The great Uzbek scandal rocks Russia

Press, 24 October 1984, Page 17

The great Uzbek scandal rocks Russia

President Chernenko singled out Uzbekistan, the largest Soviet Central Asian Republic, in a recent speech on corruption and official misbehaviour. Reports and rumours of the “Great Uzbek Scandal” had been building up for more than a year but only now is it known that a purge from top to bottom of the republic is drawing to an end. It has been a classic example of how the Soviet system — eventually _ “clears the rascals out". Its Uzbek location gives the affair peculiar significance. The Uzbeks, descendants of the Mongol hordes of Genghis Khan, are the most numerous nationality in the Soviet Union after Russians and Ukranians. They produce twotjfairds of the large ®nd precious

Soviet cotton crop, and their republic is the marshalling point for the Soviet land link that sustains the regime of Babrak Karmal in Afghanistan (where there is also an important Uzbek minority). The condition of Uzbekistan is thus of great concern to the Soviet leadership in Moscow. The puzzle of the Uzbek “mafia” only began to unlock properly with the death a year ago of Sharaf Rashidov,' Uzbek party boss for more than_ 24 years. His funeral was ominously ill-attended, and it was soon put about, unofficially, that the Uzbek Government had for some time been under investigation for fiddling the cotton harvest statistics.

The removal of three key figures the ■ party’s Second

From

MARK FRANKLAND,

in Russia

Secretary and the heads of the republican K.G.B. and police — signalled the gravity of the matter.

The Second Secretary is meant to be Moscow’s eyes and ears, a discreet proconsul. He is always a Slav and has a network of other Slav party officials performing the same function at lower levels. The K.G.B. chief in Uzbekistan has, for the same reasons, always been a Russian (similar arrangements usually hold for all central Asia). This time the watchdogs had been

asleep — or worse. Retribution, when it came, was thorough. Eight of the republic’s 13 regional party chiefs have had to go and all but one of the survivors have been subjected’ to public criticism. Eight men with the rank of Minister or Deputy have disappeared, including the Ministers of finance, justice, and cotton.

The “slaughter” at more modest levels may be judged from the casualty statistics for the region around the old city of Bukhara.

The party First Secretary fell, and with him the- region’s top legal officer, the Procurator, with the heads of the police and its fraud squad. All three were relatives of the First Secretary. Some 155 rank and file policemen had to be sacked, along with 56 officials in the cotton industry. A well-informed Muscovite,, pondering on these matters, said: “You get an extended family of up to 60 or more people and- they occupy every position in a district from party boss to manager of the local petrol station. Everything will be for sale: You want a medal, say Hero of Socialist Labour, okay, this is what it will cost you and if you don’t have the money now. come back when you have. Y

“The trouble is,” . the Russian concluded, “that the Uzbeks feel entirely at home there.” What he meant was that in Uzbekistan, as perhaps in most of the Muslim areas of the Soviet Union, better education and living standards, plus a massive increase in the birth rate, have made people feel much more the masters in their own house. Slav immigration into Uzbekistan has slowed down. For the first time in 50 years, Uzbeks outnumber Russians in the capital, Tashkent. Probably less than one in 10 of the republic’s population today is Russian.'Most of those will speak at best bad Uzbek and must be deaf to much that goes on around them. — Copyright — London Observer Service.