Benevolent Mongols. That is of course why they killed roughly 10% of the world’s population, more than any other group has ever been able to achieve.
Even the 20th century commies were only able to get up to maybe 3%.
History is what it was, who knows the truth these many millennia later. No sense arguing.
I was deployed to Uzbekistan in 2003. Local contractor secretaries were all beautiful Uzbek girls. They spoke excellent English, thought Islam sucks, liked vodka & rock music, and dressed as they pleased. Hated Afghanistan & burkas.
But all their national heroes were Genghis Khan (Temujin), Tamerlaine (Timur the Lame), Aleksandr Makedonskii (Alex the Great), and Josef Stalin. Tyrants and destroyers. And we liked to say that if the USSR were still around, every one of these lovelies would be some Soviet colonel’s b*tch.
Democracy? Rights of the individual? Never heard of those in Central Asia.