{"id":"0fc8bd79-baa1-432f-9ca6-caab347d245e","authors":[],"concepts":[{"concept":{"id":"23efa7c4-ffa0-4521-9705-fc725534ae19","openalex_id":"https://openalex.org/C3017485454","display_name":"Central asia","display_name_tr":null,"display_name_ar":null,"level":2,"works_count":0},"score":0.7603598833084106},{"concept":{"id":"6ef43cb0-68a0-4b6d-9dde-da7aeaa31a57","openalex_id":"https://openalex.org/C17744445","display_name":"Political science","display_name_tr":null,"display_name_ar":null,"level":0,"works_count":0},"score":0.43722644448280334},{"concept":{"id":"7fc836b0-debf-43c0-8bec-1e43040dbad4","openalex_id":"https://openalex.org/C6303427","display_name":"Economic history","display_name_tr":null,"display_name_ar":null,"level":1,"works_count":0},"score":0.4243912696838379},{"concept":{"id":"8bbdd7c1-d7ad-4610-b8cc-f381dcf3c2c2","openalex_id":"https://openalex.org/C2778718127","display_name":"Uzbek","display_name_tr":null,"display_name_ar":null,"level":2,"works_count":0},"score":0.9924736618995667},{"concept":{"id":"a208bf77-cbdf-4991-8012-71714744d40c","openalex_id":"https://openalex.org/C163258240","display_name":"Power (physics)","display_name_tr":null,"display_name_ar":null,"level":2,"works_count":0},"score":0.5016872882843018}],"publisher_name":null,"publisher_website_url":null,"publisher_info":null,"bib_extra":[],"journal_info":null,"raw_data":{"abstract_tr":"6. Orta Asya'daki Sovyet gücünün krizi: 'Özbek pamuk olayı', 1975-1991, Sovyet siyasi tarihinin son aşamalarını yeniden inşa etmeyi ve yorumlamayı amaçlamaktadır ve Özbekistan'daki etkilerini incelemektedir. Bu amaçla, pamuk üretim verilerinin sahtecilik ve yolsuzlukla bağlantılı olduğu 'Özbek pamuk olayı'nın yeniden inşası - binlerce parti ve devlet yetkilisini kapsayan bir hukuki ve siyasi dava - gerçekleştirilecektir.","title_en":"The Crisis of Soviet Power in Central Asia: The 'Uzbek cotton affair', (1975-1991)","subjects":[]},"openalex_id":"https://openalex.org/W2611737463","doi":"10.6092/imtlucca/e-theses/213","title":"The Crisis of Soviet Power in Central Asia: The 'Uzbek cotton affair', (1975-1991)","publication_year":2017,"type":"dissertation","cited_by_count":6,"is_open_access":true,"pdf_url":"http://e-theses.imtlucca.it/213/1/Cucciolla_phdthesis.pdf","abstract":"The crisis of Soviet power in Central Asia: The 'Uzbek cotton affair', 1975-1991 aims at reconstructing and interpreting the final phases of Soviet political history and its effects in Uzbekistan. To this end, the reconstruction of the 'Uzbek cotton affair' - a judicial and political case linking the falsification of cotton production data and corruption that involved thousands of party and state officials in the republic - is something of a case study in evaluating Moscow's grip on the 'periphery' of its empire. This case tracks the life story of Uzbekistan from its consolidation as a Soviet republic, through crisis and ultimately its transition into an independent state. Thus, we can identify 'the Uzbek cotton affair' as a critical reason for the transformations within republican political society. At the same time, it can be read as a symptom of a greater incurable disease within the whole Soviet Union itself, a system that collapsed when this kind of top-down hierarchical order - led by ideology, elite politics, social forces and interest groups and even administrators and bureaucrats - cracked down. This dissertation is divided in three parts with a total of seven chapters. The first part is introductory and aims to contextualize the Uzbek 'periphery' within the Soviet state, at both the political and at socio-economic level. In the first chapter, I introduce the political features that determined the consolidation of Soviet power in the UzSSR. After the formation of Uzbekistan, the Stalinist terror and the destalinization transition, the Soviet leadership transitioned to a peaceful, decentralized and tolerant pattern of control over the farthest regions of the