I did some work in Tajikistan a while back. Really good fun with some great people.
It was also the most vertically integrated place I've ever encountered. I've worked in a lot of places outside of EU/US and it's the only one where I've felt you could stick most people on the country on an organigram.
Sorry for the slow response, don't check my threads as much as I could.
This was back when I was in the aid business, so the gig involved a lot of going around and talking to all sorts of people: local community organisations, farmers, processing plants, schools, local government reps.
A lot of it's the sort of vibes you pick up doing this sort of thing for a while, and having other contexts to base a comparison on. I felt a clear chain running down from the top to bottom. I live in another post-Soviet place, it's a lot more chaotic: still one big man at the top, but the vibe is more of a graph than a tree.
Good things and bad things, well that's almost philosophical. It's one of the poorest countries in the region, one couldn't help but think it might be doing better if there was more space for independent action.
On the plus side, the architecture in Dushanbe (a comparatively new city) was gorgeous. If you've just got one company doing the architecture and build for everything, you get a nice harmony to the place.
It was also the most vertically integrated place I've ever encountered. I've worked in a lot of places outside of EU/US and it's the only one where I've felt you could stick most people on the country on an organigram.