Bøker i Contemporary Central Asia: Societies, Politics, and Cultures-serien

In May 1992 political and social tensions in the former Soviet Republic of Tajikistan escalated to a devastating civil war, which killed approximately 40,000-100,000 people and displaced more than one million. The enormous challenge of the Soviet Union's disintegration compounded by inner-elite conflicts, ideological disputes and state failure triggered a downward spiral to one of the worst violent conflicts in the post-Soviet space. This book explains the causes of the Civil War in Tajikistan with a historical narrative recognizing long term structural causes of the conflict originating in the Soviet transformation of Central Asia since the 1920s as well as short-term causes triggered by Perestroika or Glasnost and the rapid dismantling of the Soviet Union. For the first time, a major publication on the Tajik Civil War addresses the many contested events, their sequences and how individuals and groups shaped the dynamics of events or responded to them. The book scrutinizes the role of regionalism, political Islam, masculinities and violent non-state actors in the momentous years between Perestroika and independence drawing on rich autobiographical accounts written by key actors of the unfolding conflict. Paired with complementary sources such as the media coverage and interviews, these autobiographies provide insights how Tajik politicians, field commanders and intellectuals perceived and rationalized the outbreak of the Civil War within the complex context of post-Soviet decolonization, Islamic revival and nationalist renaissance.

This monograph traces the history of Kazakh filmmaking from its conception as a Soviet cultural construction project to its peak as fully-fledged national cinema to its eventual re-imagining as an art-house phenomenon.

This source reader discusses Central Asian history through the context of Russian colonialism and its aftermath. It examines the influence of ethnonationalism, religion, and cross-cultural contact in the nation-building process across Central Asia.

This collection examines the use of soft power in Central Asia. The contributors examine the use of non-coercive policy objectives by the United States, Russia, China, the European Union, Turkey, and Israel.

This collective study of the "Nazarbayev Generation" examines the diversity of Kazakhstan's younger generations. The contributors analyze the transformations of social and cultural norms since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Tajik civil war is defined as a mulit-aspect and multi-level armed conflict, which often takes place after the collapse of empires or during transition from one social order to another. It is also an example of incomplete peace when the end of open violence fails to resolve the conflict-generating factors that brought the country to the civil war.

This edited volume explores, analyzes, and sheds light to the field, practice, research, and critical inquiry of media, journalism, and mass communications in four countries in Central Asia-Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan.