BACKGROUND: Vladimir Lenin in his letter to the Communists of Turkestan in 1920 asked
them to investigate how many states should be there and what they should be named. 80 …

The collapse of the Soviet Empire faced the newly-independent countries of Central Asia
with the daunting and unexpected challenge of managing their own borders. These were …

Border issues have always been an inherent part of the Post-Soviet realities within Central
Asia. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Central Asia had to face numerous structural …

The disintegration of the Soviet Union in December 1991 transformed Central Asia's political
landscape—rapidly, utterly, and irrevocably. Situated between the Russian Federation and …

Politics in Central Asia remains dominated by Soviet trained elite groups, heavily influenced
by their Soviet legacies. The authoritarian nature of government in Tajikistan, Turkmenistan …

In the 1990s Russia's position in Central Asia became significantly eroded, not so much for
economic reasons, as some Russian politicians allege, but because of its grossly …

The study of contemporary Central Asia faces the problems of ontology and
conceptualization. Especially after 11 September, not only the modern scholarly works on …

On the threshold of the 21st century, the strategic importance of the new sovereign states of
Central Asia, endowed with huge oil, gas, uranium, gold and other mineral reserves, sharply …

Having risen from the rubble of the Soviet collapse, Central Asia is emerging for the first time
as an independent participant in modern world politics. The region merits attention for a …

M any borderlands in Southeast Asia—in southern Thailand, East Timor, Papua New
Guinea, Sulawesi, Aceh, southern Philippines, Myanmar—have become violent. In the …