The essay traces the origins and development of Soviet area studies from their inception in the early 1940s to the present. The first part examines the institutional framework and the funding sources for Soviet and post-Soviet area studies. The second part concentrates on the connection between...

In the early 1990s, energy companies around the world began to realize the enormity of the still-untapped oil and natural gas reserves of the Caspian Sea basin, igniting a scramble to develop new extraction and transport networks to bring these resources to the world market. The result has...

The early Soviet response to the Chinese Cultural Revolution was striking not only for its humor and creativity, but also for its spontaneity, the uncertainty of its implications, and for the remarkable snapshot it generated of Soviet identity. China not only brought out the patriotism of the...

This paper examines the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), one of the three key Islamic groups active in Central Asia. The IMU is a militant and extremist Islamic organization, one that has been listed by the US State Department as a terrorist organization. It has been linked to terrorist...

The Great Patriotic War served as a defining moment for the Soviet Union, changing the locus of legitimacy for both regime and individual and also the way that this multi-ethnic state defined itself. The following paper examines the conflict between two men who constructed narratives of this...