Speaker 1: Hmm, what's ringing my bells? I am Robert Evans. This
Speaker 1: is Behind the Bastards, the show where every week I
Speaker 1: try out a new introduction. This one got so Pie's approval,
Speaker 1: so that's good. It's also a show where we talk
Speaker 1: about the worst people in all of history, tell you
Speaker 1: the things you don't know about them. My guest today
Speaker 1: is David Christopher Bow. Hello. How you doing, Dave? I
Speaker 1: am well. I almost hit a man with my car
Speaker 1: on the way here. Oh sweet, did he have it coming? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Actually he was jaywalking. Well the fuck him? Yeah that's
Speaker 1: what I thought. Yeah, yeah, that's that's good. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: I'm gonna share a little bit of your personal business
Speaker 1: day because it makes me laugh. Your parents came here
Speaker 1: from the the blighted hellscape that is the East Coast
Speaker 1: to escape the snow. Yes, that's true. They're very old,
Speaker 1: so they do what old people do, and they went
Speaker 1: to a warm climate during the winter, and then Los
Speaker 1: Angeles got its first snow in sixty something. Here. Sure,
Speaker 1: they are very bummed out because when it's not snowing,
Speaker 1: it's been raining that stop. We've had our first winter
Speaker 1: in decades, which has been delightful. It's been great for
Speaker 1: the people who live here. It's nice. Yeah, especially after
Speaker 1: the summer, although it is a dire sign of climate
Speaker 1: change when Los Angeles has seasons. Yeah, the world is dying. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it's nice to get to wear a jacket, Hollywood. Yeah. Uh, well, Dave,
Speaker 1: today we are talking about a special fellow, very special fellow.
Speaker 1: Have you ever heard the name saparmar Atni is of
Speaker 1: Oh boy, oh oh boy. Now, the last show we
Speaker 1: had you won was Momar Kadafi. Kadafi is kind of
Speaker 1: the gold standard for just a lunatic who winds up
Speaker 1: in charge of a country, like not like a guy
Speaker 1: like like Hitler Stalin. People call them crazy, but they
Speaker 1: really weren't. Like if you if you look at them,
Speaker 1: everything they did kind of made sense, like based on
Speaker 1: where they're coming from. Kaddafi was a fucking maniac. Uh.
Speaker 1: And saparmar Atnia is off maybe even crazier than Kaddafi.
Speaker 1: He might be the craziest person who's ever run a country. Uh,
Speaker 1: But we'll have to judge that at the end of
Speaker 1: these episodes. Before we get into that, I have a
Speaker 1: new sparkling water beverage called Bubbly and I got it
Speaker 1: hoping for an orange soda of some sort, but I
Speaker 1: don't know if that's what it is or if it's
Speaker 1: more like one of those one of those lacroix. So
Speaker 1: I'm gonna I'm gonna learn right now. How is it.
Speaker 1: It's actually really nice. It is on the Lacroix scale.
Speaker 1: So it's like someone put an orange in. It's like
Speaker 1: it's like an orange was in the same room as
Speaker 1: some sparkling water. Um, but in this case, the orange
Speaker 1: talked to the water. Uh, and they reached in a chord.
Speaker 1: It's good. Okay, it's good. Yeah, it's like a melted
Speaker 1: popsicle bubbly. I'm gonna have to try it if you
Speaker 1: want too. Yeah, report in your lacroix. All right, Here
Speaker 1: we go over the over the equipment. This is we're
Speaker 1: reaching across the table. Oh Jesus sorry, it's good. Has
Speaker 1: it mixed with that? But I'm going to keep drinking it.
Speaker 1: So that's a little bit of science for you listeners
Speaker 1: at home. Do not mix passion fruit lacroix with orange bubbly. Uh.
Speaker 1: Not a good idea. All right, speaking of bad ideas,
Speaker 1: let's talk about saparmar At Niyazov, the lunatic god king
Speaker 1: of Turkmenistan. I'm so psyched. So today we're talking about
Speaker 1: a guy who was at one point probably the most
Speaker 1: powerful crazy person on planet Earth. He was the absolute
Speaker 1: ruler of a nation of five million people. So parmar
Speaker 1: At Niyazov was the dictator of Turkmenistan. And I think
Speaker 1: you're going to enjoy him, Dave, Although Turkmenistan did not um,
Speaker 1: I am extremely ignorant of the world. So where is Turkmenistan.
Speaker 1: It's like near Afghanistan and in in in the old
Speaker 1: Soviet Union. It's one of those little chunks of the country.
Speaker 1: It was like when Genghis Khan started doing his thing
Speaker 1: when they like left China and started conquering his way
Speaker 1: towards the Middle East. They were like the first empire
Speaker 1: he ran into on his way out of China. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and he had to, yet he sucked him up pretty bad.
Speaker 1: Uh So, Turkmenistan the actual country did not exist as
Speaker 1: a political entity until nineteen twenty four. Like, it wasn't
Speaker 1: a thing anyone had ever thought about as like an area.
Speaker 1: It was just a place where a bunch of like
Speaker 1: it had been a bunch of different kingdoms, but like
Speaker 1: no one had called them Turkmenistan or whatever. They wound
Speaker 1: up under Russian control during the era of the Csars,
Speaker 1: and not much was done with them. They were a
Speaker 1: little bit of a backwater, so they pretty much just
Speaker 1: stuck to themselves and did Turkmen stuff, which mainly meant
Speaker 1: outdoor picnics, fantastic wine and horseback riding. Oh good for them, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: It seemed to have that, seemed to have their ship together. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and there's just like, no one's noticing us. Yeah, let's
Speaker 1: just have a great time. Let's just chill out. They
Speaker 1: like falcons, big, big falcon people doesn't Who doesn't love
Speaker 1: a good falcon. They got great horses, and uh, they're
Speaker 1: one of those pieces of the Muslim world where everybody
Speaker 1: drinks still because they became Muslim, but they've been growing
Speaker 1: wine since before they were Muslims. They were like, well,
Speaker 1: let's just ignore that trunk earlier than we've been. It's
Speaker 1: kept grandfathered into the religion. Yeah, yeah, fair enough. Uh.
Speaker 1: In nineteen twenty four, the brand new Union of Soviet
Speaker 1: Socialist Republics decided this chunk of the world and its
Speaker 1: people needed an official designation and borders. The Turkmen SSR
Speaker 1: was considered to be the backwatery ist backwater in the
Speaker 1: entire Soviet Union. Uh say, maybe some of those chunks
Speaker 1: of Russia that were too cold for anything, but Gulags,
Speaker 1: an American diplomat told New Yorker author Paul Thiou that quote,
Speaker 1: it was the sleepiest, most remote, least favorite of the
Speaker 1: USSRS republics. So they don't get much love. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: I mean I want to live there. Yeah, if you're
Speaker 1: going to live in the Soviet Union, you want to
Speaker 1: live in the place that like Stalin doesn't think about ever. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: And they were they were basically the Soviet Union's gas station. Uh.
Speaker 1: They had like have like either the third of the
Speaker 1: fifth largest natural gas reserves in the world, and so
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union just kind of took all of their
Speaker 1: fuel and and didn't really give them money for it.
Speaker 1: And that that was kind of what happened for like
Speaker 1: seventy years or so. So they were they were doing fine. Uh.
Speaker 1: Suparmarat Niezov was born into this quiet region of the
Speaker 1: world in nineteen forty. His father was Attaya Niyazov, a
Speaker 1: farmer and His mother was Gurbon Sultan. They lived in
Speaker 1: the town of ghip Jack, a small village six miles
Speaker 1: from the capital, Ashgabat. If you know much history, you're
Speaker 1: probably aware that nineteen forty was not a great time
Speaker 1: to be born in the Soviet Union. The Nazis invaded
Speaker 1: before Subparmarat was one, and in nineteen forty two his
Speaker 1: father died in battle fighting the Wehrmacht. So not the
Speaker 1: best start so far, das he's really fun things up
Speaker 1: for this kid and twenty million other people. Yeah. Uh.