USSR. During the 70s, the Moscow leadership and the republican party cadres built a patrimonial system that relied on local figures who could ensure loyalty to the central state. This led to the creation of autonomous client networks inside the republic and the mediation of the FS CPUz between Moscow and the national elites. This approach was particularly evident during the long 'reign' of the FS CPUz Sharaf Rashidov (1959-1983), a controversial figure at the center of the Cold War who - as we will see in the second chapter - turned Uzbekistan into a 'cotton republic'. In fact, the UzSSR became the main supplier of 'white gold' and from the '60s it essentially doubled down on cotton monoculture as a strategic task for 'building communism': for the tenth FYP (1976-1981), Soviet planners demanded an annual production of six million tons of raw cotton from Tashkent and reaching this target at any cost became a matter of political stability and legitimacy for the Uzbek ruling elite. The second part is argumentative and focuses on the three phases of the 'Uzbek cotton affair'. Hence, the third chapter analyzes the context of the second economy in the USSR and the features related to corruption and falsification of cotton production data in Uzbekistan. The rise of Andropov and his 'moralization campaign' would see an attempt to legalize, cleanse and - ultimately - revitalize a system in which stagnation and fraud had reached unprecedented levels. In 1983, the so called 'Bukhara affair' exposed the level of 'official corruption' and overwhelmed the higher echelons of the party and state of the UzSSR. Nevertheless, this 'silent phase' - characterized by preliminary inquiries, the preservation of power structures in Uzbekistan and general institutional silence - culminated in the death of Rashidov, the subsequent struggle among local elites and a nominal transformation of the patrimonial system. Thus, in the fourth chapter we analyze the 'systemic phase' of the Uzbek affair (1984-1985), when Moscow's moralizing campaign was extended during the XVI plenum CPUz (1984) to map on to discord within the national party elites, the donos (complaints) wars and the internal struggles within the bureaucracy in post-Rashidovian Uzbekistan. The fifth chapter analyzes Moscow's subsequent 'trusteeship' over the republic, reflected in the 'krasnyi desant' campaign endorsed by the CC CPSU, the derashidovization crusade, and the zenith of internal struggles in the wake of the ouster of the FS CPUz Usmankhodzhaev and his replacement with the Moscow loyalist Nishanov who attempted and failed to destroy local patrimonial networks. Third and final part is aimed at evaluating the results of the Uzbek cotton affair in the center and in the periphery, and see if this story became a factor determining the collapse of the Soviet system as in Moscow as in Tashkent. The sixth chapter focuses on the investigators Gdlyan and Ivanov who became a symbol of the prosecution of the 'big fish' and alleged prominent members of the CC CPSU - and even Gorbachev - of being in collusion with the 'Uzbek mafiya'. The case, the related media circus and the political campaign of the two radical mavericks threatened the credibility of Gorbachev and the legitimacy of the CPSU, the state and its surviv","source_name":"The Signal Calculus: beyond message based coordination for services (IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca)","source_issn":null,"volume":null,"issue":null,"first_page":null,"last_page":null,"language":"en","url":null,"is_relevant":true,"thesis_level":null,"title_tr":"Orta Asya'da Sovyet Gücünün Krizi: 'Özbek Pamuk Meselesi', (1975-1991)","license_code":"","license_url":null,"doi_status":"unknown","doi_last_checked":null,"merged_at":null,"lens_id":null,"patent_cited_by_count":null,"oa_colour":null,"created_at":"2026-04-23T13:41:49.208434+03:00","updated_at":"2026-05-26T12:53:32.727357+03:00","publisher":null,"merged_into":null}