Real Dictators - Turkmenbashy Part 1: Soviet Stooge, Hermit Tyrant

Episode Date: January 14, 2022

Turkmenistan in Central Asia. Somewhere unremarkable, you might assume. But you’d be wrong. Away from prying eyes, an extraordinary story unfolded here. In the early 1990s, a man called Saparmurat Niyazov creates a brand-new state from the rubble of the Soviet Union. His regime will be a case study in modern tyranny, filled with bizarre pronouncements and barely believable laws. As ‘Turkmenbashy’, or ‘Head of the Turkmen’, Niyazov rules into the 2000s, turning Turkmenistan into a North Korea 2.0. But how does he get away with it? A Noiser production, written by Dan Smith. Research by Derek Henry Flood. For ad-free listening, exclusive content and early access to new episodes, join Noiser+. Now available for Apple and Android users. Click the Noiser+ banner on Apple or go to noiser.com/subscriptions to get started with a 7-day free trial. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Get groceries delivered across the GTA from Real Canadian Superstore with PC Express. Shop online for super prices and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit superstore.ca to get started. It's August the 25th, 2010. In Ashgabat, capital of the Central Asian nation of Turkmenistan, a huge yellow construction crane rises into a clear blue sky. In the crane's cab, an operator delicately manoeuvres the controls.

The challenge he faces today is by no measure a run-of-the-mill job. His task is to remove a gold-plated statue from the top of a marble-covered plinth. It is, quite literally, a monumental proposition. The monument, unveiled back in 1998, is known as the Arch of Neutrality. It was commissioned by the previous president, Sapomura Niyazov. It's a garish construction, to say the least. At its apex sits a golden effigy of Niyazov himself.

His arms are raised, as if accepting the adulation of a crowd. And this is not just any statue. It moves. To the former president's delight, this golden likeness was built with a mechanism that allowed it to be constantly rotated, so that it always faced the sun.

Why build a statue of yourself if it doesn't show off your best angle? This arch of neutrality is the ultimate emblem of the self-indulgent exorcist of Niyazov, a despotic figure who preferred to be known as Turkmenbashi, head of the self-indulgent exorcist of Niyatsov, a despotic figure who preferred to be known as Turkmenbashi, head of the Turkmen. In a 15-year dictatorship from 1991 until 2006, Turkmenbashi presided over the creation of Turkmenistan out of the ashes of the Soviet Union. If the USSR was a one-party setup, the country Turkmenbashi built was effectively a one-person state. All power resided in him, and he wielded it both ruthlessly and

eccentrically. It will take much more than the pulling down of a statue to dent his legacy. How was it possible, at the advent of the new millennium, for one individual to bend a country to his will without any real constraints upon him? Or to put it another way, how was a modern Thailand made? This is part one of the Turkmenbashi story. And this is Real Dictators. Little known in the West for most of his career, when Sapomur at Nyatsov did make the news, it was usually for his outwardly comical antics.

Here was a man who changed the names of the months to honour himself and his family, who banned beards and smoking on apparent whims, who outlawed dogs from his capital, a man who clamped down on theatre, opera and ballet like a seventeenth-century Puritan, and who wrote a spiritual guide for his people that he demanded be taught in all educational establishments. To international onlookers, he was almost a figure of fun, a cliché of a dictator,

in a scarcely known country in a little understood part of the world. But there was more to Turkmenbashi than mere comedy. For all the curious edicts, he was a wily operator who found a niche for his country, free from the interference of either East or West. His private fiefdom remained invisible to many, even amidst the global explosion of information technology. Only after 9-11, when Central Asia suddenly took on a new strategic importance, did the superpowers show any real interest.

And by then, his power base was long established. His legacy of secrecy and oppression extends even to today, where those who lived under his rule still fear to talk about it. The Turkmen people remain extraordinarily isolated. The state is so repressive, the circulation of information so tightly controlled, that the country ranks 176th out of 178 countries in the Press Freedom Index. And of all the countries of the former Soviet Union, Turkmenistan has the highest number of political prisoners. But we'll come to all that.

For now, let's rewind to a time long before Turkmenbashi's rule, before Turkmenistan even existed. It's a little after one o'clock in the morning, on October the 6th, 1948. In the city of Ashgabat, most people are fast asleep, resting in the single-story homes that typify this urban landscape since 1925 this has been the capital of the turkmen soviet socialist republic here we're in the heart of central asia two thousand miles from the bosphorus the strait that marks the boundary between Europe and Asia. A similar distance from Moscow.

