A Very Important Post About.... Which Central Asian State Has the Most Absurd Cult of Personality Museum.

It's hagiographic face-off season motherf**kers!!!

The hard-working staff here at Drezner’s World has left Kazakhstan behind and is now in Uzbekistan. This country has some world-class tourist destinations in Samarkand and Bukhara and Xhivo, but that is not the point of this post. No, the point is that on this trip, I have gotten the closest I will ever get to Pyongyang and therefore need to arbitrate which country has the most absurd hagiographic museum honoring their first leader.

Let me explain. It is well known in diplomatic circles that when a foreign dignitary arrives in Pyongyang, they are taken to Hyangsan, or the International Friendship Exhibition — a massive structure containing all the gifts that North Korean leader Kim-Il Sung received from diplomatic visits. It’s a ridiculous, baroque attempt to make everyone think that a tinpot dictator was actually one of the greatest leaders the world has ever seen. I desperately want to go to Pyongyang and laugh at it.

That does not seem like an option at the moment, however, as I am not fond of even a small probability of being held hostage in a North Korean prison. However, the North Korean Kims are not the only former autocrats who have these kinds of hagiographic museums! Kazakhstan has the Museum of First President of the Republic of Kazakhstan, a hosannah to Nursultan Nazarbayev. Meanwhile, Uzbekistan has the Islam Karimov Scientific and Enlightenment Memorial Complex, devoted to Uzbekistan’s first president.

Karimov and Nazarbayev ruled their countries with varying degrees of iron first.¹ While they both kept their countries sovereign and independent, their actual achievements do not justify much in the way of hagiography. Indeed, each of their successors has taken steps to liberalize their countries and dial down the cult of personality.

No one told these museum directors that, however! I visited both and am now ready to answer the question: which hagiographic museum is the most absurd?