Translation of Musafirbek’s post (RUS).

For the past few days, Uzbekistan’s media has been littered with painfully Soviet-style headlines: “A Great Victory for Our Cotton-Growers,” “The Nation Praises the Heroes in Her Fields,” and so on. The reason, as you might have guessed, is the recent harvest, which brought in over 3.4 million tons of raw cotton. Other nostalgic flashbacks include photographs of field workers, peasants with smiling faces – all they’re missing is a hammer and sickle in each pair of hands.

The president of the country sent a message to “all cotton-growers and laborers of Uzbekistan,” in which he said:

“Dear Peasants, your noble striving towards the goal, your ability to work effectively in the most adverse conditions, honorably enduring all tests, and the fact that you, with your indefatigable willpower and faith have won a major victory all deserve the highest praise and admiration.”

An excerpt from the congratulatory address by the President of the Republic of Uzbekistan, Islam Karimov. 30 October 2009.

As Uza.uz notes, “This amazing success is the result of selfless work by experienced peasants and farmers, experts and machine operators, and all agricultural workers who contributed to the victory.”

It is a pity that those who sweat away, collecting this cotton year after year are mentioned neither in the president’s address, nor in the media.

Let’s focus on the underlying meaning of the congratulations and news items.

In his address, the president mentioned the recent annual cotton fair, which took place last month in the republic’s capital, highlighting that

“Today, Uzbek cotton is in increasingly greater demand in the global arena, where our country has become one of the centers of the cotton market. Proof of this is the number of contracts signed with major foreign trading companies at the international Uzbek cotton fair, which took place this year for the fifth time in Tashkent, and furthered the level of cooperation in this sphere.”

An excerpt from the congratulatory address by the President of the Republic of Uzbekistan, Islam Karimov. 30 October 2009.

However, the president is forgetting to remind his people of concrete facts pertaining to what is happening all around them. One understated piece of information concerns “major foreign trading companies,” namely that they are ones who don’t care much how cotton is picked, who suffers as a result, and who profits – companies from China, Russia, Iran, India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, South Korea, Turkey, Vietnam.

The president evidently also forgot that on the opening day of the cotton fair, human rights activists, religious leaders and ordinary sympathizers held a demonstration in front of the Uzbek embassy in Washington, DC, demanding the abolition of forcible child labor. It should be noted that actions like this have lately led to a decrease in demand for Uzbek cotton. A number of prominent retailers, like Nike and Wal-Mart, have refused to sell textile goods made from Uzbek cotton, or use the material in any form in their products. Moreover, in September 2009, the US Department of Labor included Uzbek cotton in its blacklist.

The news item published by Uza.uz, and subsequently featured by a number of local media, confidently concludes with the following words:

“There is a saying that good intentions are half the job, for great deeds always start with noble motives. The cotton-growers who went out to the fields in the spring with this intention have achieved their high-minded goals.”

I wonder whether the author (or, more likely, authors) has considered that Uzbek cotton growers who work the fields year in and year out dream of collecting a portion of the work plan in order to make a slight profit for the year and feed their families, who receive attention from the government only in the form of words, but never as material indicators, which are more important.

There is another saying – that you can’t put a “thank you” in your pocket. Empirically tested

p.s. By the way, it is amazing that while media agencies usually cite the president’s press corps as their source, this time Uza.uz took a bold step and fired first. They should hope it doesn’t end badly. Jokes usually don’t fly without proper approval, but the journalists probably have the coming end of the work week and Halloween on their mind.