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The Kazakh Intelligentsia’s Role in Shaping National Identity
Ana Ross from the University of St Andrew’s delves into the history of the Alash Orda in Kazakhstan in the early nineteenth century.
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‘The Age of Maturity for the Turkmen Spirit’: The Ruhnama and identity production in post-Soviet Turkmenistan
Photograph: Beth via Flikr. Towering above Ashgabat’s Independence Park is a ten-metre monument of the Ruhnama: the magnum opus of Turkmenistan’s first president, Saparmurat Niyazov.1 Translated into English as ‘Book of the Soul’, it has gripped the country’s social, political, and intellectual life for nearly two decades, encapsulating the personality cult constructed by Niyazov in…
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How Post-Soviet countries in Central Asia are redefining their identities.
Although an external observer still tends to label the five major countries of Central Asia’s vast region (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan) as ‘Post-Soviet’, it might just be the wrong prism to use.
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Manas, Memory, and the Making of the Kyrgyz National Myth
How one epic poem has defined Kyrgyz identity.