Three times that many miles from Washington, D.C. Tonight, everything is calm. But that's all about to change. In a dwelling in Kipchak, a village on the outskirts of Ashgabat, In a dwelling in Kipchak, a village on the outskirts of Ashgabat, an eight-year-old boy called Sapomirat Niyatsov is snoozing, along with his mother and his two brothers. This is all of his immediate family.

His father, a schoolteacher, was one of the millions to perish in the Second World War, killed in Crimea, fighting for the Red Army. Fifteen miles away, an enormous earthquake strikes. A small village called Garagauden finds itself at the epicentre. Within moments, the tremors rage through Ashkabat too. The few lights still on in the city suddenly go out, throwing everyone into pitch blackness. Then there's a low rumble as the sun-dried bricks of which most homes are made begin to disintegrate.

Wooden beams crack and break apart. Wall by wall, building by building, street by street, Ashkabat collapses. The air fills with dust, clogging throats and burying itself deep into lungs. In the seconds after the earthquake strikes, all goes ominously quiet. As one eyewitness puts it, a dull noise, like a deep sigh, swept across the city, followed by a deathly silence. It's as if, beneath the rubble of the ruined streets, everything has perished, humans and animals. But a short while later there are the first signs of life. The desperate pleadings for help, the groans of the injured, the cries of children searching for their parents, and then the tears and wailing as the survivors discover lost loved ones.

Young Nyatsov is among those to suffer unbearable loss. He is the sole member of his family to make it through the night. He emerges from the chaos, alone in the world. He emerges from the chaos, alone in the world. It's unclear exactly how many lives the earthquake claims. It's certainly in the tens of thousands, perhaps in excess of a hundred thousand. It is by some accounts the deadliest natural disaster in the entire history of the Soviet Union. Far away in Moscow, in the headquarters of Soviet government,

those in the Kremlin are appalled by the news reaching them. At the same time, these officials are scared, scared that the news will spread, and with it, discontent. Word of the disaster cannot be allowed to get out. There must be no mention of the entire neighborhoods lost, or of the fires raging in factories, of the railway stations almost entirely destroyed, the hospitals lying in ruins, or the gangs of prisoners who have escaped from the collapsed jailhouse and are now marauding through the city. Such news will only damage public morale, perhaps even dent confidence in the Soviet

leadership. But the virtual news blackout comes at a price. At the best of times, the Turkmen Republic is a forgotten outpost of the Soviet Empire. But with a veil of secrecy thrown around it just at its hour of need, the initial rescue and rebuilding efforts stall. The resources desperately required do not arrive on time. To acknowledge the disaster and the need to rebuild would highlight problems that Moscow wants to pretend do not exist. From the director of The Greatest Showman

comes the most original musical ever. I want to prove I can make it. Prove to who? Everyone. So, the story starts. Better Man, now playing in select theaters. With TD Direct Investing, you can get live support. So whether you need help buying a partial share

from your favorite tech company, opening a TFSA, or learning about investing tools, we're here to help. But keeping your cat off your keyboard, that's up to you. Reach out to TD Direct Investing today and make your investing steps count. Plus enjoy 1% cash back. Conditions apply. Offer ends January 31st, 2025. Visit For a child such as Nyatsov, Ashkabat surely feels more exposed than ever. Over the next few days and weeks, a sort of normality resumes. The water is still running through the pipes. The electricity gets turned on again. The trains even run on a few routes.

The following year, reconstruction finally begins more widely. Young Niyazov perhaps sees how it's possible to build anew out of chaos. He witnesses firsthand how his hometown is resurrected and remolded to fit the template of its Soviet overlords. What images does the Soviet Union evoke in your mind? Lines of troops in fur caps and greatcoats, marching across a snow-sprinkled red square? Rockets launching intrepid cosmonauts into the stratosphere?

Or perhaps heavy industry, workers laboring in factories or underground in mines. Well, the Turkmen Republic of Niyazov's youth presents a rather different face. About the size of Spain, this is a land of nearly 200,000 square miles, 70% of which is taken up by the vast Karakum Desert. Somewhere between 2 and 3 million people are distributed sparsely across the republic's expanse. Its western border nestles up against the Caspian Sea.

Next door to the north are Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. To the south, Afghanistan and Iran. Communist power may emanate from Moscow, but the sprawling Soviet Union is not a homogenous country. Russia is only one of 15 republics that make up the USSR. As well as the Turkmen, these include modern-day Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, Estonia and Moldova, among others. Each republic is delineated essentially on ethnic lines.

