Andijan event

The Andijan event was a 2005 massacre of demonstrators in Uzbekistan, where police and army forces may have killed 750 people or more. In the book’s account, it marks the height of intensifying repression under Islam Karimov and illustrates how command of the security forces, control of public information, and restricted political competition helped sustain extractive rule.

Political Background

After the Soviet Union collapsed, Uzbekistan was expected to move toward independence, a market economy, and democracy. Instead, Karimov, whose career had advanced through the Communist Party of the Soviet Union to become Uzbekistan’s first secretary in 1989, recast himself as a nationalist. With crucial support from the security forces, he won the country’s first presidential election in December 1991.

Once in power, Karimov cracked down on the independent political opposition. Opponents were imprisoned or driven into exile; the country had no free media, and nongovernmental organizations were not permitted. The Andijan killings occurred within this narrowing political space, rather than as an isolated episode detached from the government’s wider suppression of independent activity.

The 2005 Killings

In Andijan in 2005, police and army forces killed demonstrators. The account qualifies the toll: possibly 750 people, perhaps more. It identifies the killings as the apogee of an intensifying campaign of repression, but does not supply a fuller sequence of the demonstration or describe the immediate circumstances in greater detail.

The forces involved were the police and the army, institutions operating under a government that had secured strong control over state power. The distinction between the reported uncertainty in the death toll and the certainty of the book’s political interpretation matters: the number is presented cautiously, while the event’s place in the escalation of repression is stated directly.

Consolidation and Political Control

Karimov’s government also used its command of the security forces and total control of the media to maintain political dominance. He first extended his presidential term by five years through a referendum, then won reelection in 2000 for a new seven-year term with 91.2 percent of the vote. His only opponent declared that he had voted for Karimov. In 2007, Karimov won 88 percent in an election widely regarded as fraudulent.

The book compares Uzbekistan’s elections with those organized under Joseph Stalin, presenting the official results not as evidence of open political competition but as part of a system in which electoral rituals accompanied repression. The Andijan killings give that system a concrete counterpart: alongside managed votes and restricted media stood the use of state force against demonstrators.

Significance

The account links the event to a broader pattern in which concentrated political power protects economic arrangements that benefit a narrow elite. Extractive political institutions, it argues, enable elites to shape economic institutions for their own advantage, while the resources generated by those arrangements help preserve political dominance. Andijan shows the coercive edge of that feedback: the state’s security apparatus could be used against demonstrators as opposition and independent organization were constrained.

The event also contrasts with cases in which broad civic organization helps turn collective action into durable political change. In Uzbekistan, the evidence emphasizes repression and the absence of independent organizations, not a successful expansion of public participation. Andijan therefore stands as a warning within the book’s comparative argument: formal elections alone do not ensure pluralism when political competition, public information, and organized opposition are tightly controlled.