The sad legacy of 1989

This building used to be the biggest bookstore in Samarkand, Uzbekistan. It’s now a cell phone store:

There are a lot of essays floating around these days about the fall of the Berlin Wall, which happened twenty years ago this month. This is the best one I’ve read. But as Timothy Garton Ash writes in that piece, there has yet to be written a great account of how these events were experienced by ordinary people. That’s probably in part due to the fact that the changes that have taken place are so vast that they’re hard to treat authoritatively.

But this piece, which popped up on Ferghana.ru this morning, reminded me of one of the most profound changes: a sad cheapening of public culture:

Samarqand used to be one of the most “reading” cities in Uzbekistan. It is hard to believe now but in 90s each of three districts of the city had several bookstores. Samarqand’s pride was Book Center – three-storey bookstore. Today, such stores are reconditioned into food stores, drug stores and boutiques. The former Book Center now serves as the head office of biggest cellular provider.

Few days ago the book store in the area of Samarqand state university (hosting five thousand students) was shut down. Allegedly, new owners will recondition the place into restaurant.

The only active bookstore in Samarqand is Uzkitab at Alisher Navoi Street (former Mustillik and Lenin Street) that has existed since Soviet period. I remember that that in the period of total deficit (even having enough bookstores) people had to sell waste paper to the government in order to obtain classic literature. This is the way how many residents of Samarqand filled their personal libraries with books. Today, these books, which were considered rare few years ago, moved to big and small markets as well as garage sales.

I’ve gotten into a ton of arguments, during my time in the former communist world, with locals who blame the U.S. for dumping all of its crap culture, like McDonald’s and Hollywood blockbusters, on them. (To which I always respond: you’re the ones buying it.) And to be fair, some good American culture makes it to the east, as well: it was in Budapest that I fell in love with Hal Hartley films (OK, I was in college) and Serb friends who introduced me to American indie bands that are still some of my favorites. But that is pretty rare and for the most part the American culture that crosses over the ruins of the Iron Curtain, and the local pop culture it inspires, is terrible.

And I suspect that is one of the U.S.’s greatest soft power challenges, and one of the reasons why 1989 did not turn out to be the “end of history” and the victory of liberal, democratic capitalism: Because, as little as people want their government to get their friends to spy on them or to be told how much wheat to produce in the next five years, they don’t want their culture to be ruined, either.