Strengthening the state is central to the post‐communist reform agenda. Here, state capacity combines organisational, material and social resources and is conceptualised along four dimensions: ideational, political, technical and implementational. This conceptualisation is applied to a comparative, survey‐based analysis in 2002 of 125 medium‐ranking officials in two post‐ communist Central Asian countries, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. The findings reveal that although Kazakhstan's controlled economic reform programme and natural resources have placed it in a stronger position to develop its state capacity, important ideational, political and implementational problems pose long‐term obstacles for reform. In turn, Kyrgyzstan's early liberalisation in the absence of economic and social resources may be serving to undermine its state capacity.

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Many Lenin monuments remain in cities around the former Soviet republics and a few national or regional authorities have decreed it against the law to deface or remove them. The Lenin monument in Bishkek, capital city of the Kyrgyz Republic, is an example of both policies. On two main counts, however, the fate of this particular bronze statue of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin has been unusual. Only in the Kyrgyz case was the country's central Lenin monument left untouched for over a decade after the collapse of communism, a decree for its preservation as a national treasure being put in force as late as 2000. And, when, in 2003, the government after all decided to remove the monument, it was then relocated only some 100 yards from its original location. These twin issues of timing and new spatial framing offer a window on the relationship between state ideology and politics in the Kyrgyz Republic. I propose to use an official ideology approach to understand the Kyrgyz ruling elite's ideological relationship to the Lenin monument after the collapse of communism.

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