Different Soviet republics for the different cultural and linguistic groups that populate the Eastern Bloc. The Turkmen is one of the most homogenous of all Soviet states. There are a handful of Russians here, but it's peopled predominantly by the ethnic Turkmen population. Perhaps unsurprisingly, as their name suggests, these people share aspects of history and culture with the inhabitants of Turkey. Hugh Pope is an expert on Central Asia and Turkmenistan. The Turkmen people can be proud of the fact that they're one of the core pillars of the Turkic world. The Turkmen are some of the first who moved from Central Asia westward, and they were the kind of nomadic herders and warriors who managed to conquer

as they went west. One of their first great family regimes was the Seljuk regime, which created very glorious dynasties in both Iran and Turkey. And these Turkmen peoples also gave birth to the Ottoman Empire in the end. The Ottomans were ultimately a descendant of Turkmen tribesmen. The Turkmen speak one of the many dialects of Turkish to exist from China through to the Balkans. And it's one of the Western Turkish dialects, so it's pretty well, especially the written form, is understandable to anyone west of them. So you have a sense of linguistic connections still today from Central Asia through to Turkey.

Famously, when the Turkish president visits Turkmenistan, I witnessed one at a banquet. Turkmenbashir would stand up and say, we are one people in two nations. Turkmenbashir would stand up and say, we are one people in two nations. What we know today as Turkmenistan was, for much of its history, a region on the Silk Road, the series of trading routes that connected Europe with the Far East. Crossing the Bosphorus from Europe, the merchants of old would set foot on Asian soil,

beginning an arduous trek through modern-day Turkey, Iraq, and Iran. Then they'd cross into the land of the Turkmen. After that, it was on to the lands that now comprise Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, and, finally, China. Over the ages, the Turkmen landmass was incorporated into a number of larger empires. It falls under Russian rule in 1881 and formally becomes part of the Soviet Union in 1925. At this time, in the early 20th century, the Turkmen cultural identity and the Islamic faith most here profess, become very much secondary to communism. The republic is, first and foremost, a small cog in a huge Russian-dominated machine. However, it is, inadvertently, the Russians who first sow the seeds for the independent

country that will eventually emerge. Adrienne Edgar is professor of history at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and a specialist in Soviet Central Asia. The Soviet Union created nations within its borders, and those nations became 15 independent states when the Soviet Union collapsed. Many of them did not exist before the 1920s, and that's especially true in Central Asia, where there was no Turkmen nation or national republic or anything before the Soviet Union. Before that, they were a bunch of, you know, a bunch of tribes who didn't necessarily have much affinity with each other.

So I don't think Turkmenbashi created the nation. And it's quite telling that he was very keen on suppressing any memory of the Turkmen communist leaders who were regarded by many Turkmen as having been the founders of the modern Turkmen nation. The Soviets engaged in massive efforts to kind of modernize and Sovietize the republic, getting children in school, bringing modern healthcare, teaching people who had been essentially nomadic tribespeople previously that they were Soviet citizens. They tried to stamp out many aspects of what they considered backwards, you know, traditional culture, particularly anything to do with religion, anything to do with what they considered

the oppression of women. They tried to get rid of customs and traditions that they regarded as oppressive, like polygamy, child marriage, early childhood engagement. They tried to make a lot of changes in the local society. What they did not do is try to turn people into Russians. The Soviets did believe that every nationality had the right to its own language, culture, elites. Turkmen language schools, Turkmen language newspapers, Turkmen language institutions of all sorts were also part of the Soviet agenda. Where nomads once travelled across the desert, by the time of Niyazov's childhood the population is settled,

most working on collective farms, in accordance with the five-year plans set out in Moscow. Complex irrigation systems are set up to counter the arid climate. Wheat is the principal food crop, but cotton is also a key revenue raiser. Some traditional commodities continue to thrive. Caracal sheep and Turkmen horses are valued livestock, while handmade carpets and rugs are prized far and wide. But what really underpins the economy here is hydrocarbons. The region's oil reserves have been exploited for many years,

but in the 1960s, the discovery of enormous natural gas fields proves a real boon. Turkmen gas becomes a key component in powering the Soviet economy. Not that you'd realize it by walking around Ashgabat, or any of the other much smaller Turkmen cities. The Republic is of monetary and ideological value to the powers that be in Russia. But while the gas keeps on coming, and any nascent dissent is repressed, she is left largely to her own devices. The remodeling after the 1948 earthquake takes decades to complete. In the process, Ashgabat takes on the look of any number of Soviet cities.

