Turkmenistan’s leader, Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, has tried to give the Central Asian country a modern gloss by touting the Internet’s ability to make life simpler. The initiative, however, has become the butt of jokes and derision among Ashgabat residents.
There’s a Stalinist-era anecdote that can apply to Turkmenistan today. The story goes that during the collectivization drive in the 1930s, an apparatchik in the Far East sent a telegram to his superiors: “The collective farms have been created; dispatch the collective farmers.”
