Finally, at 4:00 p.m., local time, fourteen hours after we had left Moscow, we landed in Tashkent, a city of a million, the largest in central Asia, described by Harrison Salisbury of the New York Times as “Russia’s Number One Advertisement in Asia.” But if indeed it was such an advertisement, it left much to be desired. I was there for only a few days, but it did not take long to see that Tashkent was a city without character—trapped, it seemed, between an old, enfeebled nomadic culture and an imposed, stultifying Soviet style of life. Tashkent was neither one nor the other.
After dropping my bag at the hotel, I set off for a quick walk around town before dinner. Prospekt Pravda Vostoka, or Avenue of the Truth of the East, one of the main streets in Tashkent, led to Gorky Park, an inevitable destination in any Soviet city. I bought an admission ticket (required in all parks) and entered what a young Uzbek later described to me as “the only place in town where one can have a good time.” The park had everything—games, movies, dancing, even a free concert. Near the center, a lottery was being held, the winner to receive 300 rubles. I saw a young woman pull at her boyfriend’s arm. “Don’t buy a ticket,” she whispered. “It’s all fixed.” Uzbeks were mixing freely with Russians. Couples walked arm in arm, very proper, almost as though their parents were watching. Here decorum reigned, so unlike in Kiev, where couples were openly hugging, kissing, and more.
I approached a large, fenced-in area reserved for dancing. In one corner a four-piece orchestra was playing Western music. I thought I heard “Stompin’ at the Savoy.” Courtships were brief. Boys approached girls, a question in their eyes, the answer soon in their arms. The dancing was graceless and awkward, but everyone seemed to be having a good time.
Under the rubric “Weird Things Can Happen Anywhere at Anytime,” an MVD officer decided this was the moment for a lecture on Soviet hydroelectric power. Ten or fifteen young people gathered around him. As he looked at the dancers with obvious disapproval he proclaimed, “All of this energy could better be invested in building a hydroelectric power station, rather than wasted here on a dance floor. This is nothing more than a polite form of hooliganism.” Most of the young people nodded in apparent agreement, but when the officer left they giggled.
I asked a Russian, “Where is the best restaurant in Tashkent”? He burst into laughter. “Maybe in Moscow, but not here.” I figured it was time to test the one in the hotel.
A sickly odor of ammonia, apparent the moment I entered the large dining room, killed my appetite. The waitresses, heavy, wearing blotched uniforms, essentially indifferent to normal courtesies, did nothing to improve it. The dining room was crowded. I joined a young Russian who was alone at a table for two. He said he was a fourth-year student in a textile institute. Tashkent, he explained, was the center of an active needle trade. In front of him was a bottle of vodka, and he appeared to have been drinking heavily. “There is nothing else to do in Tashkent,” he grumbled. “I go to the park, but one can quickly tire of the park. Nothing of interest here. Nothing to do. Here everything is skuchno—boring.” He used the word skuchno several times, as if he were a character in a Chekhov play complaining about life in a village and yearning one day to visit Moscow. Then, realizing he might have spoken too candidly to a foreigner he had just met, he belted back another vodka, asked for his check, and left. I said good-bye, but he ignored me.
In the hotel lobby, a shabby kiosk was the place for the latest news, at central Asian speed. Copies of the Khrushchev speech were piled high. The title for this edition was “Overcoming the Personality Cult of Stalin and Its Consequences.”
I asked the clerk, “When did you get copies of the speech?” In Moscow I had been told it was widely circulated shortly after Khrushchev delivered it in late February.
Here, six months later, the clerk excitedly responded, “This afternoon. It arrived here this afternoon.”
I asked, “Is it selling well?” The clerk examined me with sudden suspicion. He did not answer my question, turning his attention to other customers.
The following morning, after a spartan breakfast of tea, toast, and cheese, I headed for the old city, which the Intourist travel agency vigorously discouraged me from visiting. “Nothing there,” insisted one clerk. “Absolutely nothing there. Uninteresting.” I went anyway. I didn’t think I was being followed, but couldn’t be sure. At a street corner, I asked for directions from an Uzbek woman dressed in a long, black khalat (a long-sleeved outer garment), her face covered by a dark veil. “The trolley,” she replied in Russian, “the number four trolley… to the very end.” She pointed to a trolley rumbling to a stop across the street. I raced toward it, jumping over a rut filled with water. I saw a little boy urinating in it.
The trolley ride cost thirty kopecks, or a few pennies, cheap for an eye-opening spin through time and cultures. I started in the Soviet half of the city (paved streets, tall buildings, Gorky Park) and ended, an hour later, in the Uzbek half. It was like leaving one country and entering another. As the trolley car noisily bounced through Tashkent, I saw the streets becoming narrower, dustier, dirtier, with fewer automobiles but more donkeys and camels. The sun seemed to get hotter and the people poorer, their skin dark, their eyes slanted, their cheekbones set high on broad faces. Buildings were of clay, some of brick. Life here in the old city moved slowly—out of step, I thought, with the rhythm of the mid-twentieth century.
At the end of the trolley ride was Komsomol Square. I found myself facing the ruins of a large mosque. “Closed for repair” signs were everywhere. Like so many other mosques, it was also closed to prayer. Off a main street was the marketplace of Tashkent. It was extraordinary, covering a whole neighborhood with commerce and traffic. Masses of people swarmed through the small, crisscrossing streets, ready to sell or buy anything, from threads to furs. In Soviet society, prices were officially regulated. Theoretically, you were supposed to be able to buy a pound of butter for the same price in Leningrad as in Tashkent. In fact, however, every purchase had its own price. A buyer could scout the available merchandise, spot a possible purchase, and then haggle over price for long stretches of time. Every kopeck was like a gold coin. I heard an old man argue with remarkable passion, pointing his finger and yelling about a twenty-kopeck difference between his offer and a seller’s price for half an hour—and then dramatically walk away. The seller lingered for a few minutes and then raced after the man, knowing that in a bazaar the negotiation never ended. Ultimately the seller yielded, the difference between their prices now dropping to five kopecks. The deal was struck.
In this marketplace, everywhere, leaning up against walls and checking the passing parade of potential buyers, were the sons and grandsons of the famous Basmachi, Islamic fanatics who opposed communism before and after the Russian Revolution. When Tsar Nicholas II tried to conscript central Asian Muslims into the Russian army during World War I, many went into rebellion and under the leadership of Enver Pasha, a former Turkish minister of war, formed a guerrilla army of 16,000 rebels. Enver Pasha, who looked to Timur the Lame as a model, dreamed of establishing a Pan-Turkic confederation encompassing all of central Asia. In a series of vicious battles in the early 1920s, the Russian communists beat down the insurgent Basmachi, and by the early 1930s the Islamic movement fizzled, having run out of both drive and energy, even though nostalgic tales of Basmachi courage could still be heard in hushed conversation in shady corners of the Tashkent marketplace.