It was kind of a colonial outpost. The Turkmen themselves did not have cities before the Russians and the Soviets came along. So anyone living in Ashgabat was living in a largely Russian environment, very different from the outlying areas. I think there were paved roads in the city, but as soon as you got outside the city, you're talking dirt roads again. And even well into the Soviet era, even post-Soviet era, most areas outside Ashgabat did not have running water,

did not have what we would consider modern conveniences. Outside, Ashgabat did not have running water, did not have what we would consider modern conveniences. Low-rise residential areas have given Ashgabat an old-fashioned feel ever since the city's foundation in the 1880s. But these yield to high-rise blocks in the Soviet brutalist style. Life lived on the ground moves ever upwards into the sky. But this metropolis of concrete does retain in enclaves some of its distinctive Turkmen character. Not everyone lived in a big giant apartment building. Some people were still able, especially on the outskirts of the city, to live in single family or compounds where they could keep animals in the courtyard.

So I think if you saw it visually, externally, it would have looked like, in many ways, like any other Soviet city. But then when you look closer, you would have seen things like shepherds leading animals along, women wearing traditional Turkmen dresses. And if you went into someone's home in particular, you would have found people in their Soviet apartments.

Instead of sitting at Soviet-style chairs and tables, they might be sitting on the floor, on a carpet. And what of young Stapomir Niyatsov? In truth, we know little detail of his early life. We do know that he's raised in the Soviet orphanage system. He's one of many put here by the earthquake. The orphanage would have been a fairly austere place. Everything in the Soviet Union in the early post-war period was very austere. It wasn't just the orphanage. There was not much food. There was not much housing. It would not have been a cushy life.

But at the same time, the orphanages tried very much to make good Soviet citizens out of the kids they had. And one result of this is that kids who grew up in the orphanages very often came out Russian-speaking, identifying strongly with the whole Soviet Union. A lot of people who became Communist Party leaders and so forth actually grew up in orphanages because they were cut off from contact with Turkmen social networks, and therefore they really grew up within Russian and Soviet social networks. I have a friend who's in Kazakhstan whose father grew up in a Soviet orphanage because his parents were both killed in a World War II bombing. And he told me the Soviet Union was my father.

The Soviet state was my father. That's apparently what the kids were told. Derek Henry Flood is a journalist who spent time in Turkmenistan in the early 2000s. He actually credits having lived a lot of his childhood and adolescence in the orphanage system as what shaped his character and what kind of strengthened him. And he sort of portrayed a narrative that without that experience, it may not have propelled him to his political career. After 1991, he articulated that orphans were sort of heroes of the Turkmen nation.

Nyatsov completes his schooling in 1959. For a while, he's representative on a workers' union committee. In 1962, he joins the Communist Party. He shows enough ability, and perhaps more importantly, enough loyalty to the government in Moscow, to travel to Russia for his higher education. In 1967 he graduates from the Leningrad Technological University, majoring in electrical engineering. He is by no means a great mind of the age. Nonetheless, this is pretty good going

for someone whose start in life could hardly be described as privileged. In the coming years he benefits from prestigious invitations to undertake further training, both in Leningrad and in Moscow. Niyazov is playing the game and, against stiff odds, winning. Once you got rolled into the orphanage system and the educational system, I think that you became a member of the Soviet family, as it were. And he seems to have really taken that kind of autocratic model to heart, at least judging by his later life. If you were from a non-Russian republic,

a place like Turkmenistan, to get to go to university in a place like Moscow or Leningrad, you know, you couldn't be stupid. But at the same time, in the late Soviet Union, connections did play an important role. Knowing somebody, being connected, getting a recommendation from somebody. And part of that was being loyal to the system, speaking good Russian. In his case, because of the orphanage experience,

it was a little bit different. He had networks through having grown up in an orphanage, I suspect, although I don't know the details of that. But he was definitely loyal to the system. When Niyatsov returns home from his Russian adventure, he works as an engineer in a power plant at Bozmain near Ashgabat. His practical skills and his knowledge of both the Russian and Turkmen languages ensure a rapid rise. He's soon swept into the party structure full-time, where he proves

himself an astute political operator, a man steadily climbing the greasy pole of power. He also makes the tactically astute move of marrying a Russian woman. Her name is Musa Melnikova. In the Soviet period, for a Turkmen Communist Party member who was ambitious, in the Soviet period for a Turkmen Communist Party member who was ambitious, having a Russian or any Russian speaking, Ukrainian, German, Belarusian, someone of non-Central Asian ethnicity, shall we say, a non-Muslim wife, was definitely a boon. It not only gave them access to social networks that they might not have otherwise had access to, you know, the wife's family, particularly if she was from a prominent family. But it also made them seem trustworthy and kind of like more one of our guys to the people in Moscow, the people in power. If you spoke really good Russian and had a Russian wife,

you wouldn't be treated as a Russian, but you'd be treated as someone more like us. In the future, Niyazov's choice of wife will prove more problematic, In the future, Niyazov's choice of wife will prove more problematic, but he'll worry about that later. In 1980, he's named head of the Communist Party in Ashgabat, a position of genuine authority in the communist arena. He's still only 40 years old. But by making the best of his talents, and demonstrating unwavering commitment to the Soviet way, he has risen

in the world, and fast. He's perfectly positioned to take advantage of a new opportunity that is about to fall into his lap. In 1985, the Soviet leader Konstantin Chenenko dies at the age of 73. The Politburo chooses Mikhail Gorbachev to succeed Chinenko as General Secretary of the Communist Party, in effect, the national leader. The new man's job is to lead the USSR out of the economic doldrums.

