Is Central Asia Moving Beyond Russia? An Interview with Johan Engvall
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…
A Brief History of Collecting Abr Clothing from Uzbekistan
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…
Kazakh as an Unwritten Language: The Case of Astrakhan Oblast
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…
Decorative and Funerary Art of Eurasia. An interview with Petya Andreeva
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…
Usto Mumin: The Life and Work of a Great Artist as Seen in Recent Books
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…
Textiles, Carpets, and Geometry: An Interview with Carol Bier
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…
From Central Asia to India: Women of the Mughal Empire
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: Empresses,…
Solidarity: A Love Letter to Diasporic Asians in Russia, Central Asia, and Beyond
I was nineteen years old when I left the US to study for the first time. I spent five weeks on a summer exchange program at the International University in…
A Woman with a Camera in Uzbekistan: Umida Akhmedova about Herself
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…
Zoroastrianism and Islam: How They Interacted, Clashed, and Accommodated One Another. An Interview with Andrew Magnusson
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…
Want to Understand Industrialization in Resource-Rich Countries such as Uzbekistan? Read Marx (and Iñigo Carrera)
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…
Saints, Scholars, Poets, Jurists, and Politicians of the Sufi Hidden Caliphate: An Interview with Waleed Ziad
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…
War, Post-War, and Peace in Eurasia: An Interview with Jesse Driscoll
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…
Barzu Abdurazzakov as a Lone Voice of the Tajik Creative Intelligentsia
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…
A Woman, an Actress, a Jadid? Reflecting on a Recent Exhibition in London
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…
The Mongols and the Modern International Order: An Interview with Ayşe Zarakol
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…
Music and Women in Afghanistan and Central Asia: An Interview with Razia Sultanova
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…
Between the Aral and Caspian Seas: The Magnificent History and Archeology of Turkmenistan
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…
Central Asia in Modern Times: Architecture, Women, and Freedom. An Interview with Edda Schlager
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…
Early Soviet Modernization in the Lives of Kazakh Women
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…
What Can Golden Horde Fabrics Tell Us About Histories of Kazakhstan and Ukraine?
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…
ArtChaeology and the Destruction of Ideologies: An Interview with Vyacheslav Akhunov
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…
The Lives and Work of Soviet Kazakh Women in Photos. From the Central State Archive of Film, Photo Documents, and Sound Recording of the Ministry of Culture and Sports of the Republic of Kazakhstan
The lives of women in Central Asia before Russian colonization are often portrayed in a miserable light. European travelers did not leave much visual evidence about local women. Women in…
Archival Treasures of Kazakhstan Offer New Images and Voices of Its History
The Central State Archive of Film, Photo Documents, and Sound Recording of the Republic of Kazakhstan– http://kfdz.kz/was set up almost 80 years ago but has recently expanded to include new collections…
Studying the Steppe on Imperial Orders: Fyodor Shcherbina and His Expedition
A revolutionary spirit, an opponent of imperial and Soviet power, and a supporter of the idea of an independent Ukraine, Fyodor Shcherbina was one of the first scientists sent by…
Why We Translate Central Asia While All Eyes Are on Ukraine
This July, Gaudy Boy will publish an English-language anthology of Kazakhstani women’s writing entitled Amanat. The anthology brings together short stories and essays by 13 women from three generations (ranging…
Women, Kinship, and Property in Central Asia
Author Aksana Ismailbekova Aksana Ismailbekova is a research fellow at Leibniz-Zentrum-Moderner Orient (ZMO). Ismailbekova completed her PhD dissertation at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology and Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg in…
Rural Women in Kyrgyzstan: “Ayalzattyn tagdyry: mezgil kүүsүndө” (Women’s Fates Don’t Choose Times). An Interview with Cholpon Koichumanova
For the last few years, Professor Cholpon Koichumanova has been working on a project studying the role and place of women in modern Kyrgyzstan. The project has been implemented with…
The Turkic Roots of Monomakh’s Cap: An Interview with Guzel Valeeva-Suleymanova
Monomakh’s Cap used to crown the Russian tsars. Created in the early fourteenth century, the cap is topped by a simple gold cross, inlaid with precious stones, and trimmed with…
The Treasures of Pazyryk Kurgans in the Hermitage Museum
