Category: Voices on Central Asia

What changes took place in Uzbekistan when the country attained independence from the Soviet Union, and why did they result in mass job insecurity for the population? Author Franco Galdini… Continue reading Why Is Job Insecurity So Widespread in Independent Uzbekistan?

As the war in Ukraine continues and Russia remains under heavy international sanctions, its political allies, economic partners, and geographic as well as cultural neighbors in Central Asia are being… Continue reading Is Central Asia Moving Beyond Russia? An Interview with Johan Engvall

The traditional clothes of Central Asian peoples, made from abr silk and semi-silk fabrics in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries—chapans and munisaks, burqas and kuylaks, skullcaps and kultapushaks—became the… Continue reading A Brief History of Collecting Abr Clothing from Uzbekistan

An ethnically diverse region that abuts the Caspian Sea in southwestern Russia, Astrakhan Oblast is home to the country’s largest Kazakh community. Almost 150,000 people, or 18 percent of the… Continue reading Kazakh as an Unwritten Language: The Case of Astrakhan Oblast

The nomadic people of Eurasia left behind rich treasures that rival those of sophisticated settled societies. Many of these precious items, which can be seen today in museums around the… Continue reading Decorative and Funerary Art of Eurasia. An interview with Petya Andreeva

Usto Mumin, or Aleksandr Vasilievich Nikolaev (August 30, 1897 – June 27, 1957), was an artist who lived and worked in the Uzbek SSR. Nikolaev arrived in Tashkent after demobilization… Continue reading Usto Mumin: The Life and Work of a Great Artist as Seen in Recent Books

Central Asia is known for its long tradition of exquisite textile production. To this day, scarves or chapans woven using the ikat technique remain sought-after items for fashionistas around the… Continue reading Textiles, Carpets, and Geometry: An Interview with Carol Bier

Ira Mukhoty is an Indian writer who writes about forgotten heroines of Indian history. Two of her books—Heroines: Powerful Indian Women of Myth and History and Daughters of the Sun:… Continue reading From Central Asia to India: Women of the Mughal Empire

The most famous woman with a camera in Central Asia, Umida Akhmedova—a photographer and the author of significant documentary works—talks about herself, her creative and personal path, self-realization in the… Continue reading A Woman with a Camera in Uzbekistan: Umida Akhmedova about Herself

In Persia and the greater Central Asian region, two religions once fought for dominance. In the end, Zoroastrianism—which still enjoys adherents to this day—was forced to give way to the… Continue reading Zoroastrianism and Islam: How They Interacted, Clashed, and Accommodated One Another. An Interview with Andrew Magnusson

The commodity supercycle of the 2000s and 2010s gave rise to a rich debate in the academic literature about the potential for resource-rich countries to take advantage of the primary… Continue reading Want to Understand Industrialization in Resource-Rich Countries such as Uzbekistan? Read Marx (and Iñigo Carrera)

In his recent book, Hidden Caliphate: Sufi Saints beyond the Oxus and Indus, Waleed Ziad examines the development of Muslim Sufi networks across Asia from the eighteenth to the twentieth… Continue reading Saints, Scholars, Poets, Jurists, and Politicians of the Sufi Hidden Caliphate: An Interview with Waleed Ziad

In his work—on Central Asia and recently on Ukraine—Jesse Driscoll focuses on war and post-war. The conflicts of the 1990s in Georgia and Tajikistan and the conflict in Donbas that… Continue reading War, Post-War, and Peace in Eurasia: An Interview with Jesse Driscoll

Barzu Abdurazzakov (1959) is a famous Tajik playwright and theater director. Made an Honored Artist of the Republic of Tajikistan in 2001, he has since 2009 lost favor with the… Continue reading Barzu Abdurazzakov as a Lone Voice of the Tajik Creative Intelligentsia

Last month, an exciting photographic exhibition on Central Asia, entitled “Bound for Life and Education”: Sara Eshonturaeva and the Jadid Movement in Soviet Uzbekistan, was shown at Asia House in… Continue reading A Woman, an Actress, a Jadid? Reflecting on a Recent Exhibition in London

Ayşe Zarakol’s book Before the West: The Rise and Fall of Eastern World Orders challenges our understanding of the history of international relations and makes sense of the apparently chaotic… Continue reading The Mongols and the Modern International Order: An Interview with Ayşe Zarakol

Music occupies an enormous place in Central Asia, and in particular in Afghanistan. Dr. Razia Sultanova, a musicologist and cultural anthropologist, has studied the music of the Uzbeks and other… Continue reading Music and Women in Afghanistan and Central Asia: An Interview with Razia Sultanova

Two seas—the Aral Sea, now almost non-existent, and the Caspian Sea—encircle the great Turan plain, where constant migrations and ethnogenetic contacts between nomadic and sedentary peoples have taken place over… Continue reading Between the Aral and Caspian Seas: The Magnificent History and Archeology of Turkmenistan

Edda Schlager, a journalist, photographer, and “natural feminist,” has spent the last 17 years researching and capturing key moments in Central Asia’s modern history: the demolition of old buildings and… Continue reading Central Asia in Modern Times: Architecture, Women, and Freedom. An Interview with Edda Schlager

In her book entitled Modernization of the Early Soviet Era in the Fate of Women of Kazakhstan, 1920–1930: Monograph (Al-Farabi Kazakh National University, 2017), Janat Kundakbayeva, Doctor of Historical Sciences… Continue reading Early Soviet Modernization in the Lives of Kazakh Women

Tatiana Krupa, a Ukrainian archaeologist, historian, and restorer, has extensive experience studying fragments of fabrics that date back to the Golden Horde era. She has done work on fabrics that… Continue reading What Can Golden Horde Fabrics Tell Us About Histories of Kazakhstan and Ukraine?

The artist, philosopher, and writer Vyacheslav Akhunov stands out in the Central Asian art landscape. He created his own art movement – Sotsmodernism – based on the rejection of Soviet art… Continue reading ArtChaeology and the Destruction of Ideologies: An Interview with Vyacheslav Akhunov