New Books in Central Asian Studies

Nov 19 2024 166 ep. 58 mins 1.8k
New Books in Central Asian Studies Podcast artwork

Interviews with Scholars of Central Asia about their New Books

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Masha Kirasirova, "The Eastern International: Arabs, Central Asians, and Jews in the Soviet Union's Anticolonial Empire" (Oxford UP, 2024)

Nov 19 2024 60 mins  
In the first few years after the Russian Revolution, an ideological project coalesced to link the development of what Stalin demarcated as the internal "East"—primarily Central Asia and the Caucasus—with nation-building, the overthrow of colonialism, and progress toward socialism in the "foreign East"—the Third World. Support for anti-colonial movements abroad was part of the

J. Arch Getty and Lewis H. Siegelbaum, "Reflections on Stalinism" (Northern Illinois UP, 2024)

Nov 16 2024 46 mins  
In this episode, Alisa talks with Lewis H. Siegelbaum, who, along with J. Arch Getty, edited Reflections on Stalinism (Northern Illinois University Press, 2024), a collection of essays by twelve prominent scholars in the field who, after decades of study, reflect on the 'hows' and 'whys' of Stalinism as an authoritarian dictatorship determined to build a version of socialism in the

Ali Igmen, "Speaking Soviet with an Accent: Culture and Power in Kyrgyzstan" (U Pittsburgh Press, 2012)

Nov 13 2024 46 mins  
In this episode, Alisa talks with Ali İğmen, Professor of Central Asian History and the Director of the Oral History Program at California State University. In his book Speaking Soviet with an Accent: Culture and Power in Kyrgyzstan, Dr. İğmen examines Soviet Russia’s efforts to reshape local Kyrgyz culture into Soviet culture, as well as the ways in which the local Kyrgyz re

Norman Naimark, “Stalin’s Genocides” (Princeton UP, 2010)

Oct 09 2024 73 mins  
Absolutely no one doubts that Stalin murdered millions of people in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s. His ruthless campaign of “dekulakization,” his pitiless deportation of “unreliable” ethnic groups, his senseless starvation of Ukrainian peasants, his cruel attempt to “cleanse” the Communist Party of supposed “enemies of the people”–all of these actions resulted in mas

Zeev Levin, "Collectivization and Social Engineering: Soviet Administration and the Jews of Uzbekistan, 1917-1939" (Brill, 2015)

Sep 26 2024 83 mins  
In Collectivization and Social Engineering: Soviet Administration and the Jews of Uzbekistan, 1917-1939 (Brill, 2015), Zeev Levin seeks to provide a comprehensive picture of government efforts to socialize the Jewish masses in Uzbekistan, a process in which the central Soviet government took part, together with the local, republican and regional administrations and Soviet Jewish ac

Michael David-Fox, "The Secret Police and the Soviet System: New Archival Investigations" (U Pittsburgh Press, 2023)

Sep 21 2024 56 mins  
The Secret Police and the Soviet System: New Archival Investigations (U Pittsburgh Press, 2023) compiles an array of recent scholarship that draws on newly available archival evidence. This interview with the book's editor, Dr. Michael David-Fox, summarizes what these new findings add up to, and highlights specific arguments made by the collection's authors. While Russian archives

Yerkebulan Sairambay, "New Media and Political Participation in Russia and Kazakhstan" (Rowman and Littlefield, 2023)

Aug 26 2024 59 mins  
Dr. Yerkebulan Sairambay’s New Media and Political Participation in Russia and Kazakhstan (Rowman and Littlefield, 2023) confronts the sociological problem of the usage of new media (social media, the Internet, digital technologies, messaging applications) by young people in political participation. This book not only sheds light on the ways in which new media use contributes to

Victoria Smolkin, "A Sacred Space Is Never Empty: A History of Soviet Atheism" (Princeton UP, 2018)

Aug 18 2024 63 mins  
The specter of the “Godless” Soviet Union haunted the United States and continental Western Europe throughout the Cold War, but what did atheism mean in the Soviet Union? What was its relationship with religion? In her new book, A Sacred Space Is Never Empty: A History of Soviet Atheism, Dr. Victoria Smolkin explores how the Soviet state defined and created spaces for atheism d

Maria Taroutina and Allison Leigh, "Russian Orientalism in a Global Context: Hybridity, Encounter, and Representation, 1740-1940" (Manchester UP, 2023)

Aug 17 2024 42 mins  
Russian Orientalism in a Global Context: Hybridity, Encounter, and Representation, 1740-1940 (Manchester UP, 2023) features new research on Russia's historic relationship with Asia and the ways it was mediated and represented in the fine, decorative and performing arts and architecture from the mid-eighteenth century to the first two decades of Soviet rule. It interrogates how Russ

Elena Borisova, "Paradoxes of Migration in Tajikistan: Locating the Good Life" (UCL Press, 2024)

Aug 02 2024 57 mins  
Paradoxes of Migration in Tajikistan: Locating the Good Life (UCL Press, 2024) by Dr. Elena Borisova is the first ethnographic monograph on migration in Tajikistan, one of the most remittance-dependent countries in the world. Moving beyond economistic push-pull narratives about post-Soviet migration, it foregrounds the experiences of those who ‘stay put’ in the sending society