THE late Saparmurat Niyazov was an exceptional head of state even by Central Asian standards. Authoritarianism is pretty much the norm in that part of the world (as in so many others), and personality cults of varying intensity are part of the political culture there. But Turkmenistan under Niyazov left most of the competition trailing far behind: it appeared to be aspiring, with considerable success, for the bizarre heights scaled by North Korea, albeit without the latter’s nuclear ambitions.

Ashkabad, the capital of Turkmenistan, boasts a huge gold-plated, revolving statue of its deceased president-for-life which rotates in such a way that it always faces the sun (except, presumably, at night). It is one of countless likenesses of Niyazov that pockmark the nation of five million: not only in public spaces but also on carpets, vodka labels, watches and his own brand of perfume. He was clearly in love with his own image, and possibly somewhat embarrassed by this unfortunate trait. “I’m personally against seeing my pictures and statues in the streets,” he once said, “but it’s what the people want”. The extent of his vanity can be judged from the fact that after he dyed his hair black, it became illegal for anyone to be found sporting a watch that depicted a greying Niyazov.

And it wasn’t just his own looks that impressed Niyazov. He also fancied himself as a philosopher, encapsulating his thoughts in a tome titled Ruhnama, or ‘Book of the Soul’, which he described in the introduction as being “on a par with the Bible and the Quran”, and which schoolchildren were required to memorise. What’s more, they were encouraged to quiz their parents on its contents and report any shortcomings to their teachers.

It isn’t uncommon for self-obsessed personalities to name towns and cities after themselves, but Niyazov went further: he changed the names of months in honour of himself and his parents. His grand schemes included a lake and a ski resort in the middle of the desert.

Some of Niyazov’s bizarre follies may have been forgivable had the income from Turkmenistan’s Caspian oil and natural gas reserves been fairly distributed, or at least used to improve the standard of living. But there was evidently no room in Niyazov’s mind — or heart — for such concerns. With the Ruhnama as the only prescribed text, an entire generation of Turkmen children is likely to have emerged from school with precious little knowledge or life skills. The truncated syllabus mean the years of compulsory schooling could be curtailed. But schools at least remained in place, unlike hospitals: Niyazov decreed that they could not exist outside Ashkabad. Earlier this year, a medical school in London warned of an impending humanitarian catastrophe in Turkmenistan.

When he died last week — possibly a victim of his own refusal to invest in health facilities — Niyazov left behind no designated successor. That could be construed as something of a redeeming factor in a region where there is tendency towards dynasties, although the greater likelihood is that the man who styled himself as Turkmenbashi — father of the Turkmen — simply could not conceive of anyone ever filling his shoes. The resultant uncertainty could, it is feared, produce a failed state. Russia and China, among others, are jostling for influence in Ashkabad, but the vacuum created by Niyazov’s removal from the equation could, in desperate times, be filled by fundamentalism.

Until 15 years ago, Turkmenistan and several of its neighbours were a part of the Soviet Union. It was on Christmas Day in 1991 that Mikhail Gorbachev announced his resignation as executive president of the USSR — a union that had by then effectively ceased to exist, after the leaders of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, meeting in secret earlier that December, signed documents that replaced the mother country with a Commonwealth of Independent States. Within weeks they were joined by another eight Soviet republics. The Baltic states had already gained their independence well before then. Suddenly, there was nothing for Gorbachev to preside over. Inevitably, the significant reforms he had introduced in his nearly six years at the helm were also rendered redundant.

Niyazov had been named the first secretary of the Turkmenistan branch of the Soviet Communist Party in 1985, the same year that Gorbachev became the national party’s general secretary. He wasn’t initially keen on independence, but once it became a fait accompli, he embraced the new creed with gusto, assuming charge as the president of Turkmenistan in 1991 and entrenching himself as president-for-life eight years later. Had Niyazov been an aberration, it may have been possible to blame his behaviour entirely on eccentricities and personality defects. However, although he undoubtedly reached places where few could dare to follow, he was very much part of a trend (the Baltic states were an exception) whereby local Communist Party bosses evidently shed their ideology but clung on to their authoritarian instincts as they manoeuvred, usually with success, to retain power in the post-communist phase.

