2005 essentially remain unchanged today.  The Bakiev regime has simply continued the same mafioso Westernization policies as its predecessor.  All that happened really was a palace coup d’etat.

A tulip by any other name

If the Tulip Revolution turned out to be such a flop, what happened to the international media’s touted tidal wave of Westernization?  Well, already in 2007, the writers of The Economist‘s Democracy Index could see the futility of it all:

Hybrid and authoritarian regimes dominate heavily in the countries of the former Soviet Union, as the momentum towards ‘colour revolutions’ has appeared to peter out.

The situation today is worse.  Again, the situation in Kyrgyzstan is telling.  Baktybek Abdrisaev, Akaev’s former ambassador to the United States, ruefully remarked in April of last year,

A Siberian wind is now blowing through Kyrgyzstan’s political landscape. It is viewed by many as a process of Russification.  It maintains a semblance of democratic institutions but in fact it is looking more and more like a presidential dictatorship where the men of power are prepared to use the most ruthless methods to quiet opposition voices.

Thus, the ultimate irony is that the Colour Revolutions in general, and the Tulip Revolution in particular, may have suffered from leadership fetishism.  In retrospection, a tulip by any other name was probably to have been preferred.

Author’s note: Thanks to Schwartz for sending me the Freedom House and RSF stats, as well as Ben’s article from 2005.  Schwartz himself used this same data for his own editorial at Transitions Online, “Changing the Leopard’s Spots“. His interpretation is not ideological like mine, but his conclusion is the same.