New Books In Central Asian Studies

The Mongol period (1206-1368) marked a major turning point of exchange - culturally, politically, and artistically - across Eurasia. The wide-ranging international exchange that occurred during the Mongol period is most apparent visually through the inclusion of Mongol motifs in textile, paintings, ceramics, and metalwork, among other media. In  In Mongol Court Dress, Identity Formation, and Global Exchange (Routledge, 2020), Eiren Shea investigates how a group of newly-confederated tribes from the steppe conquered the most sophisticated societies in existence in less than a century, creating a courtly idiom that permanently changed the aesthetics of China and whose echoes were felt across Central Asia, the Middle East, and even Europe.  Eiren Shea is Assistant Professor of Art History at Grinnell College. Tanja Tolar is a Senior Teaching Fellow at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member!

On September 9th, 2001, Ahmed Shah Massoud—called one of the greatest guerilla leaders in history, alongside names like Che Guevara and Ho Chi Minh, was assassinated by two Al-Qaeda suicide bombers. Coming just two days before the terrorist attacks of September 11th, Massoud’s assassination is thus one of those points in history that invites couterfactuals: was it a warning of things to come? And what might have happened in Afghanistan had the assassination failed? Afghan Napoleon: The Life of Ahmad Shah Massoud (Haus Publishing, 2021) guides readers through the guerilla’s life—including his campaigns against the Communists, the Soviets and the Taliban—and how he became a target for Al Qaeda. The book was written by legendary journalist Sandy Gall, who traveled to Afghanistan on many occasions, meeting with Massoud several times. Carlotta Gall—who worked with her father Sandy to report and write Afghan Napoleon—joins us for this episode of the Asian Review of Books podcast. She is the Istanbul Bureau Chief fo

Debates on Stalinism (Manchester University Press, 2020) considers some of the major debates about Stalinism during and after the Cold War. Was ‘Stalinism’ a system in its own right, or just one stage in the overall development of Soviet society? Was it an aberration from Leninism, or the logical conclusion of Marxism? Was its violence an expression of revenge of the Russian past, or the result of a revolutionary mindset? In approaching these questions, the book unpacks complex historiographical debates in which evidence, politics, personality, and biography are entangled. In doing so, Debates on Stalinism allows readers to better understand the history of history writing, and sheds light on contemporary controversies and conflicts in the successor states of the Soviet Union, and in particular Russia and Ukraine. Mark Edele is a historian of the Soviet Union and its successor states. He is the inaugural Hansen Professor in History at the University of Melbourne, and an Australian Research Council Future Fello

This month we are delighted to host Togzhan Kassenova on our NBN Central Asian Studies podcast. Dr Kassenova is the author of the beautifully researched yet very readable Atomic Steppe: How Kazakhstan Gave Up the Bomb (Stanford University Press, 2022).  Atomic Steppe tells the untold true story of how Kazakhstan said no to the most powerful weapons in human history. With the fall of the Soviet Union, the newly independent Central Asian republic suddenly found itself with the world's fourth largest nuclear arsenal on its territory. Would it give up these fire-ready weapons--or try to become a Central Asian North Korea? This book takes us inside Kazakhstan's extraordinary and little-known nuclear history from the Soviet period to the present.  Equipped with intimate personal perspective and untapped archival resources, Togzhan Kassenova introduces us to the engineers turned diplomats, villagers turned activists, and scientists turned pacifists who worked toward disarmament. With thousands of nuclear weapons sti

Stalinism at War: The Soviet Union in World War II (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2021) tells the epic story of the Soviet Union in World War Two. Starting with Soviet involvement in the war in Asia and ending with a bloody counter-insurgency in the borderlands of Ukraine, Belarus and the Baltics, the Soviet Union's war was both considerably longer and more all-encompassing than is sometimes appreciated. Here, acclaimed scholar Mark Edele explores the complex experiences of both ordinary and extraordinary citizens – Russians and Koreans, Ukrainians and Jews, Lithuanians and Georgians, men and women, loyal Stalinists and critics of his regime – to reveal how the Soviet Union and leadership of a ruthless dictator propelled Allied victory over Germany and Japan. In doing so, Edele weaves together material on the society and culture of the wartime years with high-level politics and unites the military, economic and political history of the Soviet Union with broader popular histories from below. The result is an engaging