Speaker 1: This prompted Subparmarants mom to move them into the capital,
Speaker 1: where they all lived together until nineteen forty eight, when
Speaker 1: a massive earthquake struck the city and killed a hundred
Speaker 1: and ten thousand people, including Suparmarat's entire family. Okay, see,
Speaker 1: he's just having none of the luck, none of the luck,
Speaker 1: really really bad first eight years of his life. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: rough rough start, um, fair to say so. Young Saparmat
Speaker 1: grew up in a Soviet orphanage until the government found
Speaker 1: a family member he'd never met for him to go
Speaker 1: live with. Uh. In spite of the rough start, he
Speaker 1: did pretty well, winning a place in Leningrad Polytechnical Institute
Speaker 1: and graduating with a degree in power engineering in nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty six. Uh he got a job at a power
Speaker 1: plant near the capital, And UH do you like he
Speaker 1: was just going to be a normal Soviet dude. So far,
Speaker 1: so good, So far, so rough start, But he's getting
Speaker 1: his life on track, getting his life on track working
Speaker 1: as an engineer. If I know anything about engineers is
Speaker 1: that they never turned into power krazed maniacs. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: that's for sure, something about engineers that we know. Uh
Speaker 1: Saparmarat joined the Communist Party back in nineteen sixty two,
Speaker 1: and his ambitions immediately extended beyond just working at a
Speaker 1: power plant. Throughout the late nineteen sixties and the nineteen seventies,
Speaker 1: he steadily rose the ranks in local politics, due largely
Speaker 1: to the fact that he was a member of the
Speaker 1: largest Turkmen tribe in the region. The techie now uh
Speaker 1: saparmar at Yezov was named the first Secretary of the
Speaker 1: Communist Party of Turkmen by Mikhail Gorbachev and nine eight
Speaker 1: five he was put in power because his predecessor, a
Speaker 1: guy named Gapasov, had been incredibly corrupt. Uh and and
Speaker 1: stealing huge amounts of money from, you know, the republic.
Speaker 1: So that's that's his predecessor. Now. The good thing about
Speaker 1: Gapisov is that he'd almost completed construction of the world's
Speaker 1: longest aqueduct during his term, so it was like a
Speaker 1: couple of weeks away from being finished when he got
Speaker 1: ship can't And then Niyazov comes to power and he
Speaker 1: immediately takes credit for building the aqueduct, which good, solid. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So Gorbachev promised that Niyazov's promotion meant the dawning of
Speaker 1: a new age of corruption free governance in Turkmenistan. This
Speaker 1: would prove to be about as wrong as a statement
Speaker 1: can be. That feels like how a lot of monsters start. Yeah,
Speaker 1: of like the guy before them was terrible and corrupt,
Speaker 1: and they come up and they're like, no more corruption,
Speaker 1: no more corruption. Yeah. Yeah, that's a good pitch, like
Speaker 1: basically how this starts. Yeah, And he he probably would
Speaker 1: have gotten busted by Gorbachev eventually because he was really
Speaker 1: corrupt too. But five years after he comes to power,
Speaker 1: the USSR starts to fall apart, and so when the
Speaker 1: Soviet Union collapses, he's the guy in charge of Turkmenistan.
Speaker 1: So in nineteen ninety, the Turkmen Parliament declares its independence
Speaker 1: during a couple of different votes, and on October nineteen ninety,
Speaker 1: the state of Turkmenistan was officially born. It held its
Speaker 1: first presidential election immediately afterwards. Niyazov was the only candidate
Speaker 1: and he received ninety eight point three percent of the vote.
Speaker 1: So okay, so yeah, as everything collapsed around him, he
Speaker 1: took It's like having it's like being the manager at
Speaker 1: the final Blockbuster, yeah exactly, yeah, and just being like,
Speaker 1: we're gonna do things differently around Blockbuster now. Yeah. Uh yeah,
Speaker 1: he is. He is that guy. Uh. So, As the
Speaker 1: autocratic ruler of a new nation, Niazov's immediate goal was
Speaker 1: to be as neutral as possible and make a shipload
Speaker 1: of money. So not a bad plan at the start.
Speaker 1: He started selling gas oil and electricity to Iran, but
Speaker 1: also sweet talked Saudi Arabia and flew to Mecca to
Speaker 1: do his pilgrimage. So he's kind of trying to play
Speaker 1: both sides of of every angle. He's trying to be
Speaker 1: nice to Russia and be nice to the US. He
Speaker 1: just doesn't want anybody to funk with Turkmenistan. So reasonable, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's fair. He's protecting his people, protecting his people. Now,
Speaker 1: when he came to power, most Turkmen were still dirt
Speaker 1: poor because the Soviet Union had basically just been stealing
Speaker 1: their gas, like paying them, but paying them in Soviet
Speaker 1: money that wasn't worth anything, and being like, yeah, you
Speaker 1: guys are getting a fair market value for this. Feel
Speaker 1: like it was. It was a free gas station for
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union. But now that they were an independent nation,
Speaker 1: these guys had like a shipload of money at like
Speaker 1: something like five billion dollars a year coming in in
Speaker 1: uh in fuel money. And there's only five million people.
Speaker 1: So in a fair and equitable system, everyone in Turkmenistan
Speaker 1: could be really rich, like like they are in Kuwait
Speaker 1: or something. Of course, I assume that's what's going to happen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that they all get taken care of really well, and
Speaker 1: then that's it. Well you can find us on Twitter
Speaker 1: and Instagram and at Bastards pod day. No. Uh So
Speaker 1: that was what a lot of people hoped for, that
Speaker 1: like the economy will be reformed and they'd all get
Speaker 1: some of this sweet sweet gas money. But Niyazov was
Speaker 1: worried about what might happen if he reformed the economy
Speaker 1: too much. He thought it might be too much change
Speaker 1: for people in too short a period of time. Right,
Speaker 1: you got to protect the people from progress for money,
Speaker 1: change money. So what those people to have, who knows
Speaker 1: what they'll spend it? Are exactly houses? Food? Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: you don't want to risk that. So he promised that
Speaker 1: he would eventually add in some free market stuff, but
Speaker 1: in the short term, he decided that he really needed
Speaker 1: absolute power to get stuff started for good foot you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: makes sense, understandable. I just need a little I just
Speaker 1: need a little absolute powerst a couple of years. Absolute power. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I swear I will. I'll give it up. Yeah, like
Speaker 1: all the times people have given up absolute power in
Speaker 1: the past. Uh. So he got his wish when Turkmenistan's
Speaker 1: new constitution was drafted. It declared that power is held
Speaker 1: by the president, who was elected by the people, which
Speaker 1: seems reasonable until you realize that, once elected, the president's
Speaker 1: power was essentially infinite. Uh, and then included the power
Speaker 1: to determine how elections were held in the future. Yeah. Perfect. Now,
Speaker 1: under the constitution, citizens did have the right to form
Speaker 1: political parties as long as they could get a thousand
Speaker 1: other people together. That was like the minimum threshold you
Speaker 1: can make a political party. So several citizens did this.
Speaker 1: They created political parties, They kept in line, scrupulously followed
Speaker 1: the law, they avoided any calls for violence, they filled
Speaker 1: out all the required forms of petitions, and their parties
Speaker 1: were immediately banned. Um. Since the state controlled all media,
Speaker 1: no political parties were allowed in any airtime. So yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's uh, that that's what nias sort of starts
Speaker 1: off U tagging Jumakov, a journalist working for a state
Speaker 1: paper that was essentially owned by nias Off explained, quote,
Speaker 1: at this time, there is no need for a multi
Speaker 1: party system. Many problems have to be solved, social problems,
Speaker 1: and we must raise living standards. When our living standards
Speaker 1: are high and we are economically independent, then we can
Speaker 1: have a multiparty system. But if this happens now, there
Speaker 1: will be anarchy. It feels like there's a lot of putting,
Speaker 1: putting it off, putting, a lot of like, you know, no,
Speaker 1: it's a great, it's great, we'll do that at some point,
Speaker 1: but right now we really can't. Yeah, I'll clean up
Speaker 1: my room after yeah, finished stealing all this natural guess
Speaker 1: I'll clean my room, But first I got to do
Speaker 1: this cocaine, and that'll help me clean up. I can't.
