Event Report: Princeton History Professor Stephen Kotkin

Stephen Kotkin, Professor of History Professor and Director of Russian & Eurasian Studies at Princeton University, gave an excellent, and in many ways provocative, lecture at George Mason University several weeks ago. Kotkin’s lecture was largely based on an article forthcoming in Kritika, which you can access through this link (PDF). In his lecture, he challenged not only the direction of the field of Eurasian studies, but the term “Eurasia” itself. Instead, he proposed “political exchange” and “imperial legacy” as an alternative framework for analysis.

Does that sound like a lot of academic jargon? Read on and I will try to explain what he is getting at.
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On March 21 I was happy to present neweurasia (together with Global Voices, see detailed post about the conference on GV) as an example of citizen media site on First Moscow International Conference on Blogs, Media and Citizen Journalism on March 21.

Session on Freedom of Speech in Russian Segment of the Internet

The conference was organized by the Centre for Internet Policy of Moscow State University for International Relations (MGIMO), Realno.info, a web site that was created in the summer of 2006 to bring together regional journalists, and a Club for Regional Journalists “Iz Pervyh Ust” (”First-Hand Reporting”). The idea for the conference came up when Rostislav Vylegzhagin, one of the organizers and editor for Realno.info, was writing his dissertation on new media, only to discover that there are no Russian-language sources on new media, despite much interest in it.

It was good to catch up on development of Russian citizen journalistm. Because if Russia is several years behind the West in development of new media, Central Asia is several years behind Russia. Central Asian Livejournal bloggers are in touch with Russian, hence, the initiatives by Russian bloggers are likely to influence Central Asia too (especially, Kazakhstan, with high Internet penetration and mostly Russian-speaking population). It is also useful to see how Russian government copes with the rise of blogosphere, which is numerous and outspoken.

Dmitry Peskov, Director of the Center for Internet Policy, said in his welcome speech that four or five years ago, when first bloggers appeared in Russia, the IT administrators at the universities used to block access to Livejournal. Now, however, there is a need to explain the positive side of the blogosphere. Most conference participants (about 60 journalists from the regions, several from Belarus and Ukraine, and the rest - students, journalists, bloggers from Moscow) had their own blogs. If Almaty conference in September 2006 was dominated by the debate about whether blogs compete with professional journalists, Russia moved on. It now discusses what the future of the citizen media would be, and how both bloggers and professional media can cooperate with each other to contribute to better reporting. (more…)

Carleton College Professor Adeeb Khalid presented a his research on November 15th titled “Understanding Soviet Islam: Religion, Nationality and Citizenship in Soviet Central Asia” at George Mason University. His lecture was based on extensive research for a book coming out in January that will be the only narrative history of Islam in Central Asia during the entire Soviet period.

Khalid’s principle argument was that the Soviet Union had a profound impact on Central Asian Islam and made the region unique in the Muslim world. This point may seem intuitive, but was presented as a counterargument to an outdated understanding of Soviet Islam that argues: (1) the Soviets were fundamentally unsuccessful in their project of transforming Muslim consciousness; (2) Islam remained a force of opposition to Soviet ideology; (3) Soviet Central Asians were either Sovietized atheists or traditional Muslims outside the system.

Khalid began the lecture by dispelling several common myths about Soviet Islam. First, he said that Islam used as a label so totalizing as to be almost useless as a term; there are infinite possibilities of interpretation and practice. Radically opposed ideologies can be equally rooted in legitimate Islamic sources. He noted that this is also true of any other religion, and in fact, because Islam has no formal church or clergy, diversified opinions and practices are even more common.

Secondly, it is commonly believed that Soviet Central Asia was completely isolated from the outside world. According to Khalid, this is fundamentally untrue. Many Muslims from neighboring countries studied in Central Asian cities such as Tashkent, though it should be noted that they were carefully selected by the Soviets and were predominantly studying science and engineering.

He began the main part of his lecture by positing that the Soviet experiment was actually far more successful than many give it credit for. His narrative was divided into three main periods.
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On October 19, Prague’s Lucerna cinema hosted Central Asian gala event within MOFFOM, “Music on Film - Film on Music” festival. The event featured three music documentaries by Uzbek film director Saodat Ismailova: “Revitalizing Shashmaqam, Court Music of Central Asia”, “Homayun Sakhi: The Art Of The Afghan Rubab” and Tengir-Too: Mountain Music Of Kyrgyzstan”. Films were followed by live music performances by Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Tajik and Afghan musicians. The event was well attended, by international and Central Asian audience, who represented vast Czech Central Asian community – staff of the Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and students of English language universities in Prague.