In The Soviet Passport: The History, Nature and Uses of the Internal Passport in the USSR (Polity Press, 2021), Albert Baiburin provides the first in-depth study of the development and uses of the passport, or state identity card, in the former Soviet Union. This richly empirical book will be of great interest not only to students and scholars of Russia and the Soviet Union, but to to anyone interested in the shaping of identity in the modern world. The Soviet Passport was first published in Russian in 2017; this is the first English-language translation of the book. First introduced in 1932, the Soviet passport took on an exceptional range of functions, extending not just to the regulation of movement and control of migrancy but also to the constitution of subjectivity and of social hierarchies based on place of residence, family background, and ethnic origin.  While the basic role of the Soviet passport was to certify a person’s identity, it assumed a far greater significance in Soviet life, with wide-rangi

Timothy Blauvelt’s book Clientelism and Nationality in an Early Soviet Fiefdom: The Trials of Nestor Lakoba (Routledge, 2021), explores the complexity of Soviet Nationality Policy and patronage relationships among the Soviet elite by focusing on Nestor Apollonovich Lakoba, the Chairman of the Abkhazian Council of Commissars (Sovnarkom) and Abkhazia's colourful, hyper-connected and Zelig-like local power broker. Small in stature and hard of hearing, Lakoba earned an outsized reputation as a gracious Caucasian host with an easy-going spirit, known for his pithy Abkhazian folk sayings and his connections to absolutely everybody who mattered, reputedly having the ear of Stalin himself. Lakoba seemed at odds with the prototypical loud and gruff Stalinist party boss, but he was in his own way no less ruthless, despotic and cunning in his deployment of patronage and the political capital that this subtropical region had to offer. Local ethnic elites like Lakoba realized the advantages of representing the “titular” n

Over 75 years have passed since the end of World War II, but the collective memory of the conflict remains potently present for the people of the Russian Federation. Professor David Hoffman, editor of a new collection of essays about war memory in “Memory of the Second World War in Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia” suggests that this is no accident. Together with an impressive, interdisciplinary roster of academic contributors, Hoffman examines how the current leadership of Russia has put war memory at the heart of national identity, and used it as a powerful unifying force. Professor Hoffman and his fellow contributors were inspired by the memory studies of Pierre Nora, and in the fifteen well-crafted essays that make up The Memory of the Second World War in Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia (Routledge, 2021) they examine a wide range of what Nora called the “lieux de mémoire” or sites of memory, which includes textbooks, memorials, monuments, archives, and films. Hoffman’s choice of this international group of sch

For the past 30 years, a group of Russian scholars have dedicated themselves to uncovering the crimes of Stalinism. Their organization, Memorial, has in that time made great strides in understanding the scale, nature and history of Stalin's repression. On 28 December 2021, Russia's highest court found that Memorial was in violation of the Russian Federation's law regarding "foreign agents" and ordered it to be closed.   In this interview, I talked with Benjamin Nathans about Memorial's history, work, and the reasons Putin decided to shut it down now. Nathans, a professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania, has worked with and for Memorial since the 1990s. For more about Memorial, go here.  Marshall Poe is the founder and editor of the New Books Network. He can be reached at marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/central-asian-studies

Place and Nature: Essays in Russian History (White Horse Press, 2021) is a collection of essays on environmental history spanning primarily the 19th and 20th centuries. Covering a wide range of thematic topics (water history, migration history and environmentalism) and geographic locations, this book provides new perspectives on the intersection between humans and the environments that surround them. This is largely achieved through the researchers’ experiences traveling extensively through the areas they study, seeing them as living places, interviewing inhabitants and marveling at the beauty and harshness of the environment they study. Join us as we talk with Nicolas Breyfogle, David Moon and Alexandra Bekasova about their journeys and research, how the two intertwined and how that granted them new perspectives on the Russian and Soviet environment. Samantha Lomb is a lecturer at Vyatka State University in Kirov, Russia. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by beco