Speaker 1: I can't make my bed with all this cocaine on
Speaker 1: the table. Exactly what have I what am I knocked
Speaker 1: the cocaine off the table? Exactly? Yes, yeah, he has
Speaker 1: that that that that logic is it? Exactly how Niazov
Speaker 1: justifies what he does. So At a People's Council in
Speaker 1: December nine, Niazov estimated it would take ten years for
Speaker 1: Turkmenistan to achieve the prosperity it needed for people to
Speaker 1: be allowed to vote. After the constitution was ratified, Niasov
Speaker 1: ran for president again winning. Yeah. He's he's very pop
Speaker 1: very popular, very also the only candidate, uh. He was
Speaker 1: the only Central Asian head of state to continue to
Speaker 1: govern after the USSRS fall. So, of of the guys
Speaker 1: who are in charge when like the Soviet Union falls part,
Speaker 1: he's the only one who manages to hang on to power. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: Turkmenistan had never been a country before, not in the
Speaker 1: modern sense of the world, and Niazov knew he had
Speaker 1: to do something to bind all of his people together,
Speaker 1: so he held conferences using sketchy history to claim that
Speaker 1: all Turkmen were part of the same ethnic group, the Tehran,
Speaker 1: which was essentially just an ancient Persian word for the region.
Speaker 1: He also announced, to great fanfare that his name was
Speaker 1: now Turkmen Boshi, which means first among Turkmen's. He created
Speaker 1: an ethnic group, yeah, kind of okay, he just said
Speaker 1: we're all this thing. Yeah. He didn't want the tribalism
Speaker 1: to get in the way, so he said, we're all
Speaker 1: part of the same thing. Now, all right, Yeah, you
Speaker 1: got to invent stuff if you create a country. His
Speaker 1: full title was Serdar Turkmen Boshi, Great Leader of all Turkmen. Now,
Speaker 1: as natural gas money started to flow into the country,
Speaker 1: Turkmenistan found itself with money for the first time and ever. Really,
Speaker 1: Turkmen Boshi, a man who had promised his people prosperity,
Speaker 1: knew what he had to spend his windfall on. Wait
Speaker 1: what do you mean? It was, Oh god, I I
Speaker 1: don't know what do you what do you think you
Speaker 1: spent the billions of dollars That is the first money
Speaker 1: is country has ever gotten on. I mean, this could
Speaker 1: go in so many ways. It could be like war um,
Speaker 1: but I feel like it's like a clown party or
Speaker 1: something like that's not super far I watched, I listened
Speaker 1: to another show, and to not make too many predictions,
Speaker 1: he spent it all on statues. Oh, of course, of course,
Speaker 1: of course, why do oh man? That's I think there's
Speaker 1: something in our DNA where we want to It's just
Speaker 1: a natural thing we want to do is make statues.
Speaker 1: If you give me, if you gave me a million dollars,
Speaker 1: I'll be like, Okay, well the statue, um, and then
Speaker 1: I'll get a nice apartment. I guess a second RoboCop
Speaker 1: statue in Detroit would make sense. Yeah, yeah, let's do
Speaker 1: that first, and then another rocky statue in Philadelphia, all
Speaker 1: slightly bigger, slightly she like drive the statue by homeless
Speaker 1: people in the street and like statue. Uh. New Yorker
Speaker 1: writer Paul Three visited Turkmeno STANDARDI end of Turkmen Boshi's bragin.
Speaker 1: Here's how he described the capital city quote Ashkobat was
Speaker 1: filled with gold statues of Turkmen Boshi. And these statues,
Speaker 1: which had an ecclesiastical era. Boshi was el Dorado the
Speaker 1: man of Gold, all powerful and all knowing. Statues show
Speaker 1: him sitting, striding, waving, saluting, and smiling a twenty four
Speaker 1: carrot smile. One even showed him as a precocious golden
Speaker 1: child sitting in the lap of his bronze mother. He
Speaker 1: once said to a journalist, I admit it. There are
Speaker 1: too many portraits, pictures and monuments of me. I don't
Speaker 1: find any pleasure in it, but the people demand it
Speaker 1: because of their mentality. Guys, just give me a few
Speaker 1: more years. Everything will be fine. We'll get a few
Speaker 1: more statues up and then that's it. Just a couple
Speaker 1: of more statues and love democracy promise. I swear you're
Speaker 1: going to vote at some point. I do love that
Speaker 1: he makes his mom bronze, but he's gold. A little
Speaker 1: bit of mom shade there, it's just worth. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: want the baby to really pop in your in your
Speaker 1: statue of yourself as a baby. Now, we don't know
Speaker 1: what the people actually demanded, because they weren't, you know,
Speaker 1: allowed to vote, or form political parties or speak freely. Uh.
Speaker 1: Several of them were eventually allowed to operate political parties,
Speaker 1: but these were just for show and most did not
Speaker 1: meet the minimum number of members required in the constitution
Speaker 1: was just so that Turkmen Bosha could be like, no,
Speaker 1: we're not a one party state. Look at all these
Speaker 1: other parties. There's like nine guys in that one. Whenever
Speaker 1: Turkmen Poshi got in hot water with the democratic world,
Speaker 1: he'd sponsor a party or two and let his people
Speaker 1: have the illusion of a tiny amount of choice, or,
Speaker 1: to be more accurate, let the world have the illusion
Speaker 1: that his people had a tiny amount of choice. Now,
Speaker 1: Nyazov immediately started renaming parts of the country after himself.
Speaker 1: It started, not crazily, at least changing the name of
Speaker 1: a major street in the capital from Lennin to you know,
Speaker 1: Turkmen Bosh. That's fair. You know, Soviet Union's gone. You
Speaker 1: know when it named after Lennon. Okay, we named streets
Speaker 1: after presidents all the time. Uh. He ran him to
Speaker 1: collective farm in the Linen Canal with his own name. Also,
Speaker 1: when people compared what he was doing to Stalin's personality cult,
Speaker 1: he said, quote Stalin achieved his personality cult through repressive measures,
Speaker 1: whereas I achieved my popularity without conflicts. So overall, I'm
Speaker 1: just sorry. I'm thinking about his childhood and stuff. There's
Speaker 1: nothing like that messed up that happened to him and
Speaker 1: the earthquake. I'm saying that there's not anything like horrible
Speaker 1: things happened to a lot of people. Yeah, this feels
Speaker 1: like a story of like this is just like you
Speaker 1: give someone too much power. This it feels like this
Speaker 1: could be anybody. It's just like, let's give him a
Speaker 1: lot of power and then the next thing you know,
Speaker 1: they're a golden baby statue. That's possible. We'll say how
Speaker 1: you feel at the end of this, Okay, I feel
Speaker 1: like he I mean, yeah, so so far, I'm not
Speaker 1: saying what he did is understandable so far, it's just
Speaker 1: that it's I find it remarkable that his childhood isn't
Speaker 1: that over the top. Well, we just don't know that
Speaker 1: much about like what happened in the orphanage or what
Speaker 1: that's sucking. Soviet orphanage in the late forties that probably
Speaker 1: wasn't the best place you can Probably you probably some
Speaker 1: bad stuff, But I really don't know because there's just
Speaker 1: not like Turkmenistan is still a very close society, so
Speaker 1: there's not a whole lot of information. I can't imagine
Speaker 1: this guy keeping good records, know what's going on. Not
Speaker 1: a big fan of that now. Um, Turkmenistan launched its
Speaker 1: own currency, the man, in the late or in the
Speaker 1: early nineteen nineties. It's great wealth meant that the money
Speaker 1: launched at parody with the U. S. Dollar. So at
Speaker 1: the start, the Turkmenistan man is worth one U. S dollar,
Speaker 1: which is great. You know. Yeah, a new country, your
Speaker 1: dollar is a pretty good thing to be worth. In
Speaker 1: the early nineteen nineties, uh Niyazov's face was, of course,
Speaker 1: prominently printed on each and every bill. Um. Now, it's
Speaker 1: not true that his popularity was without conflict. Dissidents were
Speaker 1: punished brutally, although he was pretty popular at first. Because
Speaker 1: the Turkmen had been treated like ship by the Soviet Union,
Speaker 1: and now that were independent, uh, there was enough money
Speaker 1: for both ridiculous statues and social programs. So Turkmen Boshi
Speaker 1: tripled the salaries of public employees, He heavily subsidized food,
Speaker 1: and he offered free gas, electricity, and water to all citizens.
