Noulakaz

The blog of Avinash, Christina, Anya and Kyan Meetoo.

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Avinash Meetoo

Democracy in post-Soviet states

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I’ve always been fascinated by the Cold War and, with The Americans ending, I was interested in knowing more about the current post-Soviet states. I found the above map on Wikipedia.

There are actually fifteen post-Soviet states:

  • (1) Armenia,  (2) Azerbaijan,  (3) Belarus, (4) Estonia (which I would really love to discover one day), (5) Georgia, (6) Kazakhstan (which is enormous), (7) Kyrgyzstan, (8) Latvia, (9) Lithuania, (10) Moldova, (11) Russia, (12) Tajikistan, (13) Turkmenistan, (14) Ukraine and (15) Uzbekistan.

Of course, Russia is the most well-known country, probably followed by Ukraine and Estonia.

I did something interesting. I used the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) Democracy Index, a measure of the state of democracy in 167 countries, to categorise the fifteen countries:

  • None of them is a full democracy. Interestingly, Mauritius is one and is ranked 16th in the world. The one area where Mauritius could greatly improve is political participation by citizens.
  • Three are flawed democracies: Estonia (30th most democratic country in the world out of 167), Lithuania (37th) and Latvia (40th).
  • Five have a hybrid regime: Moldova (78th), Georgia (79th), Ukraine (83rd), Kyrgyzstan (95th) and Armenia (111th).
  • And the seven remaining countries are authoritarian: Russia (135th), Belarus (138th), Kazakhstan (141st), Azerbaijan (148th), Uzbekistan (158th), Tajikistan (159th) and Turkmenistan (162nd).

Phew. Is this a consequence of the countries being so young? After all, the Soviet Union was dismantled in 1991 only. Or there another reason to explain why so few of them are democracies?

Anyway, here are their capitals:

Phew (again). I am realising that I had never heard of e.g. Chișinău, Bishkek, Dushanbe or Ashgabat before.

I hope that I’ll have the opportunity to discover some of the these countries in the future. The democratic ones of course :-)

A House for Mr Biswas

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When I was 12, I studied A House for Mr Biswas, a novel by V. S. Naipaul who passed away on 11 August 2018. The book tells the story of “Mohun Biswas, an Indo-Trinidadian who continually strives for success and mostly fails, who marries into the Tulsi family only to find himself dominated by it, and who finally sets the goal of owning his own house” (from Wikipedia).

I have to be honest though. At that time, 33 years ago, I didn’t like the book too much. I thought Mohun Biswas was old-fashioned and I could not relate to him or his family.

I loved the class though. Our English teacher, Mrs Girdhari-Fulena, was fantastic. Pity I was too young and too stupid to appreciate V. S. Naipaul then… One of these days, I’ll read A House for Mr Biswas again.

PS: V. S. Naipaul is also known for The Overcrowded Barracoon, published in 1972, in which Mauritius is described as “an overcrowded barracoon where tranquility recedes and escape routes are closed”. The Mauritians “have no sense of danger.” Fortunately, he was wrong.

Farewell Philip and Elizabeth…

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Christina and I have just finished watching the final episode of The Americans, one of the best TV shows ever. It tells the story of Philip and Elizabeth, two Russian spies sent to the US during the Cold War to act as a normal US couple with their two kids… except that they are far from being normal people.

The Americans had Christina and I captivated for the past six years now. The final episode was in May but we only saw it yesterday. I don’t want to spoil anything for those who haven’t watched the show yet but I have to say that the ending was beautiful and very dark at the same time…