As the youngest member of the Politburo, at a relatively youthful 54, Gorbachev is seen as the man with the energy and vision to see the job through. He quickly comes to realise that he will only succeed by changing things up. He wants to get rid of the dead wood officials whom he sees as having hindered progress for years. While the Turkmen Republic is hardly top of his list of priorities The new leader wants change even here Since 1969, regional power in the Turkmen Republic

Has been held by a man called Mohammad Nasser Gaparov Initially, life improved under Gaparov Largely due to investment in the gas and oil industries But as the years rolled by, economic development stagnated. By now, corruption and nepotism are widespread. To curry favour with Moscow, Turkmenistan, in common with other Central Asian republics, has been making entirely unrealistic promises of how much cotton they can supply to Russia. entirely unrealistic promises of how much cotton they can supply to Russia.

The production goals are missed, even as the local population goes hungry trying to meet them. The Turkmen people and Gorbachev have had enough. Just before Christmas 1985, Gorbachev sweeps Gaparov out of office. There is one obvious choice as his successor. Niyazov is an apparently dependable party man, with a ready-made power base in the Turkmen capital. For Gorbachev, who frankly has bigger fish to fry, Niyazov represents a safe bet, if not an inspired one.

Seen from Moscow, Turkmenistan would have looked very small and unimportant. The only thing that it really had going for it was enormous natural gas reserves which were sort of pumped into the Soviet system. Quite easy to govern, there were never any problems there. So I don't think that if you were the General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party, you spent much time worrying about Technikhan. And it's probably best to see Sapomiratnyazov as he was then, as just a loyal person who would do whatever you told him. I guess that Gorbachev would have felt that having punished the predecessor, the successor would have learned his lesson and keep things in proper order. If they exempt the gas and oil and cotton, Moscow didn't really care as much what they were doing. There was a lot of corruption in these republics.

I don't think that Gorbachev thought he was going to be a reformer. I think it's most likely that he just thought he was going to keep things on an even keel. As Gorbachev pursues his agendas of perestroika, economic and political reform, and glasnost, openness and transparency, he finds himself permanently walking a tightrope. To hardliners within the Soviet machinery, his reformist zeal is anathema to pure communism. For those hungry for reform, meanwhile, progress is too slow.

Boris Yeltsin, a senior figure in the Russian Communist Party, is among Gorbachev's most ferocious critics. At the same time, the reforms and freedoms that Gorbachev is managing to introduce are fueling the rise of national independence movements across the Soviet Empire. The more power that is devolved to these outposts, the more power they demand. This in turn is hardening the hearts of those anti-reformers afraid that change is coming too quickly. The Gorbachev years are turbulent, to say the least. Ethnic and nationalist protests become a regular feature of life across the Soviet Union. Even in the Turkmen Republic, a nationalist movement known as Unification emerges, though it's very much a minority cause. From 1989 onwards, they hold low-level rallies calling for independence from Russia and for

the use of Turkmen rather than Russian as the state language. Niyazov has no time for all these separatists. He aligns himself completely with Moscow. He clamps down on opponents and stands firm against calls for a break with the Kremlin. In 1990, a few dissidents do manage to win elections of the Supreme Soviet, the governing council of the Turkmen Republic. But still, the Communist Party's hold over this region is utterly dominant, and separatist challenges are not considered a serious threat. Gorbachev appointed Niyazov for a reason, and he's doing everything expected of him to maintain the Soviet hegemony. But the 18th of August, 1991,

will prove a pivotal date in the history of the Soviet Union. Gorbachev is buckling under the growing pressure of separatist movements across the USSR. He wants a compromise. He prepares to sign a treaty that will turn the Union into a federation of independent states. They will, however, share a single president, a combined military, and a common foreign policy. From where Niyazov is standing, there's much to look forward to. He knows he still needs Moscow to provide military protection and economic security. But the prospect of a freer hand in domestic affairs is certainly appealing. For others in the USSR, though, the treaty either does not go far enough in