Pavel Azbelev, archaeologist and guides’ educator at the State Hermitage Museum, Russia, discusses the frozen treasures of Pazyryk culture, a Scythian nomadic Iron Age archaeological culture whose artifacts and mummies…
Jewelry of Central Asia: Past and Present of the Art Tradition
While working in the archives of the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, I came across an interesting document. It was a list of the…
Political Vagabonds of the Steppe and Their Influence on Modern Eurasia. A Conversation About Qazaqlïq With Joo-Yup Lee
What are the origins of the Kazakh nation? What do the Kazakhs, Uzbeks, and Cossacks have in common? In this interview, Joo-Yup Lee tells us about the political vagabonds or ambitious…
Documentary Center in Tashkent Documents Untold Stories and Unfurls Symbolic Meanings
Around the world, “art and artistic activism is a dynamic practice that combines the creative power of art, which moves us emotionally, with the strategic planning of the activities necessary…
Social Mobilization in the Absence of Infrastructure and Services on the Urban Margins: Toward “Societal Infrastructures”
How do communities deal with the decay, failure or complete absence of infrastructure? In the fourth decade after the collapse of the Soviet and other Socialist states, this question is…
How the Soviet State’s Promises of Water Were First Fulfilled and then Failed
The Soviet state invested heavily in water infrastructure in arid Central Asia. These investments produced transformations with significant social impact. They also created memories that many anthropological studies have tried…
A Past That Is Neither Remembered nor Forgotten. A Tale of Two Lenin Statues in Tajikistan
In Soviet times, statues of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, a Russian revolutionary and the first head of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, were powerful political symbols. For most of the…
Did the Kazakhs Have Their Own Dance Culture and What Are the Origins of Kara-Zhorga – The Nation’s Favorite Dance?
It is known that dance is a bodily expression of human feelings and emotions. Every nation has its own lexicography and distinguished style of dance. How things were with the…
The Love and Beauty of Wedding Suzani from the Collection of the Russian State Museum of Oriental Art
Russian State Museum of Oriental Art (Gosudarstvennyi Muzei Vostoka) has an extensive collection of Central Asian suzani—a type of richly embroidered textile that once served as wedding embroidery to protect…
The Comfort Zone of the Artist Alexander Barkovsky
In this essay, artist Alexander Barkovsky writes about his comfort zone, his attempts to escape it, and the reasons why he ultimately had to return to it.An artist must deceive…
The History of the Tajik Costume: An Interview with Guzel Maitdinova
In her Eurovision performance, Russian singer Manizha (of Tajik origin) wore a dress richly decorated with traditional Tajik chakan embroidery. This embroidery can be traced back to early medieval ornamentation…
The Cinema of Soviet Kazakhstan 1925–1991: An Uneasy Legacy. An interview with Peter Rollberg
In this interview, Peter Rollberg, one of the rare foreign specialists on Soviet Kazakh cinema, speaks about the first Kazakh filmmakers, their main themes and relations with the audience, and…
Politics of the Kyrgyz mining sector: An Interview with Beril Ocaklı
The mining sector of the Kyrgyz Republic has been attracting a lot of diverse investments even despite frequent conflicts and violence. Investors are advised to consider volatile politics when entering…
Open Central Asian Photo Archives: A Visual History of the Region in Private Collections
On March 7, 2021 the Open Central Asian Photo Archives/Открытый Центральноазиатский Фотоархив (https://ca-photoarchives.net/) opened. An exciting project is open to all potential collectors who would like to share photos of…
Niva Yau on China in Central Asia: We Need to Look and Think Ahead of China
Interview with Niva Yau Niva Yau is a resident researcher at the OSCE Academy in Bishkek and a fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia. Her work focuses on…
The Return to Romanticism: Interview with Crimean Tatar folk artist Mamut Churlu
Mamut Churlu is an artist who worked for years in Uzbekistan and Russia on researching folk art practices as well as creating his own art. As part of the mass…
Urban Planning in Bukhara in the Early Post-Revolutionary Years
The bombing of Bukhara in 1920 by Bolshevik troops under the command of Mikhail Frunze marked the beginning of the destruction of old urban space in the city. The Ark…
Uzbek Dance Goes Virtual with the 17th Central Asian Dance Camp
Member of Silk Road Dance Company, Nilufar Rahmanova. Image courtesy of Central Asian Dance Camp.“Yaxshi Raqqosa Bitta Joyda O’nayshi Mumkin”(A Good Dancer Can Perform in One Place)By Dr. Laurel Victoria…
Mosque Diplomacy in Central Asia: Geopolitics Beginning with the Mihrab
In Islamic states or in countries with predominantly Muslim populations, mosques are one of the forms of nation-building. They serve as a means to visually demonstrate the attitude of the…
Tajik Gahvora: Harmful Tradition or Useful Childrearing Device?
