Part of the plan was to dilute the aboriginal populace and so weaken it. Another element of this plan was to create economies that could not function without Russia so, for instance, Uzbekistan was turned into a cotton monoculture and most of the cotton it produced was processed north of the Urals in Russia and Ukraine. Uzbekistan assumed independence in 1991 upon the break up of the Soviet Union. Since then, the ex-communist People's Democratic Party of Uzbekistan, in conjunction with allied smaller parties and under the undisputed leadership of Islam Karimov, have maintained a firm grip on power. Karimov first came to power in 1989 and was elected president of the independent state in 1991.
Domestic opposition is divided between secular democratic forces and Islamic parties.
Only the PDPU and the allied Progress of the Fatherland party were allowed to contest the most recent election in 1995. Karimov maintains that the economy should take precedence over political development, and only when the economy is strong enough will political plurality be allowed. This has been made more difficult by the events in neighbouring Tajikistan, where heavy fighting has been under way for much of the 1990s and Uzbek peacekeepers were engaged. The Government has also been worried about occasional outbreaks of inter-ethnic violence in the Fergana valley region. Abroad, policy towards Russia, Uzbekistan's most important bilateral relation, has been clouded by the Government's refusal to grant citizenship to the country's large and relatively skilled ethnic Russian minority.