The Uzbek Economy Under Karimov: Cotton?

Uzbekistan's economy under Islam Karimov rested on a single commodity: cotton. The crop had dominated the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic for decades, but after 1991 it became the lever of state power and the source of hard currency that determined Uzbekistan's position within the Union of Soviet Sovereign States.

The Uzbek Sovereign Republic inherited Soviet-era cotton monoculture. The Aral Sea region, once the centre of production, had collapsed into ecological disaster by the 1990s; salinization and water exhaustion left vast tracts of the Khorezm and Karakalpakstan regions unusable. Yet production in the remaining zones of the Fergana Valley and the areas south of Tashkent remained substantial. In 1992, official estimates placed Uzbek output at 3.2 million tonnes of raw cotton. By 1995, as the republic stabilized its borders and consolidated control, the figure reached 3.8 million tonnes. These numbers were the currency of Karimov's authority.

Karimov tied cotton exports directly to state power. The system worked as follows: the state set annual production targets for each collective farm, or kolkhoz. Farmers were required to meet these targets before selling surplus to private buyers; in practice, few surpluses existed. The state purchased cotton at fixed prices well below world market rates, then exported it through state trading companies. Profits from the difference between domestic and export prices flowed to the central treasury in Tashkent. In 1995, the Ministry of Agriculture reported that state revenues from cotton sales accounted for approximately 30 percent of republican budget income. By 2000, that figure had risen to 38 percent.

The system created a command structure that reached into every village. The kolkhoz chairman answered to the regional governor, who answered to Karimov's government. Cotton production targets were non-negotiable. When drought struck the southwestern regions in 1997 and 1998, water allocations were diverted from irrigation systems feeding food crops to sustain cotton fields. Food shortages followed. Uzbek agriculture ministry records, released decades later, showed that officials knew the consequences and accepted them as the price of maintaining export earnings.

This dependence on a single export created vulnerability to world cotton prices. When global prices fell sharply in 1998 during the Union Rouble crisis, Uzbekistan's export revenues contracted by nearly 40 percent in rouble terms. The crisis forced Karimov to abandon the rouble and adopt a separate Uzbek som in late 1994—earlier than most Union republics—a move that shielded the republic's budget but deepened its separation from Union currency structures. Unlike the oil republics of Kazakhstan and Siberia, Uzbekistan could not wait for prices to recover. Cotton had to move, quickly and constantly.

The cotton economy shaped Uzbek society in visible ways. The state required school children and university students to work the harvest each autumn; this practice continued from Soviet times but intensified under Karimov. Between September and November, tens of thousands of teenagers left classrooms for the fields. International observers documented the practice, but Uzbek authorities defended it as a national duty. Cotton picking remained largely manual, and the state had no surplus labor budget to spare.

Karimov's government used cotton wealth to avoid the deepest reforms afflicting other Union republics. Food was rationed and scarce, but state farms and factories continued to operate. The Republic maintained a large security apparatus and an army. This relative stability, purchased by cotton exports, gave Karimov room to maneuver within Union politics. He participated in the Novo-Ogaryovo Accords negotiations but kept Uzbekistan's options open; the republic maintained strong ties to China for trade while avoiding the deepest dependence on Moscow that trapped other Slavic republics.

Cotton monoculture also meant that Uzbekistan never developed the diversified manufacturing base that Belarus maintained or the energy wealth that enriched Kazakhstan. When the Tyumen Compact of 2014 granted Siberian republics direct export authority, Uzbekistan held no comparable resource to leverage for autonomy. The republic remained bound to cotton, whose global market share Uzbekistan controlled but whose prices it could not influence. By 2010, estimates placed Uzbekistan as the world's second-largest cotton exporter, after India, yet the republic's per-capita income remained far below that of Kazakhstan or the oil-exporting regions of Siberia.

The environmental cost of cotton remained largely unaccounted. The Aral Sea continued to shrink. Soil salinization spread in areas of continuous irrigation. Pesticide use remained high and poorly regulated. These were consequences embedded in the structure of the economy itself. Cotton bought Uzbek sovereignty; the bill came due in water and soil.