For centuries, Tajik families have used a “gahvora” (cradle) to contain babies. The gahvora is one of the oldest traditions in child care and it is still preserved in the…
Is There Future for the Ilkhom Theatre?
By Alexey Ulko for MOZAIKAIn the last few months, the flagship of Uzbek contemporary art, the Mark Weil Ilkhom Theatre has been in danger. Why is its very existence threatened…
Genghis Khan, Kok-Par and Other Stories of the Great Steppe by Said Atabekov
“I wish to see kok-par players – “Steppe Wolves” from Central Asia on the world’s best catwalks. They are not the refined Europeans, just ordinary guys from a remote aul…
Central Asian Non-Conformist Art in Norton Dodge Collection
Norton Townshend Dodge (June 15, 1927 – November 5, 2011) was an American economist who amassed one of the largest Soviet-era art collections outside of the Soviet Union. Dodge, who…
Women’s Perspective and the Central Asian Cinema
The founders of Central Asian countries’ national cinema include Kazakhstan’s Shaken Aimanov, with his masterpiece “The Land of Fathers”, Kyrgyzstan’s Melis Ubukeyev, with his work “White Mountains”, Uzbekistan’s Shukhrat Abbasov,…
Sweat, Blood and Central Asian Dance
Dance is an integral part of life in Central Asia; it can be seen both in rural settings and on the proscenium stage, from highly developed virtuosic classical styles to…
Khorezm Lazgi: The Sunniest Dance on Earth
Lazgi is a must-see of Khorezm. Lazgi is the dance with a feel-good factor, making you feel a joie de vivre or zest for life. There is an opinion that…
Law and Custom in Central Asia: An Interview with Judith Beyer
Prof. Dr. Judith Beyer specializes in political and legal anthropology. She conducted long-term ethnographic fieldwork in Kyrgyzstan where she studied the practices of retraditionalization – how the concept of traditions…
Uzbekistan Without Graffiti: Censorship Against Street Art
Despite the rich artistic traditions of the past, contemporary Uzbekistan can not particularly boast about its popular street art. Even in cosmopolitan Tashkent, public spaces sparkle with pristine purity. On…
Through the Eyes of an Artist: Art Quarantine by Vyacheslav (Yura) Useinov, Bobur Ismoilov and Anna Ivanova
In the midst of quarantine, I saw Stagnation (Стагнация) by Bobur Ismailov. The painting shows a lonely girl in a confined room with a book on her knees and the…
Would Uzbekistan be the First Nuclear Power and Technological Leader in Central Asia? An Interview with Margarita Kalinina-Pohl
Uzbekistan has announced plans to develop its nuclear energy capacities to support economic growth and development. The advantages, risks, and threats that nuclear power can bring are discussed in this…
Ali Shir Navayi and the Rich World of Turkic-Persian Poetry. An Interview with Nicholas Walmsley
Ali Shir Navayi born in 1441 in Herat, was a Turkic poet, writer, politician, linguist, and mystic, who was the greatest representative of Chagatai literature. He lived in the Timurid…
Feminism and Central Asia – What Went Wrong?