ceding authority, or, alternatively, gives away far too much of the Kremlin's power. It's proving simply impossible to keep everyone happy. Just two days ahead of the planned signing, Gorbachev is far away from Moscow. He's in his Dasha, his luxurious holiday home in the delightful Crimean coastal town of Foros. Just before 5pm, an unexpected group of visitors turns up at the house. They hammer on the door, demanding a meeting with him. Among them are Gorbachev's chief of staff, Valery Bolgin, senior party official Oleg Shenin, senior military figures Oleg Baklanov and General Valentin Berenikov, plus General Yuri Plakhanov of

the KGB, the feared security service. Sick to his stomach, Gorbachev reaches for his phone to make a call, but as he brings the receiver to his ear, he hears no tone. The line is dead. He's on his own. Inside the house now, the visitors lay out their demands. Gorbachev must declare a state of emergency and assign power to the vice president, Gennady Yanaev. But Gorbachev refuses. He accuses them of blackmail and treachery.

Now the coup attempt really swings into action. Gorbachev and his family are placed under house arrest. It seems just a matter of time until he and his wife Raisa are killed. At six o'clock in the morning of the following day, the coup leaders begin a campaign of misinformation. The state news agency reports that Gorbachev can no longer carry out his duties because of ill health and that Yanayev has stepped in as acting president. But the plotters are working off the cuff and the coup has not been well planned. In the Crimea, Gorbachev hunches over a small radio he smuggled past his captors. He follows the unfolding drama of the power grab on the BBC and Voice of America. He's also managed to make contact with his allies in Moscow.

In Moscow itself there is widespread fury with this turn of events. Thousands of protesters swarm the streets, pleading with soldiers to disobey the orders of the coup plotters. Tanks and troop carriers loyal to Boris Yeltsin, by now President of Russia, roll into the city to protect Parliament against the coup. In the early afternoon of the 19th of August, Yeltsin himself climbs on top of one of the tanks in front of the Parliamentary building and addresses the cheering crowd. The coup, he says, is illegal, the work of criminals and traitors.

He appeals to his audience to go on a general strike. The clouds of terror and dictatorship are gathering over the whole country, he says. They must not be allowed to bring eternal night. Far away, in his office in the Turkmen Republic, there is only silence from Sapomurad Niyazov. He shows himself to be an arch-pragmatist. In common with other regional leaders, he refuses to come out publicly as either for or against the coup.

He's calculating all the possible outcomes. If the hardliners can take power, they will ensure that the Soviet Union continues much as it always has done. They represent the status quo. But if Gorbachev, the man who gave him his job in the first place, is restored to office, Niyatsev wants to be able to say he had no part in the plot against him. For now, watching on from a distance, trying to keep track of who is in the ascendancy. Discretion is the better part of valour. Only when it's clear that the plot has definitely failed does he voice his opposition to it.

The truth is, Nyatsov wants to stay in everybody's good books. He is not at all interested in joining an ideological war between hardliners and reformers. Luca Anceschi is professor of Asian Studies at the University of Glasgow. At that time, silence was strong enough. They did not want to break up. This is

clear. They felt, and rightly so, that they had no resources to become independent states. But particularly in those years where the tension between the centre and the periphery was very pronounced and where the future of the Union was the most common topic discussed within the Communist Party and in the Soviet structures. Having someone who does not come openly out and say, well, this is wrong, we should go back to the Union, it tells you that he's a man only interested in one thing, one thing only, his own power.

By August the 21st, three days after it began, the coup is totally over. Gorbachev is formally reinstated. But the whole affair has shone a spotlight on the Soviet Union, and shown up its many weaknesses. Hoarding power in Moscow is increasingly unrealistic in this ever more interconnected world. The clock is ticking for Gorbachev and the USSR itself. Within days the premier sets about dismantling many of his party's power structures. Ukraine, the second largest state in the Union after Russia, declares its independence, setting

off a chain reaction of similar declarations. Gorbachev retains some nominal power, but in practice Yeltsin has overtaken him as the leading authority in Russia. Over in Ashgabat, Niyazov now sees which way the wind is blowing, and spots a glorious opportunity. He announces a referendum on Turkmen independence, to be held in October. When the vote rolls around, the pro-independence side wins 94% support. This is certainly eye-catching,

because it isn't the first referendum of its kind. When Gorbachev called a similar vote seven months earlier, Niyazov's government reported 97% support to remain part of the USSR. Now, that result has been turned on its head, almost as if Niyazov is manipulating election outcomes to suit his evolving agenda. Regardless, the die has been cast. On December 25, 1991, Gorbachev appears on television to formally resign as Premier of the Soviet Union.