Speaker 1: He also spent a hundred and thirty million dollars turning
Speaker 1: his presidential seven sixty seven into an airborne palace. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so a little bit for you, a little bit from
Speaker 1: a little bit for you, a lot a lot for me,
Speaker 1: get golden statues for me. Gasoline is basically free. Uh
Speaker 1: so you know, I mean as a citizen at this point,
Speaker 1: it's not the worst case and it's not the worst
Speaker 1: not the worst case scenario. It's just like, Okay, well
Speaker 1: there's a bunch of just terrible statues of this, really
Speaker 1: bad statues. But you know what I'm not I'm not
Speaker 1: paying for gas. I'm not paying for gas. We will
Speaker 1: see where this story goes. But speaking of not complaining,
Speaker 1: you know what makes me not complain? I want to
Speaker 1: say adds, yes, adds for the odd product, a couple
Speaker 1: of services. Okay, maybe maybe even an ad for bubbly
Speaker 1: sparkling water, the only sparkling water that tastes terrible and
Speaker 1: mixed with lacroix. That is that going to get us
Speaker 1: any money? Sovie? Alright, ads, and we're back. We're talking
Speaker 1: about Turkmen boshi Uh, dictator of Turkmenistan and at this
Speaker 1: point not doing terrible. A lot of statues, way too
Speaker 1: much money on the plane. Gold Baby. I'm really thinking
Speaker 1: about that gold baby thing because I think what it
Speaker 1: is is that making a statue of yourself as an adult. Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's messed up, but it's celebrating your big birth as
Speaker 1: this special event. Yeah, Like there's really only the one
Speaker 1: person that we do that with. Yeah, if someone else
Speaker 1: is doing it, like, that's it's a bold statement. It's
Speaker 1: a bold statement. And I gotta say, Dave you really
Speaker 1: on the right track with that, with that? Oh yeah, delight.
Speaker 1: So at this point in Niazov does not seem like
Speaker 1: the worst case scenario for a dictator. The Turkmen people
Speaker 1: were at least getting something while he robbed the country blind.
Speaker 1: But Niyazov's corruption quickly took its toll on the national economy.
Speaker 1: After bribing former U S Secretary of State Alexander Haig
Speaker 1: to lobby on Turkmenistan's behalf, he almost succeeded in gletting
Speaker 1: the Clinton administration to open the country up to American investment.
Speaker 1: The deal got to rail because Niazov demanded of all
Speaker 1: invested money go to him personally. Yeah, I can see
Speaker 1: them moving that out, but I get a third of everything.
Speaker 1: I know. You don't know. Now, this turned out to
Speaker 1: be a bad idea because most of Turkmenistan's regional trading partners.
Speaker 1: The former Soviet states suffered economic collapses after their first
Speaker 1: few years of capitalism. Uh They stopped being able to
Speaker 1: buy Turkmenistan's fuel production fell by two thirds, and all
Speaker 1: that sweet plane and statue money stopped coming in. Niyazov
Speaker 1: responded to this with an effort to boost the country's
Speaker 1: internal economy. He did this by modernizing the capital, Ashgabat.
Speaker 1: According to the book Inside Central Asia by Dilip hero Quote,
Speaker 1: modernizing Ashkabat meant raising many central neighborhoods to create a
Speaker 1: network of bulls of ards with lavish palaces of white
Speaker 1: marble and green tinted glass, dotted with massive fountains and
Speaker 1: statues of Niyazov and his parents, as well as historical
Speaker 1: Turkmen personalities, guarded by uniform security men standing to attention.
Speaker 1: The city would become the site of the largest fountain
Speaker 1: in the world, a multi storied shopping mall with water
Speaker 1: gushing out of the roof and pouring down in a
Speaker 1: ring of waterfalls. Its main avenue would end up with
Speaker 1: twenty two five star hotels where foreign guests would be
Speaker 1: accommodated only in the rooms that were bugged. Many of
Speaker 1: the displaced families did not get alternative accommodation or compensation
Speaker 1: as they could not prove the ownership of their homes.
Speaker 1: How modern bulldozes hundreds of houses, builds twenty two hotels,
Speaker 1: and nobody's visiting Turkmenistan at this point, Like there's no
Speaker 1: foreign visits. Yeah, but did you hear about fountain that
Speaker 1: fucking fountains the ship. That's when I think the future.
Speaker 1: I think, how can we make water fall in neat ways?
Speaker 1: That is what the future is. And how can we
Speaker 1: fill a city with enough gold fountains that we need
Speaker 1: to have permanent security guards stationed to stop people from
Speaker 1: stealing the gold because we bulldozed their houses and they're
Speaker 1: all poor, solid move, solid move Now. Building a shipload
Speaker 1: of hotels and additional statues during an economic downturn may
Speaker 1: not seem like a great idea, but that's just because
Speaker 1: you and I are in economic geniuses like Turkmens. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: to keep the economy afloat, Turkmenistan Central Bank started printing
Speaker 1: money like it was going out of fucking style. Inflation
Speaker 1: hit three percent and the menot went from being at
Speaker 1: one to one parody with the U S dollar to
Speaker 1: being at fifty two hundred to one parody with the
Speaker 1: US dollar. It turns out that's not a great strategy.
Speaker 1: Nobody could have predicted that. No, I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: it's the econty. Nobody knows. It's like, it's like predicting
Speaker 1: that offering people a lot of ballooning interest rate mortgages
Speaker 1: on their houses and like loans and stuff would eventually
Speaker 1: lead to a massive foreclosure. Christ who could who could
Speaker 1: have seen that come? They did all the right things,
Speaker 1: They got the statues, they got the statues, and what
Speaker 1: is it? Warren Buffett always says, when the economy is bad,
Speaker 1: build more fountains. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's basic economics one
Speaker 1: oh two. At least. Now, as his entire nation suffered,
Speaker 1: so did Turkmen Boshy. His doctors told him that his
Speaker 1: arteries had hardened, probably because of his massive chronic alcoholism
Speaker 1: constant cigarette smoking. Uh. He would need major heart surgery,
Speaker 1: which he received in a German clinic. Uh. He survived
Speaker 1: the surgery, but it seems to have wrought a change
Speaker 1: in him. Up to this point, he had been the
Speaker 1: absolute ruler of Turkmenistan, but he was more or less
Speaker 1: normal for like an absolute ruler, you know, banning political parties,
Speaker 1: building tons of statues, sacred police, nothing super wild, like
Speaker 1: like it was some fun stuff, but like the dictators stuff,
Speaker 1: as far as ruthless dictators go, this is pretty by
Speaker 1: the book, pretty by the book. After his heart surgery,
Speaker 1: Niazov began to treat his nation as an extension of himself.
Speaker 1: His doctor told him he had to stop smoking, so
Speaker 1: he ordered all cabinet ministers to stop smoking too. He
Speaker 1: banned smoking in public places and even smoking out in
Speaker 1: the street. Sucks, It really sucks. Why can't we smoke
Speaker 1: outside anymore? The president's hearts turned my house into a
Speaker 1: gold fountain. Let me smoke, Let me smoke. My house
Speaker 1: is a statue of you as a baby. Well. He
Speaker 1: was rebuilding his capital in the Muslim Las Vegas and
Speaker 1: dealing with hard issues and being a nut turkmen bosh,
Speaker 1: he managed to maintain his policy of careful, stringent neutrality.
Speaker 1: He joined the non Aligned movement in and commemorated the
Speaker 1: event with a hundred and seventy foot tall neutrality arch
Speaker 1: in downtown Ashgabad. It is described as an amalgam of
Speaker 1: a triffid Eiffels, Eiffel Tower and a marble covered base rocket. Sophie, I,
Speaker 1: I I'll finish describing this first, but can you look
Speaker 1: up the Neutrality Arch so I can show Dave now.
Speaker 1: A few years later, after his heart surgery, turkmen Bosh
Speaker 1: he added another statue to the top of the Neutrality Arch,
Speaker 1: a twenty two foot tall golden plated statue of himself
Speaker 1: wearing Superman's cape with his arms extended into the air.
