What are your thoughts on post soviet Turkmenistan? Western media and “youtube historians” portray it as “evil north korea style totalitarian regime”. But if you look at the facts, we see that Turkmenistan, along with Belarus, is the only post soviet state that didnt mass privatize. Its first president himself, Saparmurat Niyazov, supported the failed 1991 August Coup that tried to save socialism and the USSR. After independence of Turkmenistan, communist rhethoric was replaced by conservative nationalist populism through his Democratic Party of Turkmenistan (DPT). Still, he did not follow western dictates. He refused to privatize anything or even impose market principles in the economy. To this day, Turkmenistans economy remains dominated by state owned planned economy, focused on exports of gas, oil and cotton (as in soviet times). Social welfare has remained extensive, with basic necessities like water, electricity, housing and gas being free for all citizens.
So, i was wondering, what do you think about Turkmenistan and its ruling DPT? They definetely arent socialist although they dont seem very capitalist either. What do you think?
Some sources on this that you can read (with a lot of skepticism cuz its wikipedia):
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Party_of_Turkmenistan
What is the revolutionary potential of such a country?
Revolutionary potential? Not much because its not socialist. But its still not fully capitalist either. I guess you could say its a weird mix of socialist economics and liberal politics. A strange type of state capitalism with extensive social welfare and central planning.
It seems too isolated from, well everything, to do a lot of stuff, its an very simple country, with an simple economy, but it looks to be on a better state them the rest of the ex soviet central asian countries, but they still are good friends with both russia and China. I think that because its such an isolated country, it was able to survive the balkanization of the USSR. Its good to see that there still is countries that make the western midia cope&seethe and that dont buy the capitalist bs, and the steep countries are natural friends of russia and China, specially with the BRI iniciative.