It could be argued that the continuity reduced scope for turbulence. It also meant, however, that some of the worst traits of Soviet rule were retained, while its redeeming features were largely discarded. Privatisation of the means of production did not, at least in the short run, lead to notable industrial triumphs, but it certainly paved the way for a sharp increase in disparities of wealth, accompanied by the depletion of services provided by the state. Corruption was hardly unknown in the Soviet Union, but it scaled unprecedented heights in its aftermath. Thus, for countless millions of its former citizens, the demise of the USSR was an impoverishing experience.

This is not to suggest that there was no poverty in the Soviet Union, although it generally remained concealed from prying eyes at least until the advent of Gorbachev’s glasnost. The Soviet economy was a lumbering behemoth whose inefficiency was legendary, but its well-integrated structure across the union meant that chopping it up dealt a serious blow to production. It is possible that the shock therapy introduced under Boris Yeltsin in Russia was an attempt, conscious or otherwise, to replicate the zeal with which the Bolsheviks took an axe to the economic structure of the tsarist era back in 1917.

The sale of precious state assets, often at throwaway prices, created Russia’s first millionaires and, before long, billionaires. The overdose of free-market capitalism produced many beneficiaries, but they were never more than a fraction of those for whom the changes brought new privations.

The pain may have proved more bearable had it been accompanied by unambiguous moves towards greater democracy. But that was rarely the case, even in Russia. Yeltsin too, after all, was a former Party apparatchik who often couldn’t help behaving in an extraordinarily authoritarian fashion, not least when he literally declared war on the elected Russian parliament — which appeared to cost him none of the western support he thrived on.

His successor has not fared as well, albeit quite possibly for the wrong reasons. Vladimir Putin has striven to re-establish a degree of control over state assets, which has done his popularity at home little harm. State patronage has been withdrawn from some of the oligarchs who were seen to be getting too big for their boots.

The political context for these developments is a growing democracy deficit: the abolition of mayoral and gubernatorial elections has been accompanied by changes in electoral rules that have made success progressively more difficult for candidates of whom the Kremlin does not approve. Former officials of the KGB and its successor, the FSB (Putin himself is an alumnus of both), are increasingly being ensconced in positions of power.

Putin arguably preceded George W. Bush in extracting political capital from a “war on terror”: in certain ways, Chechnya is a microcosm of Iraq. And there is something decidedly macabre about the way opponents of the Putin administration keep dying in mysterious circumstances. However, much of the above may readily have been overlooked had Putin been more willing to kowtow to Washington. He does not, mind you, consistently adopt an adversarial posture. However, he visibly bristles at the slightest criticism and resents insinuations that Russia is a second-rate power. Furthermore, unlike Yeltsin, he has mixed feelings about the events of 1991 and is unabashed in his nostalgia for certain aspects of Soviet power.

This, in turn, provides a source of irritation of the unreconstructed Cold Warriors in the Bush administration. The last thing they want to see is Russia reasserting itself as a counterweight to the US in international affairs. At the same time, they never tire of humiliating Russia. Nato has expanded eastwards and Central Asia is dotted with US military bases. Washington feels free to interfere in the political processes of countries such as Georgia and Ukraine, yet any hint of Moscow’s influence is greeted with warnings and threats.

The US-Soviet balance of power (also known as the balance of terror) that once was a basic tenet of international affairs did not by any means represent an ideal situation, but the imbalance that replaced it has, predictably, produced baleful consequences on a global scale.

In world-historical terms, 15 years is but the blink of an eye. The post-Soviet scenario continues to unfold, and the question whether the union could, in slightly different circumstances (sans the disastrous coup attempt against Gorbachev, for instance), have been reformed will trouble historians and polemicists for decades to come. However, notwithstanding the likes of Niyazov, it is important to remember that the USSR wasn’t an unremitting nightmare. It also encapsulated, particularly in its origins, some worthwhile dreams. It would make sense to hang on to them: they might come in handy in the future.