Speaker 1: The statue rotates three hundred and sixty degrees every day,
Speaker 1: so his face is always facing the sun. Turkmen Boshi
Speaker 1: required that the statue be visible from the International Airport,
Speaker 1: many miles away from the city. Also, the airport was
Speaker 1: named after him. Of course, of course this is now.
Speaker 1: This is reminded me of that Futurama episode where Benderbill's
Speaker 1: the giant exactly remember me, Like, didn't shoot fire out
Speaker 1: of it, no, but it's it's pretty close to that.
Speaker 1: So if he we'll have a picture up on the website.
Speaker 1: Look at that phone. Yeah, when I think the word neutral,
Speaker 1: that's that's what's what I think of when I think
Speaker 1: of neutral. Holy shi it. I love that he saw that.
Speaker 1: He was like needs another statue, needs another statue of
Speaker 1: me made out of gold wearing a cape. Oh my god.
Speaker 1: So turk and Boshi took his neutrality as seriously as
Speaker 1: he took his absurd statues and monuments. He renamed the
Speaker 1: official newspaper from Turkmenistan to Neutral Turkmenistan. He replaced the
Speaker 1: national anthem Turkmenistan with independent Neutral Turkmenistan State anthem. He
Speaker 1: wrote both the words and the music for this song.
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna read the words. I'm just gonna read
Speaker 1: the first verse because I find it funny. I don't
Speaker 1: know how to sing this. I am ready to give
Speaker 1: life for our native heart. The spirit of ancestors descendants
Speaker 1: are famous for. My land is sacred. My flag plays
Speaker 1: in the world, A symbol of the great neutral country flies.
Speaker 1: This is why you gotta outsource, Your gotta outsarch your song.
Speaker 1: Right dictators or tomorrow, don't think you can do anything.
Speaker 1: It's also of the of the ways to inspire a people.
Speaker 1: The word neutral is not one of them, like the
Speaker 1: Swiss are neutral. It's not like the session word. It's
Speaker 1: again another Futurama reference. Oh, post surgery Turkmen Bosh. He
Speaker 1: succeeded in getting a second chance to dance with Uncle Sam.
Speaker 1: He made some deals that included Unokal, an American corporation,
Speaker 1: helping Turkmenistan to build a gigantic pipeline. The fact that
Speaker 1: an American company won the contract looked very good to
Speaker 1: the White House. There was talk of okaying more investment
Speaker 1: in Turkmenistan. But in January of that year, those Pesky
Speaker 1: State Department bastards released their yearly report on human rights.
Speaker 1: They noted that Turkmenistan had made basically no progress towards
Speaker 1: democracy since leaving the Soviet Union. The Clinton administration asked
Speaker 1: Nia's off to give them what Heroes book calls a
Speaker 1: gesture towards democratization. In return, Turkmen Bosh would be invited
Speaker 1: to the White House. Now, he visited the US once before,
Speaker 1: shortly after taking power, but he'd been ignored by everybody. Uh,
Speaker 1: And this was something Turkmen Bosh you very badly wanted
Speaker 1: for reasons I don't understand, but probably boiled down to eagle.
Speaker 1: He wanted pictures with the American president. It was like
Speaker 1: his thing. So that February, Nika'sov got up in front
Speaker 1: of Turkmenistan's high officials and promised to amend to the constitution,
Speaker 1: giving more power to parliament and less to himself. True
Speaker 1: to his word, Bill Clinton invited him to the White House.
Speaker 1: Turkmen Boshi immediately reneged on his promises now that he
Speaker 1: had the invitation, and said that any constitutional amendments would
Speaker 1: have to wait until the parliamentary elections in December of
Speaker 1: What a shocker. What a shocker. You can't just be like, look,
Speaker 1: you have to you have to say you'll do this,
Speaker 1: and then you can take pictures with me, Like, you
Speaker 1: have to make sure they actually follow through, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: if we cared about democracy, that's I don't know, if
Speaker 1: we cared, They're like, look, you have to at least pretend, yeah,
Speaker 1: like just so we can all look good, Yeah, for
Speaker 1: at least a moment, for at least a second. Yeah,
Speaker 1: let us pretend that we care about freedom around the world,
Speaker 1: which you know he did. He gave Americans the ability
Speaker 1: to feel like the good guys for one last time
Speaker 1: before nine eleven. That's true, So thank you, turkmen Boshi.
Speaker 1: Sonia's off spit a fun week in the United States
Speaker 1: hanging out with Bill Clinton, and al Gore and talking
Speaker 1: about democracy uh and all the democracy that he was
Speaker 1: totally gonna bring to his people. There were, of course
Speaker 1: questions from the press and outrage from people who didn't
Speaker 1: like dictators. I'm going to quote from the book Inside
Speaker 1: Central Asia here quote. In his press briefing, the White
Speaker 1: House spokesman explained that, just as in the case of China,
Speaker 1: the US national economic interest outweighed the administration's concern over
Speaker 1: Niyazov's dismal record on post Soviet reform. When questioned on
Speaker 1: the issues of civil liberties and multiparty democracy, it's such
Speaker 1: forms as the Council on Foreign Relations in New York,
Speaker 1: Niyazov repeated and not the argument that political liberalization would
Speaker 1: follow only after independence and stability had been consolidated. His
Speaker 1: statement that no one had been arrested in Turkmenistan for
Speaker 1: political reasons flew in the face of the recent State
Speaker 1: Department report on Turkmenistan. The opposition was repressed, with leading
Speaker 1: dissidents either imprisoned or committed to psychiatric hospitals. The reality
Speaker 1: is that a roughly twenty thousand people had been imprisoned,
Speaker 1: so it's frustratingly hard to find many stories of the
Speaker 1: victims of Turkmen Bosh's regime, because again, it's still a
Speaker 1: pretty close at soxiety. Uh. The imprisoned were generally tracked
Speaker 1: by secret police after being freed to keep them from talking.
Speaker 1: I did find one Telegraph article that interviewed a former
Speaker 1: enemy of the state. Here's what he said about his
Speaker 1: time in a Turkmenistan prison. Quote. I had read about
Speaker 1: the beatings and electric shock therapy, which I experienced in prison,
Speaker 1: but it was the unexpected techniques that really damaged me.
Speaker 1: I was fitted with a gas mask in the airvant
Speaker 1: was closed. They played tapes of my relatives being beaten
Speaker 1: after they were arrested. Their suffering was mine. It was terrible. Wow. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that he did not mass execute people. Uh. He did
Speaker 1: have some people killed, but he didn't do mass executions.
Speaker 1: His thing seems to be if you stepped out of line,
Speaker 1: he'd arrest your whole family and beat the ship up
Speaker 1: and then tape them and creative villain. Yeah Jesus, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it is one of those one of those dictator strategies
Speaker 1: that I hadn't run into yet, which is like like
Speaker 1: obviously people's families being threatened like that specific way, it's like, okay, well,
Speaker 1: at least you're an innovator. Yeah. Uh. He also tortured
Speaker 1: shiploads of people, although he did, you know, avoid the
Speaker 1: mass murder that like a guy like Bachar Lassad is
Speaker 1: famous for Turkmen. Boshi was smart enough to avoid doing
Speaker 1: anything too obviously horrible, like you know, bombing you know,
Speaker 1: a dissident chunk of the city or whatever. And so
Speaker 1: he never really provoked mass outrage from the United States
Speaker 1: or any of its allies. Since he only tortured and
Speaker 1: imprisoned people, our government was happy to take his money, or,
Speaker 1: to be more accurate, let major US corporations take his money. Right,
Speaker 1: he's staying under the radar, staying right under the radar. Yeah,
Speaker 1: smart guy, Smart guy. Elections came Une point nine percent
Speaker 1: of the country showed up to choose between a hundred
Speaker 1: and four candidates for fifty seats in the parliament. So
Speaker 1: he kept his promise. People got to vote. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: got to vote for parliament. Now all of the candidates
Speaker 1: were members of the same party which he headed. Uh,
Speaker 1: but it's something, but it's a yeah, you've yeah, you
Speaker 1: got to press a button or like write a name.
