What does 1991 Mean in Central Asia?: Oral Histories of a Turning Point

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

Central Asians were on the receiving end of dramatic political changes that originated in Moscow. This panel draws together oral history research from Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan, undertaken for an international project called Central Asians remember 1991. Each panelist focuses on a specific sector of society, asking about their lives before and after the 1991 ending of the USSR and beginning of independence. Oral history highlights the varied positionalities of narrators as they remember their own past, and this study approaches 1991 with attention to the many divergences among respondents that arise from ethnic differences, from class-based differences, and from their core connections to religious belonging, to the Communist Party, and to their professions. Collectively, we see the same political event, that 1991 'transition' impacting a generation of Central Asian lives in disparate ways, but with many cross-border similarities.

Sub Unit

• History: Since 1990

Chair

• Nicholas Seay, Ohio State U

Papers

• Central Asians Living as Expats in Türkiye and the UK after the Dissolution of the USSR - Ali Igmen, California State U, Long Beach

• 1991 in the Words of Uzbeks - Ravshan Shamsitdinov, Kokand U Andijan (Uzbekistan)

• Telling Stories of 1991 across Central Asia - Marianne Ruth Kamp, Indiana U Bloomington

Discussant

• Azamat Junisbai, Pitzer College