Akayev, Askar (1944- )

Kyrgyz politician, president from 1990. A reform-communist politician, he joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) in 1981 and became executive president in Kyrgyzstan in November 1990, after hundreds died in Kyrgyz-Uzbek ethnic riots in the Fergana Valley. He promoted economic restructuring , privatization of land, price liberalization, secular values, and independence within the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) from December 1991.

A former professor of radiophysics, he became an ally of the reforming Soviet communist leader Mikhail Gorbachev, who offered Akayev the post of Soviet vice-president in August 1991 in the wake of the failed anti-Gorbachev coup in Moscow. He declined, and was directly elected, unchallenged, as Kyrgyzstan's president in October 1991. A constitutional amendment in 1996 increased his presidential powers.