The collapse of the Soviet Union-led Eastern bloc surely constitutes one of the great turning points in human history. The disintegration of the USSR demonstrated in stark terms that a world fashioned along the lines of a Marxist dictatorship model could not hope to compete with liberal capitalist democracy in economic terms. A great 'natural experiment' thus ended with the resounding defeat of communist utopianism. The rapid disintegration of the Soviet Union has given rise to a host of interesting questions, not least the best means of transforming stagnant socialist economic systems into vibrant market economies. This has meant inter alia that the transition economies of the former Soviet bloc have formed the subject of intensive economic research over the past twenty years. However, within this specific genre on transition economies progress towards a modern market-oriented economy in the Republic of Uzbekistan remains one of the least-studied areas in the transition literature. In particular, very little work has been focused on the reform of the financial sector in Uzbekistan. The urgent need to remedy this unfortunate neglect has been the major motivation for the present book.