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.