Feminism is not adequately perceived in Central Asian societies. Some consider it as a threat to the existing traditions of the patriarchal foundation, when a woman (responsible for too many…
A Look into the Soviet Past of the Central Asian Cinema with Cloe Drieu
Researcher Cloe Drieu studied the earliest films in Central Asia that go back as far as 1924, a year that marked a political birth, with the ethnic and territorial delimitation…
On the Uzbek media development: An interview with Nikita Makarenko
Main photo: President Shavkat Mirziyoev with bloggers, August 2019Media in Uzbekistan represents an interesting object of study. After President Shavkat Mirziyoyev came to power, the media, which under the previous…
Central Asia is Slowly Reopening After a Tight Lockdown. Street Photos from Four Cities
These days streets are not so busy and crowded in the Central Asia’s largest cities: Tashkent, Almaty, Bishkek and Dushanbe. Yet, they are slowly returning to the previous life even…
Refugees from Сentral Asia and in Central Asia
Closed borders around the world due to the outbreak of COVID – 19 have temporarily affected the mobility of people, including both voluntary and forced migration. The precise impact of…
The Worsening of US-Chinese Relations and the Echo in Central Asia. An Interview with Raffaello Pantucci
An interview with Raffaello PantucciSenior Associate Fellow, Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) Raffaello Pantucci’s research focuses on terrorism and counter-terrorism as well as China’s relations with its Western neighbors. Prior to…
Art Bazar! A New Initiative for Central Asian Artists to Create An Online Marketplace for Contemporary Art
Author Diana T. Kudaibergenova Diana T. Kudaibergenova is a Postdoctoral Research Associate on the UKRI GCRF “COMPASS” project at the University of Cambridge. She studies different intersections of power relations…
Panjikent, the Central Asian Pompeii. An Interview with Pavel Lurje
Interview with Pavel Lurje Head of the Sector of Central Asia, Caucasus and Crimea, Senior Research Fellow of the Oriental Department of the State Hermitage Museum, head of the Panjikent Expedition.Dr.…
The Image of the Snow Leopard in the Archaeological Records of Kazakhstan and its Instrumentalization in Modern-Day Political Agendas
This article examines the connection between how archaeological remains were excavated in the past to how such remains are dealt with in present day Kazakhstan. Special attention is given to…
How Alerte Héritage Protects the Cultural Heritage of Central Asia
The cultural heritage of Central Asia is in serious danger due to the relative poverty of the population, the high levels of corruption, and the radical rewriting of history that…
What do Theaters in Tajikistan Tell Us?
My recent visit to Tashkent (the capital of Uzbekistan) was marked by the exploration of several theaters. I saw two plays: The first, Zavtra (Tomorrow), was staged by Artyom Kim,…
Nomads and Soviet Rule: Central Asia under Lenin and Stalin. An Interview with an Author
In his book, Nomads and Soviet Rule: Central Asia under Lenin and Stalin (I.B. Tauris, 2018), Alun Thomas examines the experiences of Kazakh and Kyrgyz nomads in the NEP (New…
Сarpet Propaganda: From Azerbaijan to Turkmenistan. The “Echo of Soviet Azerbaijan” Exhibition
The State Museum of Oriental Art of Russia, in cooperation with the Azerbaijan National Carpet Museum (ANCM), is holding an exhibition called “Echo of Soviet Azerbaijan. Carpet. Embroidery. Poster.” The…
Tajik Fashion and the Challenges of Achieving an International Breakthrough
Just recently, Tajikistan, with its rich aesthetic traditions, has seemingly made a breakthrough in the fashion arena with some great designers like Khurshed Sattorov (born in 1981), Nafisa Imronova (1991)…
Petroglyphs of Kazakhstan
Author Alan Georgievich Medoev (1934-1980) Alan Medoev was born in Leningrad in 1934. In the 1960-1980s he guided archaeological teams and expeditions in the field; he discovered and explored the…
ALZHIR – A Place of Remembrance
Situated in the center of Kazakhstan, ALZHIR (Акмолинский лагерь жен изменников родины, “the Akmola camp of wives of traitors to the homeland”) was a notorious prison for thousands of women…
Contemporary Art in Central Asia: An Interview with a Curator
Interview withThibaut de Ruyter is a French architect, curator, and critic. His latest projects include a traveling exhibition for the Goethe Institute in Eastern Europe and Central Asia entitled “die…
How Ikat Accompanied History in Central Asia
Ikat is a fabric that got its name from the resist dye technique used to make its patterns. But I’d like to show you ikat from a different perspective. In…
Destructing Soviet Architecture in Central Asia
Soviet architecture in Central Asia, as the name tells, is a fusion of Soviet modernity with traditional Central Asian culture that remains remarkable to this day. Persian and Islamic motifs…
Kazakh Graphic Illustrations of Evgeny Sidorkin
Evgeny Matveevich Sidorkin (1930-1982) is a Soviet graphic illustrator and artist who was recognized by several prestigious awards for his art. He mainly worked in Kazakhstan and created powerful images…
WILDNESS. About Bride Kidnapping in Kyrgyzstan
In the former Soviet republic of Kyrgyzstan, thousands of young girls and women are kidnapped every year to be forced into marriage. Although the practice was outlawed in 2013, bride…
Why Is Job Insecurity So Widespread in Independent Uzbekistan?
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 GaldiniFranco…