By Sergei Abashin

The collapse of the USSR and the appearance instead of some 15 new states, not counting several territories declaring themselves to be states, has raised the inevitable question of how this space might now be reconfigured for analytical purposes. Should it, as used to be the case, be considered as an indivisible whole (as post-Soviet countries for example, or as Eurasia)? Or would it be better divided into separate parts, each correlated with other, wider delineations (North/South, West/East, the Christian/Islamic worlds etc.)? Both solutions have their reasons and goals, and, naturally, their pros and cons. In the first case, there is the risk of ascribing certain unique and uniform features to this space, while ignoring, on the one hand, its internal complexity and, on the other, its interaction with the rest of the world. In the second case, the opposite danger arises: of ignoring shared historical experiences and essentializing the borders, first and foremost the cultural borders, between the various communities that inhabit the space in question. Evidently, then, any strategy for analysis must be developed around the possibility of combining and aligning these two perspectives.

In this chapter, Abashin analyzes the new Central Asian states through the lens of three categories: nation, post-coloniality, and post-Sovietness. These terms are studied in how they are used to describe societies of Central Asia as well as models, similarities and differences, and what further questions these classifications prompt.

Read this chapter here.