Legitimation through self-victimization. The “Uzbek cotton affair” and its repression narrative (1989-1991)

The cotton affair, which overwhelmed Uzbekistan after 1983 and involved thousands of state and party cadres, resulted in Rashidov’s memory being stained and in extensive purges of the former ruling elite. This massive moralization campaign became a crucial event in late Soviet history, provoking disaffection with the empire among the Uzbek elite and providing a postcolonial trauma narrative undergirding Uzbekistan’s independence and post‑Soviet identity. Karimov’s ideological shift (1989‑1991) saw the CPUz move from loyal communist orthodoxy towards independence and a nationalist ideological split. Right from birth, the newly independent Republic of Uzbekistan claimed to have been under the colonial tutelage of Moscow and its local ‘puppets,’ as exemplified by the Uzbek affair—as well as the cotton monoculture and the related ecological disaster in the Aral basin, creating a sensitive identity theme of resistance against Soviet power. The major events are here identified: in the harsh political rhetoric of the late 1980s – characterized by such terms as “colonial,” “purge,” “new terror,” “renewed 1937,” “Uzbek genocide”; the witch‑hunt against the Uzbek people and anti‑Uzbek krasnyi desant by the CPSU; the general amnesty of the prosecuted people, and the rehabilitation of Rashidov as a “national hero.” These events played a major role in reshaping ‘Uzbekness,’ that post‑Soviet sense of a unique Uzbek identity.