New Books In Central Asian Studies

In his new book, Nomads and Soviet Rule: Central Asia under Lenin and Stalin (I.B. Tauris, 2018), Alun Thomas examines the understudied experiences of Kazakh and Kyrgyz nomads in the NEP period. Thomas begins his book by examining enduring problems nomads faced such as increased European settlement that lead to sharp conflicts over land usage as well as nascent nationalist movements that had their roots in the tsarist period and how these problems were tackled by the Soviet state. The Soviet response, following the revolution, was initially quite weak as the party was small and central Asia even more under governed than in European Russia. But, as the Soviets consolidated power post-Civil War, they sought to Sovietize and modernize the region. Communists and Soviet officials viewed nomads as backwards and poverty stricken and difficult to manage and sought to modernize them and settle them through outreach such as literacy programs, Red Yurts, returning land that had been taken by European settles and tax bre