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Accepted Paper:
The Southern Gate: Soviet Uzbekistan and the regional initiatives with India and Afghanistan
Riccardo Mario Cucciolla
(University of Naples L'Orientale)
Paper short abstract:
The international dimensions of a Soviet republic and its peculiar connections with India and Afghanistan
Paper long abstract:
Uzbekistan was a crucial republic in the Soviet agenda for the Third World. During the Cold War, the republic was promoted as a modern and emancipated model of political, economic, social and cultural development for newly independent countries emerging from decolonization. This international dimension of the Soviet periphery was kept until Perestroika when the Cold War was ending, the system of international relations changed, and Uzbekistan was shocked by the Cotton Affair. However, also in the 1980s, Tashkent played an essential role on the Southern front, promoting a series of economic, social and cultural initiatives with India and becoming the military hub and one of the main cogs of the Afghan sovietization. This form of cooperation would have set the basis for the new diplomatic line of the independent Republic of Uzbekistan. This paper aims at assessing, through new archival sources, the international dimension of a Soviet periphery, evaluating the level of subjectivity and the internal debate of the Uzbek party and the republic's government in these regional initiatives.