His office, he says, is hereby dissolved, and with it, the USSR. Just after half past seven that evening, Gorbachev departs his office. The hammer and sickle flag is lowered from above the Kremlin for the last time. The following day, Sapomur Adnyatsov wakes as president of a new independent nation, Turkmenistan. It's an extraordinary development. Beyond the wildest dreams of any power-hungry, would-be strongman. This has not even been Niyazov's long-term goal. How could it be, when for most of his career the Soviet Union had seemed rock-solid?

But history has seen to it that he is uniquely placed to seize control of the brand new state. Niyazov has scant historical forebears. Few have ever found themselves gifted office in a newborn country. Those who have experienced such a situation tended to have fought and sacrificed for that right. Yet, just until a few months ago, Niyazov was opposed to the very idea of Turkmenistan. He was content to be a career yes-man within the Soviet behemoth, and now suddenly he has a blank canvas before him. For all their proud heritage, the Turkmen have never had a country of their own.

No one knows what to expect or what to demand. There is no national history to refer to, no tradition of institutions, no memory of halcyon days to which to return. The history is there to be written from scratch. Power was really served to Sapermartin Yelzov on a plate because he was the first secretary of the Communist Party in Turkmenistan. There was no opposition to speak of, just people cowering really in corners. It was very difficult to find anyone who was an opponent. So I think power was already concentrated in his hands, and it was only his to lose.

They didn't have a plan. They didn't have any experience of democracy. So how would they implement that? Their peoples didn't have any experience of either the rights or obligations of democracy, so they weren't really knowing what to do. In the earliest days, Niyatsov shows a degree of restraint. He's careful not to come across as overbearing, at least at first. He's still finding his way. He's only just beginning to develop the cult of personality that will underpin his decade and a half of tyranny. All of the leaders of the five Central Asian republics that were just

basically thrust into independence by sort of an accident of history, they work to sort of resuscitate and foster national narratives based on the ethnic majorities of each of those nation states. Central Asia, from the Russian perspective, was never meant to have any of this kind of sovereignty and independence. In Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, these presidents of the republics looked to figures in history, look to figures in history, poets, warriors, clan chieftains, that they could kind of make their, if you will, their George Washingtons of these societies. And in Turkmenistan, Turkmenbashi basically made himself this figure. Turkmenbashi made himself a postmodern historical great figure. I actually had a chance to watch him in action a few months after he declared independence.

It was impossible to actually interview him. He was a very insecure person. But in those days, he would appear in front of the people in quite small gatherings. I found him at this factory, which he'd gone to talk to the workers. The factory clearly had very short notice that he was coming because the paint on the gates was still wet and dripping over the grass

and there was a bit of wind and some of the windows fell out because they'd only just been put in. He got into the room and there was Töckmann Böscher answering questions from the floor of these workers. In those days, Töckmann Böscher still had white hair. He hadn't dyed it black yet because he spruced up his image a bit later. It was such a strange scene, because the questions that were being asked was so small,

including questions like, what are you going to do about the price of kvass, which is a kind of licorice drink, so a somewhat cool and pleasant drink. All he had to do was sort of say, I will make kvass free, or I will give you free sugar, or everything will be half price for students. And I promise I will privatize all the little shops that you have.

It was like watching a slightly dysfunctional parent handing out sweets to children. I tried to go out and talk to him afterwards, but I couldn't. But I did manage to go up to one of his officials who was ready to speak to me. And I said, come on, what is this? How is this going to result in a functioning company? He said, oh, you've got to understand that we've been frozen for 60 years under the Soviet Union and we're just waking up now. We can't fix this. It's our children who'll fix it. Which was kind of, I think, illustrative of the passivity that Turkmenbashi was dealing with. that Turkmenbashir was dealing with. It's difficult to overstate just how down at heel this new country feels.

There's nothing akin to the excitement and sense of possibility enjoyed by, say, Poland or Czechoslovakia when they throw off the Soviet yoke. Aside from a few doughty campaigners, there has been no mass movement for independence here. Turkmenistan has not so much won its freedom as had its freedom thrust upon it. Most people have lived their entire lives as Soviets and to some extent become resigned to their lot. Submissiveness is hardwired into the popular psyche. To do anything else has been to take on a system so mighty that it will crush you. I think people really underestimate to what extent Turkmenistan was a very forgotten back

country sort of place. I didn't visit it in the Soviet times, but I did visit it the year after the Soviet Union fell in 1992. I remember how difficult it was to get there. I mean, I crossed the Caspian Sea in a ferry. It took two days for the ferry to leave. It took a day for the ferry to cross the Caspian. And when we arrived at Krasnovodsk, the city that would later be named after Turkmenbashi on the Caspian Sea, it was another day waiting for a train to take me to the capital, Ashgabat. It was incredibly hot. There was nothing in the shops. They were full of East European plastic goods and chintzy ceramics, and that was about it. And it was a real problem finding stuff to eat. The Turkmenistan that emerges in the early 90s is by

