POLITICAL ORGANIZATION IN CENTRAL ASIA AND AZERBAIJAN: SOURCES AND DOCUMENTS

Edited by Vladimir Babak, Demian Vaisman and Aryeh Wasserman
This sourcebook, which contains a selection of 90 annotated documents, demonstrates the spectrum of political and social forces at work in the six Soviet successor states whose eponymous nationalities are traditionally Muslim - Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.

The Soviet backwater republics comprising the subject of this volume had a standard of living that was generally lower than the national average, and a level of political consciousness and involvement  of the intelligentsia and leading cadres which lagged behind the rest of the USSR. With the break-up of the Soviet body politic, these nations were suddenly faced with the challenges of independence, and entered into a period of transition, in which they struggled to shape the contours of their new states. By examining the political transition of these six Muslim republics together, we are able both to follow the threads of their common legacy and to identify the salient differences among them.

From the fledgling establishment of 'informal groups' in the early years of glasnost and perestroika, through the zigzags of political pluralism and repression, the documents in this volume reflect, on the one hand, these societies' aspirations and goals and, on the other, the obstacles and constraints which they confronted. The sources further reveal that power was both engendered and tempered by issues such as ethnic conflict, Islamic influence, clan, national and linguistic identification, migration, economic deprivation and demands for entrepreneurship and market economies, ecological neglect, global orientation, the communist legacy, education and the status of women.

Two divergent trends of development can be discerned as the six states evolved into independent entities. The first was a tendency towards the resurrection of traditional models; the other inclined towards Western-style institutions and frameworks, usually in their Russian variant. The question was - and remains  - which will prevail.

This book is a vital source for anyone trying to understand the political complexities of the new Muslim states of the former Soviet Union, as well as for those seeking models and patterns which might be relevant to the process of nation-building in the post-September 11 regimes of Afghanistan and Iraq.

 

CONTENTS

 
c430 pages 2004
0 7146 4838 8 cloth £65/$115