This month we discuss the post-coloniality of Central Asia's International relations with Timur Dadabaev, the author of Decolonizing Central Asian International Relations: Beyond Empire (Routledge, 2021). This book, which brings together new writing and other material previously published by Dadabaev, re-reads the international politics of Central Asia through a very original post-colonial lens. Dadabaev, a Japan-based scholar who hails from the region himself, engages with the existing literature to depict and explain existing inter-state relations in Central Asia, to ultimately construct fairer International Relations along the Silk Road. There is plenty of empirical grounding for the alternative views illustrated by Dadabaev, who suggests that Western International Relations, when studying Central Asia, repeated the same mistakes that Russian Marxists made when they attributed a narrative of modernity along the lines of the progress made in Germany and Russia. The book does also engage critically with Uzbe

The Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Central Asia (Routledge, 2021), edited by Rico Isaacs and Erica Marat, offers the first comprehensive, cross-disciplinary overview of key issues in Central Asian Studies. The 30 chapters by leading and emerging scholars summarise major findings in the field and highlight long-term trends, recent observations, and future developments in the region. The handbook features case studies of all five Central Asian republics and is organised thematically in seven sections: History, Politics, Geography, International Relations. Political Economy, Society and Culture, Religion. An essential cross-disciplinary reference work, the handbook offers an accessible and easy to understand guide to the core issues permeating the region to enable readers to grasp the fundamental challenges, transformations and themes in contemporary Central Asia. It will be of interest to researchers, academics and students of the region and those working in the field of Area Studies, History, Anthropology,

This month we are delighted to host one of the most important voices in Central Asian Studies worldwide: Professor Marlene Laruelle from George Washington University in DC, to discuss her latest, Open Access book Central Peripheries: Nationhood in Central Asia (UCL Press 2021). This is a much-anticipated book, which is going to become the go-to resource for every reader interested in nationalism in Central Asia. Bringing together for the first time Laruelle's articles on Central Asian nationalism, the book offers an intriguing overview of 30 years of nation-building in the region, linking back the choices made in the different nationalising states to concepts and constructs of nationhood developed during the Soviet era. The first part of this very readable book looks comparatively at the nationalism processes as developed in the southern part of the region [Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan. Uzbekistan] while the second segment features a collection of Laruelle's writing on the many complexities associated with nation-b

I could not think of a better way to start my tenure as host of New Books in Central Asian Studies than discussing Slow Anti-Americanism: Social Movements & Symbolic Politics in Central Asia (Stanford University Press 2021) with its author, Prof Edward Schatz from the University of Toronto. The book offers a privileged vantage point to assess the political relevance that symbols--in this case those emanated by the United States--continue to hold vis-à-vis attitudes, agendas, and strategies of social movements. The book is rich in details, showcases the results of an exciting long-term research agenda, and does a fantastic job in tracing the long, slow trajectory of anti-American sentiments in post-Soviet Central Asia, focusing on how the many shifts in the US regional image have been observed, digested, and acted upon by three audiences as diverse as Islamic activists, social mobilisers, and labour activists. This is a timely book, one that will have even more resonance now that Central Asia has entered the p

In Labour, Mobility and Informal Practices in Russia, Central Asia and Eastern Europe (Routledge, 2021), Dr. Turaeva and Dr. Urinboyev have brought together a number of studies which explore the daily survival strategies of people within the context of failed states, flourishing informal economies, legal uncertainty, increased mobility, and globalization. As they show, many people who are forced by the circumstances to be innovative and transnational, have found their niches outside formal processes and structures. The book provides a thorough theoretical introduction to the link between labour mobility and informality and comprises convincing case studies from a wide range of post-socialist countries. Overall, it highlights the importance of trust, transnational networks, and digital technologies in settings where the rules governing economic and social activities of mobile workers are often unclear and flexible. Finally, the book shows how many of the processes surrounding labor, mobility, and informality i

