PRESENTING the political, economic and military history of five Central Asian republics – Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, the author describes the evolution of the people living in these republics since the era of nomadic cattle-rearing to the modern era of launching spacecraft, thus highlighting what has changed in their day-to-day existence and what has remained largely unchanged at the core.
In order to present the contemporary events, it is necessary to delve in the past and so the author shows how these republics were delineated during the 1920s along ethnic lines as a result of the policies devised by Joseph V Stalin (187801953) and covers the period up to his death.
The disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991 signalled a new phase in the history of each of the Central Asian republics. Given its strategic location, its predominantly Muslim population and its hydrocarbons and other valuable resources a new chapter was opened in international relations with the United States, China, Turkey and Iran trying to fill the vacuum left by the collapse of Russia’s nearly 150-year old supremacy.
(HarperCollins Publishers, A-53, Sector – 57, Noida-201301, UP.)
