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…

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…

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…

A talented ethnographer, photographer, traveler, collector, artist, and researcher of the history and culture of Central Asia, Samuil Dudin (1863-1929) made his first expedition in 1891. Dudin was a participant…

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…

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…

English transcript of the video presentation belowToday I am going to talk about one particular type of traditional Kazakh clothing: the headdress of a bride, called a saukele.Voronina-Utkina A.A. Watercolor.…

Dinmukhamed Kunaev was a leader of Soviet Kazakhstan. As the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan he was in office from 7 December 1964, to 16 December 1986.…