When considering pivotal years in Russian history, one naturally thinks of 1861 (the Serf Emancipation), the 1905 Revolution, or the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. Dr. Paul Werth’s 1837: Russia's Quiet Revolution (Oxford UP, 2021), invites us to reconsider that list of revolutionary years. Werth’s wide-ranging discussion analyzes such subjects as Pushkin’s death and Petr Chadaaev’s criticism of Russia’s past, to the Khiva campaign in which the Russian’s learned all they ever wanted to know about camels, but were afraid to ask. By the end of this engaging narrative, the reader comes to realize that post-1837 Russia was clearly on track (literally, in the case of the new railways) to become a different sort of place than it had been before. The era of Nicholas I has, with some justification, been portrayed as a stagnant, stultifying period. Werth’s book, however, demonstrates that the events of 1837, from the heir’s cross-country trip to the burning of the Winter Palace, did in fact add up to a “Quiet Revolution.”

There's been a lot of resurgent interest in the Silk Routes lately, particularly looking at the cultural, political, and economic connections between "East" and "West" that challenge long held narratives of a world that only became interconnected in the last half millennium. Even so, it's been rarely appreciated how much of the history of Eurasian medicine in the premodern period hinges on cross-cultural interactions and knowledge transmissions along these same lines of contact. Using manuscripts found in key Eurasian nodes of the medieval world - Dunhuang, Kucha, the Cairo Geniza, and Tabriz - this fascinating and much-needed book analyses a number of case-studies of Eurasian medical encounters, giving a voice to places, languages, people and narratives which were once prominent but have gone silent. ReOrienting Histories of Medicine: Encounters Along the Silk Roads (Bloomsbury, 2021) is an important book for those interested in the history of medicine and the transmissions of knowledge that have taken place

Weaving together personal story and broad analysis, Bagila Burkhabayeva’s The Vanishing Generation: Revolution, Religion, and Disappearance in Modern Uzbekistan (Indiana UP, 2019) deals with the question of Islam and its repression during the period of Islam Karimov’s rule in newly independent Uzbekistan. As witness to the infamous Zhaslyk prison and the 2005 Andijan uprising, Bukharbayeva shares intimate details about Uzbekistan’s use of torture, kidnapping, and imprisonment against perceived religious extremists. Burkhabayeva’s book will be of great interest to scholars, journalists, and anyone interested in contemporary Islam, Central Asia, or newly-formed authoritarian states of the late 20th and early 21st century. Nicholas Seay is a PhD student at Ohio State University Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/central-asian-studies

“A map is the greatest of all epic poems, its lines and colors show the realization of great dreams.” --Gilbert Grosvenor The Great Game raged through the wilds of Central Asia during the nineteenth century, as Imperial Russia and Great Britain jostled for power. Tsarist armies gobbled up large tracts of Turkestan, advancing inexorably towards their ultimate prize, India. These rivals understood well that the first need of an army in a strange land is a reliable map, prompting desperate efforts to explore and chart out uncharted regions. Two distinct groups would rise to this challenge: a band of army officers, who would become the classic Great Game players; and an obscure group of natives employed by the Survey of India, known as the Pundits. While the game played out, a self-educated cartographer named William Lambton began mapping the Great Arc, attempting to measure the actual shape of the Indian subcontinent. The Great Arc would then be lauded as one of the most stupendous works in the whole history of

Most of our understanding of the Mongol Empire begins and ends with Chinggis Khan and his sweep across Asia. His name is now included among conquerors whose efforts burn bright and burn out quick: Alexander the Great, Napoleon, and so on. Except the story doesn’t end with Chinggis’s death. As Professor Marie Favereau notes in The Horde: How the Mongols Changed the World (Harvard University Press: 2021), the empire that he built continued to shape, incubate and grow the political cultures it conquered. Even as the empire formally splintered, the ties that bound together the Mongols continued to play a critical role in the growth of new identities and cultures. More information can be found in Marie’s article for Quillete: How the (Much Maligned) Mongol Horde Helped Create Russian Civilization. In this interview Marie and I talk about the empire the Mongols built: how it grew, what it covered, and how it changed. We discuss how the Mongols changed those they ruled and those they bordered against, and the geopol