Speaker 1: Write it's democracy, twice as many choices as there were seats,
Speaker 1: and even they were all from It's something. Uh. The
Speaker 1: Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe did not send
Speaker 1: out election observers, which they normally do in situations like this,
Speaker 1: because the elections were seen as too much of a
Speaker 1: sham to be worth observing. After the election, the delegates
Speaker 1: who had been voted in unanimously declared that Niyazov was
Speaker 1: president for life. Yeah. Democracy, So lucky for him, he
Speaker 1: really nailed it. Yeah, he must be very popular now
Speaker 1: president for life. Niazov introduced a new set of civil
Speaker 1: rights for his citizens. So this is seeming like he's
Speaker 1: making his promise. I mean he didn't. He didn't choose
Speaker 1: to be president. No, he the people demanded that he'd
Speaker 1: be president, and he gave them new civil rights. Uh.
Speaker 1: He did not, however, have a great grasp on what
Speaker 1: civil rights are. So his first new civil rights was
Speaker 1: to cancel all internet licenses except the state owned Telecom
Speaker 1: Telecom Company, Continuing to prove that he really didn't have
Speaker 1: a good handle on the concept of civil rights. Niyazov
Speaker 1: next band Ballet and Opera, calling them, calling them alien
Speaker 1: to Turkmen. Culture. Somewhere there's like a smoking ballet Dancer's
Speaker 1: just like I can't have a cigarette, I can't do ballet.
Speaker 1: Just staring at that golden baby got damn uh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he ordered the country's few movie theaters shut down, but
Speaker 1: he did replace the movie theaters with a single enormous
Speaker 1: puppet theater in the capital. What is wrong with him? Okay,
Speaker 1: don't you like puppet? What happened at that orphanage? That's
Speaker 1: that's the real question with this guy. A friend of puppet,
Speaker 1: like a roll of cellulose fell out of a movie
Speaker 1: theater and crushed his favorite puppeteer. Yeah, this is story
Speaker 1: to feel like he's he's trolling his country on purpose,
Speaker 1: Like I'm going to get rid of the movie theaters
Speaker 1: and give them puppet puppet shows. Christ. Yeah. His exact
Speaker 1: justification was something along the lines of, like, all these
Speaker 1: movies made by foreign people are going to make people
Speaker 1: not like the way we talk here in Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: if he's trying to control the internet and movies, yeah,
Speaker 1: he's definitely trying to make people in this country not
Speaker 1: realize just how screwed they are at the moment. Yeah,
Speaker 1: how how not not great? It is? To not be
Speaker 1: able to fucking banning ballet, Like what subversive about ballet?
Speaker 1: Even Stalin had ballets. Still, you could make your own movies. Yeah, ballet.
Speaker 1: He must have like dated a ballet dancer or something.
Speaker 1: Get is heartbroken. Yeah, it all feels so personal. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it really does. Like that's the thing. That's the thing
Speaker 1: that's weird about this Guy's that every decision he makes
Speaker 1: feels like like a guy who got pissed at something
Speaker 1: like then banned it for the entire country. Right, But
Speaker 1: like cigarettes sucked up my heart, nobody gets to smoke.
Speaker 1: As someone who loves movies, I'm real peeved about the
Speaker 1: movie thing, because if you're gonna ban movies and then
Speaker 1: make better movies or something, don't replace it with puppets,
Speaker 1: because your people are going to see that and be like,
Speaker 1: I know there's something better than I know it gets
Speaker 1: better than puppets. I know this is the best we
Speaker 1: can do. So in two thousand one, Present for Life
Speaker 1: and puppet Lover turkmen Boshi embarked on the next great
Speaker 1: chapter of his career as a dictator and as a luminary.
Speaker 1: He wrote a book, Oh God, not just any book,
Speaker 1: His Opus, The Runama was billed by him as the
Speaker 1: most important book since the Koran. Part history text, part
Speaker 1: guide to life, part religious book, and all crazy. The
Speaker 1: Runama was the pinnacle of everything insane dictator literature can be.
Speaker 1: Here's how Turkmen Boshi described the book in his own introduction.
Speaker 1: Runama is a visit to this land. Runama is a
Speaker 1: visit to the past of this territory and a visit
Speaker 1: to the future of this territory. Runama is the visit
Speaker 1: made to the heart of the Turkmen. Runama is a
Speaker 1: sweet spiritual fruit grown in this territory. No human being
Speaker 1: who has not experienced what I have lived through can
Speaker 1: understand me. Wow, it's a little bit of emo. That special.
Speaker 1: He's a real special boy. He's a real special boy. Now.
Speaker 1: The book is partly fictional, jumping between modern day and
Speaker 1: the Middle Ages, and focused around a character Saparmaratnsov, whose
Speaker 1: birth was ordained by God himself, a character with his
Speaker 1: name who is God's profit on earth. M M. I
Speaker 1: wonder if it's based on anyway. If you're gonna write
Speaker 1: a book like this, at least do it under a
Speaker 1: different name or something, because you can't say you're God. Well,
Speaker 1: God's profit on Earth, God's profit. He's not saying he's
Speaker 1: better than Mohammed, just that he's newer than Mohammed and
Speaker 1: so should be taken more seriously than the prophet of
Speaker 1: the Muslims, right, the new cool Mohammed. Yeah, he'll let
Speaker 1: you drink, but you can't smoke, which I mean, I
Speaker 1: guess Actually that's a that is a help. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: this kind of a watch. Actually. Yeah. Ah. So we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about the Runama, and I'm going to
Speaker 1: read you some of it's timeless wisdom. But first you
Speaker 1: know what else is timelessly wise? Oh? God, I want
Speaker 1: to say, ads, you're you're, you're, you nailed it, all right, products,
Speaker 1: we're back, all right. So, uh, we're talking about the Runama,
Speaker 1: a book in which saparmarrotnie is Off writes about himself
Speaker 1: as God's prophet. Uh. He goes on a quest to
Speaker 1: discover the history of the Turkmen's uh, and during that
Speaker 1: quest he learns that he is God's son essentially. Uh.
Speaker 1: Good for him, good for him? Yeah, he Well, he
Speaker 1: was a child ordained by God and probably probably his
Speaker 1: mom was impregnated by divine will. Uh. In other words.
Speaker 1: Saparmaratniezov wrote an explicitly Turkmen themed Bible with himself as
Speaker 1: Jesus and mixed it with a self help book and
Speaker 1: like one of those history books. Below'riley writes like, that's
Speaker 1: that's kind of the Runama in a nutshell. It's all
Speaker 1: these red flags just smushed together. It's a lot. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now I'm gonna level with you all. I did not
Speaker 1: have time this week to read the entirety of the Runama.
Speaker 1: I may get back to it someday, because apparently reading
Speaker 1: it three times guarantees you entry into heaven. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think next vacation or something. Just read it on the beach.
Speaker 1: Read it on the beach. I did learn reading Paul
Speaker 1: throws New Yorker article that apparently you you are guaranteed
Speaker 1: a trip to heaven if you read it three times.
Speaker 1: So you know, people out there, if you're sinning, if
Speaker 1: you're if you're doing anything terrible, Uh, maybe read the
Speaker 1: Runama three times in a row. I also feel like
Speaker 1: more books should use that for marketing because it's like, well,
Speaker 1: I mean they're probably wrong, but what if they're right?
Speaker 1: What if they're it's just three Yeah, and then you
Speaker 1: just gotta read it through just yet, you gotta read
Speaker 1: it three times? Does it? Does it count? If you
Speaker 1: do like the thing where like kindle like where it
Speaker 1: reads the book for you. You can do it on
Speaker 1: double speed. I don't know that would trick God. Dave,
Speaker 1: let me let me read to you where Paul Throw
Speaker 1: learned that this was apparently what Saparmarra was saying. He
Speaker 1: apparently was told this by a cab driver during a
Speaker 1: visit to Turkmenistan. So I'm gonna quote from that conversation.
Speaker 1: He was on TV last night. My driver said, well,
Speaker 1: he's on almost every night. Turkmen almost never said Turkmen
Speaker 1: Boshi's name aloud. He said, if you read my book
Speaker 1: three times, you will go to heaven. How does he
Speaker 1: know this? He said, I asked Allah to arrange it. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: so he told Allah to do so. He told God
Speaker 1: that if you read his book three times, anyone who
Speaker 1: he told a promo code? Yeah, exactly. He's doing with podcasters.