“Festival organizer Keith Jones attributes the enthusiasm of the audience to the exotic nature of the music and to outstanding musicianship…There’s also a political side underlying this — that people want to know more, especially in Europe, about the Islamic world , … about secular cultures from Islamic countries because they are sort of attacked in the media with unfair stereotypes. And a lot of people are searching for stories that lie underneath the headlines and underneath what is just on the surface. And so Central Asian music has attracted relatively strong support within a certain community which is interested in world music and international cultures generally”, wrote RFE/RL.

The films were very picturesque and interesting. Read the RFE/RL description of the films:

The film “Revitalizing Shashmaqam, Court Music of Central Asia” offers a glimpse into “shashmaqam” - one of the primary styles of ancient court music that flourished in Silk Road cities of Central Asia like Samarkand, Bukhara, and Tashkent. “Homayun Sakhi: The Art Of The Afghan Rubab” is a detailed portrait of the life and work of a master of Afghan traditional music. Sakhi, the subject of the film, fled his native Afghanistan after the Soviet invasion. But he developed a new musical style while living in exile in Pakistan. Eventually he moved to Fremont, California, a small American town that has a large population of Afghan expatriates. “Tengir-Too: Mountain Music Of Kyrgyzstan,” depicted the relationship between the Kyrgyz people, their traditional music, and the landscape.

I remember one of the characters of the “Tengir-Too”, “komuz” player, told that he grew up in a family where playing komuz was from generation to generation. “We are nomad people”, he said, and historically we played individually, we did not have orchestras. Now that we live in the cities, we still play our traditional music, but in ensembles, in a modern Western way.”

Live performances were vivid and touching: having similar instruments, Central Asian music has different styles. When musicians were playing one after another, there was a feeling that it was not only the Western audience that was getting exposed to different sounds of Central Asia, but also that Central Asians themselves were learning more about each other’s cultures. We were pleased to speak to Murad, a Turkmen musician who played at the event, and publish his story on neweurasia Turkmenistan, available here.

With practically all international media attention focusing on the fight between Nazarbayev and Borat, other nonetheless interesting news tidbits from Kazakhstan get lost in the wealth of search results. In Almaty, there are other highlights, however; and who needs to look towards America for the big international stage when there is one right next door, on Gogolya?

The Third International Eurasia Film Festival ended the day before yesterday, but unfortunately, their website wasn’t updated as of yet. To get a taste of the offered program, there were many interesting films on show in 2005, including the Kyrgyz production “Saratan”. Last year, there was also a panorama program on Central Asia, highlighting contemporary filmmakers from the whole region.

While the awards have not been published on the website yet either, IranMania reports that Iranian artist Ladan Mostofi won the prize of the best actress in “Good night commander”.

Unfortunately, not that many international stars could make it. While the organisers were trying their best - and I read that in the Kazakhstan Monitor back in the summer - to make ‘Michelle Pfiffer’ (famous for her appearance in “Batman Comes Back”, the newspaper added) or Morgan Freeman show up, the only tangible Hollywood star to make it to Almaty was Steven Seagal. Fortunately, he was in a good condition when the organisers invited him.

We have already arranged all details regarding the visit of Steven Seagul. He is in a good shape now and moreover, he is going to visit Kazakhstan not only as an actor, but also as a future director.

Apparently, Mr. Seagal didn’t behave all too well. (more…)

A conference on HIV/Aids kicked off in Bishkek yesterday, gathering government officials and independent experts from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and the Ukraine. In the light of the seminar, some interesting new research findings were presented.

The first pertains to the number of those infected with the HI-virus:

[T]he US Center for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that there are some 90,000 people in Central Asia living with HIV/AIDS.

The second is a hypothetical cost analysis for the scenario of an epidemic outbreak of the disease:

The uninhibited spread of HIV in Central Asia over the next decade would slow economic growth by an estimated 20 percent in Uzbekistan and by 10 percent in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, the conference organisers said in a statement.

