INSTITUTIONALIZATION OF THE PARTY SYSTEM IN KAZAKHSTAN AND RUSSIA: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS Part I

141 T Second, there is a connection between democracy and geopolitics. In Central Asia geopolitics, or new geopolitics, has also penetrated (in the same way as the issue of democracy) national genetics. Uzbekistan’s democratic self-identification (if I may say so) will not merely be a result of the country’s domestic sociopolitical evolution; to a great extent it will be the result of an external impact of a dual—containing and stimulating—nature. For example, recently the disagreements between Russia and the U.S./West over the democratic prospects for the post-Soviet states (especially in the Central Asian countries) have become clearer. To specify: what the West describes as support and promotion of democracy, Russia (and the majority of the CIS countries) take as a geopolitical scheme. For the time being, the newly independent Central Asian states remain under the spell of the Soviet syndrome. The democratic West has also fallen victim to it: it regards us, the post-Soviet states, as new Soviet states.