Speaker 1: But God, can we work something out here? Yeah? This
Speaker 1: is the heavenly equivalent of offering a discount code on
Speaker 1: a mattress. Good for him, working with God? Yeah, working
Speaker 1: with God now Paul Throw, being a better journalist than me,
Speaker 1: read the entirety of the Runama. He described it as
Speaker 1: a confused mixture of memoire, Turkmen lore, potted history, dietary suggestions,
Speaker 1: Soviet bashing, boasting, wild promises, and Turkmen Boshi's poems. He
Speaker 1: seemed to regard it as both a sort of koran
Speaker 1: and as a how to guide for the Turkmen people,
Speaker 1: a jingoistic pep talk. In fact, it is little more
Speaker 1: than a sopa for chloroform in print. As Mark Twain
Speaker 1: described the Book of Mormon, I read it once. Turkmen
Speaker 1: Boshi would have to promise more than heaven I for
Speaker 1: we to read it two more times. Yeah. I think
Speaker 1: if you're not a dictator, we call this a manifesto.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah. This is just the ravings of
Speaker 1: a madman. And I do feel like in another society,
Speaker 1: Turkmen Bosh he is a guy who mails people bombs
Speaker 1: and forces the New York Times to print as manifest
Speaker 1: And it's it's those little things that's like hidden in there,
Speaker 1: like recipes. It's like, oh, you just want to be
Speaker 1: listened to. Yeah, you were just dictating this to somebody
Speaker 1: and stopped at some point string of consciousness. Now I
Speaker 1: did skin the Runama in search of some of the
Speaker 1: apparently ageless wisdom that Turkmen Boshi blessed the world with
Speaker 1: in his book. I can tell it's definitely the book
Speaker 1: of an old man who was worried about dying because
Speaker 1: he writes about time a lot. But the way he
Speaker 1: writes about time makes no sense at all to me.
Speaker 1: Quote the devil keeps a close eye over your time
Speaker 1: and faith, both of which are your precious belongings. Time
Speaker 1: is your life in this world and faith is your
Speaker 1: life in the other world. Wasting time means losing one's
Speaker 1: life or oneself. Teach your child how to save his
Speaker 1: time and life. All that you can save of time
Speaker 1: will belong to you. Time is a mace hit or
Speaker 1: be hit. Huh, So you can hit time? What does
Speaker 1: that mean? Like, I get saving time. It's valuable to
Speaker 1: have more time, obviously, what is time as a mase? Mean?
Speaker 1: How do you hit someone with time? I'm trying to
Speaker 1: I mean, I want to know. I want to know
Speaker 1: how how do you get hit with time? Like jail? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like Marty McFly had this experience. Marty McFly might might
Speaker 1: be the only person who's taken turkmen Boshi's advice get
Speaker 1: hit by the DeLorean from did get hit by the Dolorean?
Speaker 1: Al Right, well, we're finding some logic in this. Thinking
Speaker 1: about this one for a while. You know, he did
Speaker 1: come to power in the mid eighties, so it's possible
Speaker 1: he was a big back to the future. Yeah, DeLorean
Speaker 1: is it's a metallic it's yeah, yeah, yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker 1: Turkmen Boshi also had a lot to say on the
Speaker 1: subject of laziness. He was not for it. Quote, laziness
Speaker 1: means being profligate and living one leaving oneself to be
Speaker 1: blown about by the winds of fate. Be hard working
Speaker 1: and you will generate returns in cash. Be lazy and
Speaker 1: you will get into debt. The comfort that laziness provides
Speaker 1: is like the taste of a sour cucumber. Out of
Speaker 1: mercy for yourself, work, joblessness, lack of wisdom, and laziness
Speaker 1: will damage you more than your enemies ever could. Time
Speaker 1: is a wild predator, but if you train it, you
Speaker 1: may use it to your benefit. Do not be subject
Speaker 1: to time. Let it be your subject lives, so that
Speaker 1: you regret nothing when you die. Living does not only
Speaker 1: mean passing time. It means reaching eternity after passing through time.
Speaker 1: I don't think you should train time by hitting it though. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that doesn't seem that seems like time is going to
Speaker 1: grow up like abused and problems. I don't want time
Speaker 1: to turn on me. You do not want time to
Speaker 1: turn on you, although that is the one thing time
Speaker 1: does to everybody. Yeah. Yeah, also bold decision, uh, speaking
Speaker 1: out against laziness. Yeah really, really really now. The Runama
Speaker 1: also includes handy advice on how to obtain world peace. Quote,
Speaker 1: if everybody likes their own nation, then the nations will
Speaker 1: like each other. It feels like I think that's not
Speaker 1: how that works. Like that's the opposite of how that work. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think historically feel like the nation really likes itself.
Speaker 1: The first problem, that's the first step to other nations
Speaker 1: ceasing to exist, is one nation really liking itself, likes
Speaker 1: itself so much. It's like, guys, you gotta try this nation.
Speaker 1: You gotta try being Germany. It's pretty sweet here in Germany.
Speaker 1: Oh you don't want some, now, come here, come here,
Speaker 1: come here. You're gonna try. You're gonna take some Germany.
Speaker 1: You'll love it. You'll love it. Turkmenistanard like that's what
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union did to them, Just like, right, this
Speaker 1: is going so well, we're just gonna keep going now.
Speaker 1: The Runama also includes handy advice. Oh sorry, already read
Speaker 1: that part. I didn't edit this, which is unusual for
Speaker 1: me because I'm a hacking of fraud. So everyone should know. No,
Speaker 1: this is raw. We're going, we're raw dogging. It is
Speaker 1: punk rock where we are talking raw talking. That's one
Speaker 1: of my favorite terms. It's just so visceral and gross
Speaker 1: re It's just the nastiest way to describe that. I
Speaker 1: love it. Okay, So are you wondering, Dave, how Niyazov
Speaker 1: defined the concept of a nation. Oh, yes, yeah, well,
Speaker 1: nation is the transformation of human groups in the context
Speaker 1: of certain spiritual foundations. A nation is shaped materially according
Speaker 1: to these spiritual foundations. You get what I need statues?
Speaker 1: Is that where he's going, you got to have, like,
Speaker 1: you're not a nation unless you have, like I don't know,
Speaker 1: ten or more statues. Yeah, I mean way more than
Speaker 1: ten statues. Right, that's a minimum? That is that a minimum? Yeah? So? Uh?
Speaker 1: In the Runama, Turkmen Boshi credits the Turkmen people with
Speaker 1: many great historical innovations, including the invention of robots, the
Speaker 1: invention of white wheat, and the invention of the wheel.
Speaker 1: What ye, robots and the wheel? How did he? How
Speaker 1: did robots get into that? I do not know, Dave.
Speaker 1: I could see, like anybody can kind of claim the wheel,
Speaker 1: because it's like, who's going to prove them? Who's going
Speaker 1: to prove you wrong? Yeah, it might have been Turkman.
Speaker 1: I don't know. Yeah, for all we know, but robots,
Speaker 1: I feel like we have that written down, Like we're
Speaker 1: pretty clear on robots. Yeah. So I cannot say that
Speaker 1: my limited reading of the Runama has led me to
Speaker 1: any staggering revelations about my place in the universe. But
Speaker 1: Nazov was adamant that his people needed to read this book.
Speaker 1: He acquired anyone entering a Moscow or a church to
Speaker 1: kiss a copy of the Runama before going into worship.
Speaker 1: And Yeah. In a different New Yorker article by Macy
Speaker 1: halford I found one possible explanation of Niyazov's motivation in
Speaker 1: writing the Runama. The person who provided it is just
Speaker 1: described as a scholar. I think because they're a person
Speaker 1: from Turkmenistan who doesn't want to have their family tortured
Speaker 1: fair enough. Yeah, quote, Niyazov was somewhat illiterate. He couldn't
Speaker 1: read or write Turkmen or Russian properly. People who have disabilities,
Speaker 1: for example of literacy want to be seen as geniuses.
