Direct speech

Alexey Makarkin , political scientist, deputy director of the Center for Political Technologies:

There are three options for further developments in Uzbekistan. They do not depend on the specific fate of Karimov, since it is clear that he is no longer legally capable. Of course, the question of whether he is alive or not is very significant not only for his family, but also for the entire country, but in general it is clear that even under the most favorable circumstances for him, Karimov leaves. One can recall the situation with Ilham Aliyev, who was alive for another six months after a serious illness, remained as president and died in the United States, where he was transported for treatment. But these six months were already part of a different era.

The first option is the succession option. Moreover, there is no official successor, whom Karimov himself would point to. He does not have a son who could lay claim to power; his son from his first marriage is being considered as a candidate. He apparently considered his daughter, Gulnara Karimova, as a contender for some time, but then she had a strong conflict not only with her father, but also with most of the elite. Still, she turned out to be too unusual a figure for Uzbekistan, she did not calculate her capabilities, and she did not become one of her kind for the West, so now her chances are slim.

There have already been rumors about the arrest of one of the possible candidates for successor - Deputy Prime Minister Azimov, a man very seriously connected with international financial institutions. And against this background, it looks most likely that the current Prime Minister Mirziev will become the successor. He has been in office since 2003, but does not belong to Karimov’s Tashkent entourage; experts call him part of the so-called Samarkand clan. However, it may be acceptable to a significant part of the bureaucracy and security forces. And now the option of his coming to power looks most likely.

In any case, the scenario with a successor implies that he takes power into his own hands and retains it, with some modifications preserving the Karimov regime in its previous form. This is authoritarian power within the country, and in international politics - balancing between different forces: Russia, the USA, China. This version is supported by the analogy with Turkmenistan, where Berdymukhamedov was initially considered a weak figure, but he is still in office and arrested the man who helped him come to power, proving that he was underestimated in vain.

The second scenario for the development of events is related to the fact that the successor may not become a dominant figure, and a clan struggle will begin.

And the third scenario, related to the second, is a strong growth of the banned opposition, that is, Islamists. And here analogies with Turkmenistan must be drawn very carefully. Under Niyazov, Turkmenistan was not even authoritarian, but totalitarian, everything that could be crushed was crushed there. Uzbekistan is still an authoritarian country. Everything is more complicated there, there are different players, different clans, and the position of the Islamists is much stronger. Karimov, of course, suppressed them, but he could not completely suppress them. Uzbekistan has always been more polycentric than Turkmenistan, even during Soviet times. There, the intra-elite structures of regional clans are more complex. In the late 80s, they all united to oppose the center and protect themselves from arrests in the “Uzbek case,” but now there is competition there, and it dates back to Soviet times.

So now we see three scenarios: a successor, intra-elite conflict and grassroots activity. Moreover, they can be interconnected. And if destabilization begins, or at least the threat of destabilization, then Uzbekistan will have nowhere to go except to Russia. The Kremlin is always ready to support, of course, in exchange for some concessions from the local elites. Moreover, support can be both political and military in case of need. For Moscow there is no concept of “human rights”; at one time it calmly reacted to the persecution of Islamists. But the elites of Uzbekistan will be ready to meet Russia halfway only as long as it does not affect their political power. They are ready to sign agreements with Russia, but as soon as it comes to power, everything is put off, and they don’t give up a single piece. This is typical of both Lukashenko and Asian leaders.

There is no point in drawing parallels between the situation in Uzbekistan and the possible development of events in Russia in the event of the death of Vladimir Putin. Firstly, there is not the same big grassroots threat that exists in Central Asia. They talk about Russian nationalists, but this is more of a technique when government officials claim that if not them, then they are fascists. In reality, the nationalists are weak, they have split many times; when they try to create something unified, it turns out that we are talking about four different parties, whose representatives throw mud at each other on social networks.

As for intra-elite conflicts, Russia is still a country with nuclear weapons and a permanent member of the UN Security Council. This is a completely different scale. So it’s difficult to draw direct analogies here. If we talk about opaque mechanisms of power and personnel decisions, then yes, this makes us similar to Central Asia. But still, the political culture is completely different. So there is no point in transferring the Uzbek experience to Russia; everything will be different for us.