contest for dominance in the region. In 1865 Russian military forces systematically took over cities in the Kokand Khanate and Bukharan Emirate, beginning with the sacking of Tashkent in that year. By 1876 the Khanate of Kokand was dissolved and incorporated into the Governor-Generalship of Turkestan. The Khanate of Khiva in the west and the Bukharan Emirate were reduced to the status of protectorates. During the next forty years, this region was part of the Russian empire. In general, the Russian overlords sought to obtain taxes and raw materials from the region and left the indigenous populations to their own social and cultural traditions.
The Russian Revolution of 1917 and the Civil War resulted in radical changes for Central Asia.
1628
Eventually, the region was consolidated under Bolshevik rule and new political structures were created. The first entity called Uzbekistan appeared in 1924 with the National Delimitation in the Soviet Union. The Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic actually included the Tajik Autonomous Republic. This easternmost portion was granted full Union Republic status in 1929. With modest border adjustments over the ensuing decades, the Uzbek S.S.R. was considered to be the homeland for the Uzbeks living in the Soviet Union. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the Uzbek S.S.R. declared its independence and has henceforth been called the Republic of Uzbekistan.
For much of the Soviet period, Uzbekistan was the primary cotton-producing region of the Soviet Union, with annual quotas exceeding four and five million metric tons by the 1980s. In addition, Uzbekistan was a major supplier of gold, strategic minerals, gas, and agricultural products. In the post-Soviet period, these commodities remain the foundation for Uzbekistan’s economy. Uzbekistan is one of the few states of the former Soviet Union that did not experience a radical drop in production and income during the 1990s, largely because of its reliance on exporting these goods. However, the country’s economy has not rebounded quickly because of difficulties in the currency market and the obstacles faced by foreign investors. Moreover, the steady increase in population has resulted in a growing labor force that continues to experience a high unemployment rate.
Politically, there was also continuity at the time of independence. In 1991 the president of the Uzbek S.S.R., Islam Karimov, was elected President of Uzbekistan. In 1999 and 2000 the militant Islamic Movement for Uzbekistan (IMU) unsuccessfully attempted to destabilize the country. The government since considers Islamic extremism to be a major security concern for the country, whether it is in the guise of the IMU or the broader, internationally-based group Hezb-ut Tahrir.
Throughout the 1990s and the early twenty-first century, Uzbekistan has tried to assert itself as a leading state in Central Asia. Of great importance was the desire to reduce the influence of Russia and remove the notion of an elder brother in the region. Consequently, Uzbekistan has diplomatic and economic ties with a number of important powers, such as China, India, the United States, the European Union, Turkey, and Iran. Since the events of September 11, 2001, and the subsequent U.S. led actions in Afghanistan, Uzbekistan has been
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
more active in NATO Partnership for Peace programs and bilateral security relations with the United States. Ultimately, Uzbekistan would prefer to see a greater emphasis on a Central Asian regional security arrangement, with itself as the key member. See also: CENTRAL ASIA; ISLAM; NATIONALITIES POLICIES, SOVIET; NATIONALITIES POLICIES, TSARIST
Allworth, Edward. (1990). The Modern Uzbeks: From The Fourteenth Century To The Present: A Cultural History. Stanford, CA: Hoover University Press. Babushkin, L. N., ed. (1973). Soviet Uzbekistan. Moscow: Progress Publishers. Bohr, Annette. (1998). Uzbekistan: Politics and Foreign Policy. London: RIIA. Gleason, Gregory. (1997). The Central Asian States: Discovering Independence. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Kangas, Roger. (2002). Uzbekistan in the Twentieth Century: Political Development and the Evolution of Power. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Karimov, Islam. (1997). Uzbekistan on the Threshold of the Twenty-First Century. Surrey, UK: Curzon Press. Levitin, Leonid, with Carlisle, Donald S. (1995). Islam Karimov: President of the New Uzbekistan. Vienna: Agrotec. MacLeod, Calum, and Mayhew, Bradley. (1999). Uzbekistan: The Golden Road to Samarkand. London: Odyssey. Melvin, Neil. (2000). Uzbekistan: Transition to Authoritarianism on the Silk Road. Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers.
ROGER KANGAS
1629
Value subtraction, or negative value added, occurs when resources and other inputs used in the production process generate output with a lower value than that of the original resources and inputs. The management of Soviet state-owned enterprises, focusing on fulfilling plan targets in order to receive a bonus, tended to fulfill the main plan target, quantity of output, with little regard for cost or efficiency considerations. At the same time, enterprises faced centrally determined prices for both the input used and the output produced. Soviet centrally determined prices were not based upon supply and demand conditions in either the domestic or global market, nor were they adjusted in response to obvious surplus or shortage conditions. Consequently, neither the prices nor the corresponding profits or losses generated in the planning process provided meaningful information to Soviet firms in terms of whether to expand or contract their operations. The primary obligation of each firm was to fulfill annual output plan targets.
Value subtraction characterized the operation and performance of Soviet firms when their inputs and output were valued at world market prices. World market prices were more accurate reflections of the economic cost of producing an item than Soviet centrally determined prices, because they incorporated marginal rather than average costs of production, and because they adjusted to surplus and shortage conditions generated by ever-changing actions of buyers and sellers. Typically, Soviet prices were well below world market prices for the majority of resources and other inputs used in the production process. Consequently, when world market prices were applied by Western researchers and analysts to the actual resources and inputs used in the Soviet production process, the newly calculated costs of production were much higher. These higher costs were not offset by applying world market prices to the produced output, however, because the technological level of Soviet enterprises and abject quality assessments kept Soviet output valuations low in comparison to world standards. The existence of value subtraction, or negative value added, was confirmed by Soviet economists and analysts when glasnost and pere- stroika in the late 1980s allowed more frank and detailed discussions of actual conditions in the Soviet economy.
1631
See also: HARD BUDGET CONSTRAINTS; RATCHET EFFECT; VIRTUAL ECONOMY
SUSAN J. LINZ VARANGIAN See VIKINGS.
(b.1923), commander-in-chief of the Soviet Ground Forces; deputy minister of defense; General of the Army; Hero of the Soviet Union; member of the State Duma.
Valentin Krasnodar was born on December 13, 1923, in Krasnodar in the Kuban region of South Russia. He joined the Red Army in 1941 as an officer cadet and was commissioned in 1942. He took part in the defense of Stalingrad as an artillery officer and served in that capacity through the war to the assault on Berlin. Varennikov was a stand-bearer at the Victory Parade in Red Square in 1945. After the war he commanded artillery and infantry units. In 1954 he graduated from the Frunze Military Academy.
Varennikov advanced in the army leadership and graduated from the Voroshilov Military Academy of the General Staff in 1967. During the late 1960s and early 1970s he commanded an army and served as deputy commander of the Soviet Group of Forces in Germany and as commander of the Carpathian Military District. In 1979 he was head of the Operations Directorate of the General Staff, which planned the military intervention in Afghanistan. In 1984 he assumed the post of deputy chief of the Soviet General Staff with responsibility for direct oversight of operations in Afghanistan; he later oversaw the withdrawal of Soviet forces.
