We can summarize the transformations that took place in Inner Asia during the last decade in the following manner: the five Soviet republics of Central Asia have attained a double liberation – from colonial domination and from Communism; Mongolia, already independent, from Communism; Sinkiang, however, has experienced neither – except that Marxist-Leninist dogma has acquired a different ring in pragmatic China.

Mikhail Gorbachev's accession to power, we have suggested, greatly accelerated and modified a process that otherwise might still be the property of political scientists and Kremlinologists forecasting the future. A special feature of the Gorbachev years – 1985 to 1991 – were several cross-currents that clashed in Central Asia and created a unique political and cultural climate. This climate could be labeled “Central Asian Spring,” for during those few years its citizens attained a degree of internal freedom unheard of before. This freedom has been considerably reduced since then – in other words, since the republics became independent.

Gorbachev's campaign against “corruption” in Central Asia was overshadowed, from a historian's vantage point, by yet another attempt to stave off nationalism there. It might have succeeded – for a time – if this statesman had had recourse to the formidable coercive apparatus of the Soviet state which was still in place at the time of his accession. Glasnost and perestroika declawed this apparatus, and the Central Asians, instead of withdrawing into a shell of sullen or sycophantic submission as they had been wont to do, counterattacked.