Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty

home, his teacher or class curator comes over and denounces the parents. They assign a plan to each child, from 20 to 60 kg per day depending on the child’s age. If a child fails to fulfil this plan then next morning he is lambasted in front of the whole class.
    The harvest lasts for two months. Rural children lucky enough to be assigned to farms close to home can walk or are bused to work. Children farther away or from urban areas have to sleep in the sheds or storehouses with the machinery and animals. There are no toilets or kitchens. Children have to bring their own food for lunch.
    The main beneficiaries from all this forced labor are the political elites, led by President Karimov, the de facto king of all Uzbeki cotton. The schoolchildren are supposedly paid for their labor, but only supposedly. In 2006, when the world price of cotton was around $1.40 (U.S.) per kilo, the children were paid about $0.03 for their daily quota of twenty to sixty kilos. Probably 75 percent of the cotton harvest is now picked by children. In the spring, school is closed for compulsory hoeing, weeding, and transplanting.
    How did it all come to this? Uzbekistan, like the other Soviet Socialist Republics, was supposed to gain its independence after the collapse of the Soviet Union and develop a market economy and democracy. As in many other Soviet Republics, this is not what happened, however. President Karimov, who began his political career in the Communist Party of the old Soviet Union, rising to the post of first secretary for Uzbekistan at the opportune moment of 1989, just as the Berlin Wall was collapsing, managed to reinvent himself as a nationalist. With the crucial support of the security forces, in December 1991 he won Uzbekistan’s first-ever presidential election. After taking power, he cracked down on the independent political opposition. Opponents are now in prison or exile. There is no free media in Uzbekistan, and no nongovernmental organizations are allowed. The apogee of the intensifying repression came in 2005, when possibly 750, maybe more, demonstrators were murdered by the police and army in Andijon.
    Using this command of the security forces and total control of the media, Karimov first extended his presidential term for five years, through a referendum, and then won reelection for a new seven-year term in 2000, with 91.2 percent of the vote. His only opponent declared that he had voted for Karimov! In his 2007 reelection, widely regarded as fraudulent, he won 88 percent of the vote. Elections in Uzbekistan are similar to those that Joseph Stalin used to organize in the heyday of the Soviet Union. One in 1937 was famously covered by
New York Times
correspondent Harold Denny, who reproduced a translation from
Pravda
, the newspaper of the Communist Party, which was meant to convey the tension and excitement of Soviet elections:
    Midnight has struck. The twelfth of December, the day of the first general, equal and direct elections to the Supreme Soviet, has ended. The result of the voting is about to be announced.
    The commission remains alone in its room. It is quiet, and the lamps are shining solemnly. Amid the general attentive and intense expectation the chairman performs all the necessary formalities before counting of the ballots—checking up by list how many voters there were and how many have voted—and the result is 100 per cent. 100 per cent! What election in what country for what candidate has given a 100 per cent response?
    The main business starts now. Excitedly the chairman inspects the seals on the boxes. Then the members of the commission inspect them. The seals are intact and are cut off. The boxes are opened.
    It is quiet. They sit attentively and seriously, these election inspectors and executives.
    Now it is time to open the envelopes. Three members of the commission take scissors. The chairman rises. The tellers have their copybooks ready. The first envelope is slit. All eyes are directed to it. The chairman takes out two slips—white [for a candidate for the Soviet of the Union] and blue [for a candidate for the Soviet of Nationalities]—and reads loudly and distinctly, “Comrade Stalin.”
    Instantly the solemnity is broken. Everybody in the room jumps up and applauds joyously and stormily for the first ballot of the first general secret election under the Stalinist Constitution—a ballot with the name of the Constitution’s creator.
    This mood would have captured the suspense