In the mid-1990s, I was surprised to learn from Central Asian colleagues that Leonid Brezhnev, the stolid-faced Soviet leader known for sending political prisoners to psychiatric wards even long after the death of Stalin, was actually quite popular in these republics. This was not because he had converted most Kyrgyz or Tajiks to Leninism and scientific atheism, but because he more or less left them alone. And leaving them alone allowed many in these republics to prosper.

So what happened to clans under the later decades of Soviet rule, when mature socialism allegedly finished the task of modernizing Central Asia and therefore should have eradicated clan identities and networks? Not only Brezhnev, but also many Western scholars and policy makers and Central Asians themselves, argued that the Soviet Union had successfully modernized the USSR. First, this chapter, building on Chapter 3, argues instead that despite, or perhaps because of, the contradictions of Soviet modernization, clans adapted and survived. Brezhnev's policies reinforced and further entrenched the clan networks that had persisted during the very early decades of Soviet rule. Thus, Soviet policies “modernized” clans, by driving them underground and linking them with corruption, mafioso activities, and the second economy, but did not seriously attempt to eradicate them. Soviet policies furthermore gave some clans greater access to state and party resources.