no means an affluent country. But it does have a valuable commodity that the world wants, and that Russia needs very much indeed. The mammoth reserves of natural gas, buried beneath the sands, bring hard cash, and Niyazov is the one with access to the bank account. With hard currency at his fingertips, and with a general lack of political opposition, Nyatsov is able to consolidate his position quickly and effectively. Obviously, autocracy is always made much easier by a steady flow of cash, because if you have a steady flow of cash, you don't need people to support you. You don't need to ask them for taxes. The people are not asked for anything, and nor do they have to give anything. You don't need to ask them for taxes. The people are not asked for anything,

nor do they have to give anything. But once you give taxes to a regime, you tend to sort of want to demand things from it. And since in Turkmenistan no one had to give any taxes, perhaps it explains a bit the passivity is that they didn't really feel that they had any need to ask for anything because they weren't putting anything in anyway. A product of the Soviet system, raised in its orphanages and educated in its schools and universities, Niyazov now makes an enormous pivot as he begins to mould his new land. He puts forward a vision of a country not tied to the whims of others in far-off places like Moscow or Leningrad. Rather, his is a country rooted in the proud traditions of the Turkmen people. The Kremlin has nothing left to offer him or his citizens.

Almost overnight, Niyazov exchanges the Soviet identity to which he's clung since childhood and remodels himself as an ethnic Turkman, a proud descendant of those warriors who forged their way westwards a thousand years earlier. It's a breathtaking piece of pragmatism. Almost the entire population is of Turkmen descent. Russians are the other main ethnic community, but they will soon fade away as Moscow's influence dissipates.

but they will soon fade away as Moscow's influence dissipates. For Niyazov, it's simply good politics to present himself as one of the masses' own. But this transformation is not just political. It's highly personal. Indeed, it has ramifications even within the Niyazov family. Sentimentality must not be allowed to hinder the pursuit of power so the president makes moves to distance himself from his russian wife their son and their daughter they will no longer live together as a family i know a lot of people who knew him who told me he was just an ordinary

loyal communist apparatchik nothing special people who had known him found it ridiculous, the kind of way he was being built up in the post-Soviet era. But a very important part of that was seeming more Turkmen, seeming like a genuine Turkmen leader. And to do that, I wouldn't say he had to jettison the Russian wife and half-Russian children, but he had to perhaps hide them away a little bit. The public had every right to wonder how one of the old guard could possibly make things better. In response, Nyatsov raises the possibility of renewal. I am no hangover from the Soviet era. Against all the evidence, I am not one of the old guard.

I am the leader of the Turkmen, figurehead of a proud people, and founding father of a nation you never had before, and which is now your birthright. Places that had been communist were now becoming nationalist, so he was going to become nationalist too. And he was going to become the uber-nationalist, more nationalist than anybody else. Once communism was dead, what else was there? What other ideology, what other way of bringing people together did they have? A lot of people have said that to me, that when communism died, the only ideology really left was nationalism. Now, of course, there were other possible ideologies, but at the time, kind of nation-building ideology, national glory, and so forth, was the most obvious choice.

I met a lot of people who'd been devoted communists and had become incredibly devoted members of the Turkmenbashi cult, I guess you can call it. And I asked people, why were people able to so easily pivot? And what people told me is, people never really believed in communism either. Turkmen people are very adaptable. You know, we've had a lot of people trying to rule us.

We know how to speak the language and say what's necessary and placate the authorities. And then we kind of, behind the scenes, just keep doing our Turkmen thing. Nyatsov is promising a land of milk and honey. But there are a few conditions attached. As we shall see, he expects power to be concentrated in him exclusively. Not only politically, but culturally and spiritually too. He predicts that Russia won't take much interest in his territory. Certainly they never have before. The Russian flag has replaced the Soviet one in Red Square, while in Ashgabat the green Turkmen

banner flutters proudly. This new nation will be a lifetime's work for Sapomurad Niyazov, to be built as he sees fit. In the next episode of Real Dictators, in the second and final part of the Turkmenbashi story, Niyazov purges his rivals and constructs a facade of democracy. A series of bizarre policies will begin. Nothing is exempt from Turkmenbashi's whims. Appearing on TV daily, hair freshly dyed for the cameras, the tyrant will seem unstoppable. But somehow, opposition will emerge, culminating in a dramatic attempt on his life. That's next time on Real Dictators.