Why did the young capital of a traditionally nomadic land become Central Asia’s greatest trading hub in the post-Soviet period, rather than one of the great Silk Road trading cities of Bukhara, Khiva or Samarkand? That’s one of the questions raised — and answered — in Regine Spector’s book that delves deeply into the explosion of private trading during and after the breakdown of the Soviet Union, and how some of the huge new bazaars, most notably the book’s main subject Dordoi in the outskirts of Bishkek, became unlikely oases of order in a chaotic new world. 

The bazaars that in the early days of post communism mushroomed across the former socialist space remain an important part of the retail and wholesale sectors — and indeed daily life — in a number of countries in the region despite the growth of modern retail formats. In poorer countries like Kyrgyzstan, they still account for a large share of trade. 

Not only that, but over the last three decades Kyrgyzstan has emerged as an unlikely hub for regional trade, with most of it channelled through its largest bazaars, Dordoi and Karasuu on the Uzbek border. This dates back to the early days after the fall of communism when, in contrast to its neighbours, the Kyrgyz government rapidly liberalised the economy and took the country into the World Trade Organisation (WTO). That was back in the days when there were still hopes Kyrgyzstan could become the “Switzerland of Central Asia”, before its two revolutions in 2005 and 2010, and subsequent assaults on property rights. Yet through both revolutions, Kyrgyzstan’s bazaars continued to thrive, even surviving the ructions to regional trade caused by neighbouring Kazakhstan’s entry to the Customs Union as a founder member. 

Spector, an assistant professor in political science at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, charts the development of bazaar trading in ‘Order at the Bazaar: Power and Trade in Central Asia’, from small-scale “suitcase” or shuttle trade, to wholesale imports as Kyrgyzstani traders forged direct links with manufacturers in China and rival manufacturing hubs such as Turkey and South Korea. The explosion in bazaar trading even gave rise to a thriving local garment manufacturing industry. Dordoi itself became a “city within a city”, and the trading hub for the Eurasian region, with Spector describing how hundreds of buses would arrive daily in the early hours of the morning with traders from all over the former Soviet Union. 

But the main focus of Spector’s book is on how poriadok — a Russian word translated as “order” — has been established and maintained in what at first glance appears to be an intensively chaotic environment. Dordoi is the prime example of this process; Central Asia’s largest bazaar yet one where order is consistently maintained in aspects of bazaar life from the relations between traders and the owner, to negotiations with government officials on relevant policies to seemingly small yet vital issues such as stallholders ensuring their goods don’t protrude into the aisles. It has also been relatively exempt from the depredations bazaars in the former Soviet Union became associated with, first by racketeers and later by bureaucrats.

Spector’s insights are based on interviews with traders and as well as shedding light onto how order was created also offer often poignant insights into lives shattered by the fall of communism then rebuilt in the radically changed environment that appeared afterwards. Her interviews reveal conflicted views of the bazaar even the traders — one interviewee, a former teacher, tells her: “I feel that I lost so much of my soul.” 

Yet the fact that many of the new traders grew up in the Soviet Union led them to create order by adapting some of the practices — notably the formation of trade unions — from that era, as Spector underlines. “Order at the bazaar … is in part undergirded by these individual choices of traders who carry with them engrained sensibilities instilled from Soviet education … Conflicts exist. It is the active choice to avoid and prevent conflict that in part undergirds the buzzing and humming of traders, consumers, cart pushers and the daily grind within the bazaars,” she writes. 

Dordoi is also a special case because of its early privatisation. Under the ownership of Askar Salymbekov it was transformed from an occasional flea market to Central Asia’s largest bazaar, helped by its location outside the city as well as investments into new roads and other infrastructure. Spector profiles Salymbekov, outlining how he played a skilful diplomatic game to ensure he was seen as the legitimate owner of the bazaar in a country where property rights are often insecure. 

Spector contrasts the relatively orderly development of Dordoi with the longer-established and notoriously chaotic Osh bazaar in central Bishkek, whose fragmented ownership ensured the city authorities failed many times to reorganise it. Traders at Osh bazaar also created their own form of order, reaching back to pre-Soviet times. “[V]illage-born traders — literally white beards, or aksakals — who had been working at the bazaar for fifteen to twenty years became important sources of local authority,” writes Spector, in what she describes as a “reappropriation of a pre-Soviet Kyrgyz village institution in a capital city bazaar”. 

While there is a trend across the former Soviet Union towards modern retail, the central role bazaars continue to play in the retail trade in Kyrgyzstan and other of the poorer countries from the region, as well as in channelling goods westwards into the region from China, mean Spector’s insights into the inner workings of bazaar life continue to be highly relevant. 

Order at the Bazaar: Power and Trade in Central Asia, by Regine A. Spector, was published by Cornell University Press.