Speaker 1: That's probably what got him started. I don't know about
Speaker 1: that logic either, but it's funny that he can't read.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's definitely most dictators are compensating for things, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that part seems in It probably starts with like a
Speaker 1: profound lack of confidence, where it's like, you know, just
Speaker 1: you're you're fine, man, you're fine. You don't have to
Speaker 1: build this many statues and and hear of your people
Speaker 1: or bulldoz or houses or whatever. Yeah, like it's all right,
Speaker 1: you're fine, you're fine, You're doing great, buddy. We were
Speaker 1: all impressed when you were an engineer. Yeah, you didn't
Speaker 1: do the rest of this. Great career would have been
Speaker 1: a great career. We would have done so much good things.
Speaker 1: Is that just as an engineer keeping the lights on,
Speaker 1: not building golden baby statues? You think that's where it started.
Speaker 1: As an engineer, he was like, you know what I
Speaker 1: really need want to like engineer is statues, statues. That's yeah,
Speaker 1: closer than yeah, it's comfortable. So once it was published.
Speaker 1: Once the Runama was published, Turkmen Boshi did everything in
Speaker 1: his power to make it a central part of turkmenistan life.
Speaker 1: According to the book Inside Central Asia, Niazov erected a
Speaker 1: commemorative complex in his home village of gip Jack, conceived
Speaker 1: as a symbol of the rebirth of the Turkmen nation,
Speaker 1: which included a mosque whose walls carry quotations from the
Speaker 1: Koran as well as the Runama. Yeah, that's bold. The
Speaker 1: Turkmen government ordered a prominent display of the Runama, not
Speaker 1: only in bookshops and official buildings, but also in mosques
Speaker 1: and churches, sharing its place with the Koran or the Bible.
Speaker 1: The colossal pink statue of the Runama and Ashkabat was
Speaker 1: too conspicuous to be missed. Another decree extended the book's
Speaker 1: presence to libraries and schools and made it a part
Speaker 1: of the curriculum. To be able to recite passages of
Speaker 1: the book became a badge of honor. Next, civil servants,
Speaker 1: teachers and doctors were required to pass a test on
Speaker 1: its teachings. Then this requirement also became part of the
Speaker 1: driving test. The Runama was lauded in songs, and the
Speaker 1: state run media regularly broadcast or printed excerpts from it.
Speaker 1: Criticizing the book even in private was tantamount to criticizing Niyazov,
Speaker 1: an offense punishable with a five year jail sentence. Niyazov
Speaker 1: redesigned the educational system, reducing the compulsory schooling from two
Speaker 1: years to one uh in higher education by three years
Speaker 1: down to a mere two Inexplicably, he reduced the college
Speaker 1: and university enrollments to ten percent of the then current figure.
Speaker 1: He banned the teaching of foreign languages and decreed that
Speaker 1: the exceptional history and culture of Turkmen must be stressed
Speaker 1: with his Runama to act as the load star. The
Speaker 1: worst part is this book sounds terrible. It's a terrible book.
Speaker 1: And then he bans other languages and cuts like, reduces
Speaker 1: school by a half so that nobody has any education,
Speaker 1: so that presumably they'll find his book more compelling. Exactly,
Speaker 1: you can of these people reading other books. No, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like it's like if Neil Breener Tommy Wise, Oh
Speaker 1: opened a theater and had like Citizen Cane posters next
Speaker 1: to the room. Yeah, and it was just walled with
Speaker 1: that and like started a film school where they're like, look,
Speaker 1: we're just going to focus on the room, on the classics. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but gradually they phase out Citizen Kane for just exactly
Speaker 1: he's trying to create. He's basically lowering the bar as
Speaker 1: much as he can to make his book the best
Speaker 1: thing around. Yeah. Yeah, that's exactly what's happening. That's infuriating now. Uh.
Speaker 1: You may have noted from from that passage. I read
Speaker 1: a little note about a statue of the Runama that
Speaker 1: was put up in the capital. Oh. I have a
Speaker 1: video of that statue day uh and and it'll be
Speaker 1: up on our side behind the Bastards dot Com. But
Speaker 1: I've got to show it to you, and I'd like
Speaker 1: you to describe it to our listeners because most of
Speaker 1: them are probably jogging or driving or shopping at the
Speaker 1: moment and can't get a video. I hope they're pooping
Speaker 1: to Okay, I'm not sure what I'm seeing right now.
Speaker 1: There's like cool, very cool, it's very cool music. I've
Speaker 1: seen a lot of colors. I feel like it should
Speaker 1: be high. Um. Oh wow, it's a book. It's a
Speaker 1: very colorful book. Is this a statue? Is a statue?
Speaker 1: It's opening? Oh my god, it is a giant sly
Speaker 1: opens every night in Ashgabaty. It opens every night. This
Speaker 1: is like a Disney attraction in this Like this should
Speaker 1: be like the Story of snow White opens the New
Speaker 1: Coral's Old Spiritual Guide for the people. It's an interact.
Speaker 1: It's like a moving Is that a per chance? There's
Speaker 1: of course, there's fastest children are expected to learn. Wow,
Speaker 1: he loves his book, so as anyone who wants to
Speaker 1: get a driver's license. But what is the point of
Speaker 1: that he made you memorize bits of it to get
Speaker 1: a driver's license? Yeah? Why? Okay, there's so much to
Speaker 1: unpack here. So first of all, that he loves his
Speaker 1: books so much that you made a giant statue that
Speaker 1: just opens, a statue that opens, Yeah, just like celebrating
Speaker 1: the act of opening his book. Okay, so the driver's license.
Speaker 1: What in the book helps with driving? Well, you gotta
Speaker 1: know how to use time as a mace dave, otherwise
Speaker 1: you're gonna get hit. So back to the delrium ba.
Speaker 1: See it all ties together, the internal logics consistent. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be honest. After writing a book I was,
Speaker 1: I'm pretty proud of it, right, But I don't think
Speaker 1: I would build a giant statue of my book A
Speaker 1: Brief History of Ice. I would build a statue of
Speaker 1: your book. But see, if you build it, it's fine,
Speaker 1: It is fine. Yeah, exactly. I should note that reading
Speaker 1: my book will not help you pass the driver's test.
Speaker 1: You never know. Don't sell yourself short, don't presume what
Speaker 1: people will take away from your book. I learned how
Speaker 1: to merge from you. But this is this is a
Speaker 1: running theme with like Kadafi with that astronaut thing, with
Speaker 1: the death of the dictators are like brutal and do
Speaker 1: all these things, and then they're like, but you gotta
Speaker 1: read my stuff, you gotta read my book. It's just like,
Speaker 1: why don't we start with that, Like, let's all read
Speaker 1: their your brook first and we'll praise you and then
Speaker 1: you don't have to hurt everybody. It's it's it's you
Speaker 1: know what it is like. And someone has a post
Speaker 1: go viral on Twitter unexpectedly and they link their SoundCloud
Speaker 1: or something it's the v But if you're in charge
Speaker 1: of a country, right, yeah, oh god, I'm in charge everybody.
Speaker 1: Look at this, so many follows. I didn't expect this, guys,
Speaker 1: didn't expect this. Guys, here's my PayPal. Oh wait, I'm
Speaker 1: in charge of where all the oil and gas money goes,
Speaker 1: so it just goes right to my bank account. Uh
Speaker 1: So that's all we're gonna talk about in part one
Speaker 1: of this episode. But when we come back, we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about Turkman Boss. He's post two thousand one career,
Speaker 1: and trust me, Dave, it's going to go even further
Speaker 1: off the rails. Turns out all the craziness we've talked
Speaker 1: about so far was just a dress rehearsal. Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: So you got any plug double as you want to
Speaker 1: plug before we uh we head out. I guess So
Speaker 1: I have a I have a podcast network that run
Speaker 1: with Tom Ryman called Gamefully Unemployed. You can check us
Speaker 1: out at patreon dot com slash gamefully Unemployed. We have
Speaker 1: a new show called Fox Molders a Maniac. It's exclusive. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's uh, it's our behind the bastards, but just for Fox.
Speaker 1: Fust for Fox molders, so check it out. Yeah, donate
Speaker 1: to gamefully Unemployed fantastic podcasts Tom and Dave two the
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Speaker 1: This has been Behind the Bastards. I love you. Eight