I read something very interesting at the BBC Uzbek’s website about our leaders’ ability to shout and swear to get things done. I remember watching some programmes on UzTV some time ago. Karimov goes somewhere to meet local leaders, hokim, elderly people, etc. He accuses hokim for appointing his family members to all key posts in the district or corruption or even crimes he committed during his time as a hokim. Then he orders to remove him from his post and gives some advice for the next hokim. Couple of years later he comes to see the next hokim’s job and gets equally frustrated as last time. It goes on and on… and again no one dares to oppose him. Everyone equally accepts.

Here is the translation of the article:

By Bunyod Bek

There’s a well known story about the famous Uzbek writer Gaffur Gulyam, and it goes like this: One day Gaffur went to the bazaar and he met a Central Asian gypsy who was famous for his swearing. They started to swear at each other and the gypsy was shocked at Gaffur Gulyam’s extensive knowledge of Uzbek swear words and insults. They exchanged insults with each other for half an hour and during that time Gaffur Gulyam didn’t repeat a single word or phrase once. The gypsy was so impressed that he asked Gaffur Gulyam if they could meet again and have another swearing contest because he’d enjoyed it so much.

A friend of mine is a minor official in one of our regions, and he says even Gaffur Gulyam could have learned a thing or two about swearing from our regional governors. During the sowing season and the harvest, he told me, we often have meetings. All the local officials have to come, everyone from the head of the district administration to the heads of all the local schools and representatives of all the neighbourhood committees. Usually the meetings start after work at around 6pm and they go on until midnight. The old governor of our region used to shout and swear at people so badly during these meetings that people would come away with high blood pressure. You can’t say anything back in this sort of situation because you know that if you do, the police will be round to your house the next day accusing you of breaking the law in some way.

Uzbeks are optimists by nature, so before the meetings like these what do people do? Well, they drop into the local tea house and put in an order for later for a big bowl of plov and four or five bottles of vodka. After the meeting and all the swearing and insults, they all go back to the tea house, eat the plov, drink the vodka and the next day everything seems okay with the world and it’s a business as usual. The main thing is how to get through those four or five hours of shouting and swearing that you have to put up with first. But there are times when the optimism, the plov and even the vodka just aren’t enough.

Recently my friend said that an inspector from Tashkent had turned up at one of his meetings. He started shouting and swearing at the chairman of a local collective farm. It went on for several hours. This chairman was in charge of a small farm and he had ten people working for him. He kept his head down and tried to keep quiet and just listen, but even this wasn’t enough for the Tashkent inspector. “Look at me when I’m talking to you, “he yelled. The chairman looked at him. His eyes were bloodshot, his blood pressure was soaring. “Why are you staring at me with your cow’s eyes?” the inspector roared. That was the final straw. The very next day the farm chairman packed up his bags, took his two sons and left for Russia.

I heard a similar story the other day from a farmer in Tashkent region. He told me that the head of the local district had come to see him and started shouting and swearing at him, and even hitting him around the head, all in front of his children. “We all know that we’re living in hell, “the man said. “How much longer do we have to put with being insulted and humiliated in this way,” the farmer said. “Our life is hell.”

In the Uzbek media they are always writing about our Eastern traditions and how polite and well behaved our people always are. Some journalists even bemoan the fact that life is changing and that we’re losing touch with our traditional ways. But it’s becoming increasingly obvious that shouting and swearing is becoming a traditional way of doing things in our government structures. And in fact there are some who would even go so far as to argue that trading insults is in our blood, and that in Uzbekistan we’ve never lacked leaders who are willing to shout and swear to get things done.