Note the attendance of experts from Russia and the Ukraine, countries which have a much worse HIV/Aids situation, compared to which Central Asia scores relatively well (in Odessa for example about 10% of the population is HIV-positive).

It can only be hoped that Central Asia’s comparatively good HIV data does not result in a lack of funding. Jessica discussed this before on this blog:

On one hand, this relatively low prevalence would suggest that the huge amounts of donor resources devoted to ‘vertical’ HIV/AIDS programs in the region are unwarranted, given how disproportionately large they are compared to other health and development priorities. However, there is a compelling counter-argument that it is the low prevalence itself that justifies the substantial donor monies because there is still the opportunity to halt the spread of the disease before it enters the broader population through targeted prevention efforts now, reducing the need for expensive - and ultimately unsustainable - antiretroviral treatment programs further down the line.

Due to a conference on Blogging in Kazakhstan and the wider region plus some outreach parts of the neweurasia crew undertook, the website did not get updated as often as we would have liked over the past weeks.

As for the findings of the conference, we will post some summarising remarks here within the next week - but make sure to check out Tolkun’s and Mirsulzhan’s posts for their respective takes on what has been talked about in Almaty.

In the light of the recent idleness, something we cannot stress too often: If you’re interested in writing for neweurasia, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us.

Open Source will be hosting a podcast discussion on remittances this Thursday, and they are interested in the Central Asian perspective on this issue. So if you are intrigued by the subject of remittances (“the new foreign aid?� they ask) and know something about the situation in Eurasia, head on over. They are looking for testimonies and first-person accounts.

Are remittances better suited to help small communities than aid, or are they just signs that aid is failing? What does it mean that workers are making these kinds of sacrifices, and what will it mean when governments learn to depend on those sacrifices? Are remittances a viable development strategy?

Welcome to another roundup of news on press freedom and censorship in Central Asia and the Caucasus. To start us off, here’s a useful primer from RFE on the region’s bureaucratic controls on journalists.

May 3rd marked World Press Freedom Day, and the Committee to Protect Journalists released a report to mark the day, listing the world’s 10 most censored countries. Unsuprisingly, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan make the list - the report features the fact that Turkmen newsbroadcasters, “…begin each broadcast with a pledge that their tongues will shrivel if their reports ever slander the country, the flag, or the president.”

Also in Turkmenistan, two RFE journalists who had been jailed for ‘hoolinganism’ have been freed, but only on the condition that they stop working for the station. RFE has a useful chronology of the arrests, and the intimidation of their other local journalists.

In more positive news, the Turkmen novelist and journalist Rakhim Esenov has been awarded a PEN/Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write Award. Esenov’s novel The Crowned Wanderer was banned after the Turkmenbashi found it to be ‘historically inaccurate’, and Esenov himself remains under virtual house arrest in Ashgabat.

Meanwhile, one year after Andijan, the suppression of independent media in Uzbekistan continues. Sobirdjon Yakubov, a journalist jailed a year ago on subversion charges, has been released for ‘lack of evidence’. His imprisonment was widely condemned at the time, moving one English writer to poetry.

In Kazakhstan, opposition journalist Kenzhegali Aytbakiyev has been severly beaten by unknown attackers. The newspaper he worked for, Ayna-Plus, was recently closed by the authorities because of its coverage of government corruption. In addition, Kazakh Minister of Culture and Information Yermukhamet Yertysbayev has attacked two local news stations, accusing them of putting “the national leadership under pressure” by asking unwelcome questions over the assassination of opposition leader Altynbek Sarsenbayev.

Across the border in Kyrgzystan, the director of the country’s oldest independent TV station, Pyramid TV, has been receiving death threats, possibly related to a dispute between the channel and associates of the ousted President, Askar Akayev. Pyramid TV has had similar threats in the past, and in December 2005 its offices were attacked by a 20-strong gang.

Moving on to the Caucasus, two leading Georgian TV journalists have been jailed, supposedly for trying to extort money from a ruling party politician. Reporters Without Borders calls the evidence against them ‘thin’, while the journalists claim they have been the victim of a set-up.

Pressure on independent media has been increasing, both from the authorities and from business tycoons. The recent news that Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp is buying a large share in the Georgian TV channel Imedi has provoked a mixed reponse. One local expert pronounced, “that professional standards in Georgia are so low, that any possible bias, real or perceived, introduced by News Corp. could not make things worse.”

A full day seminar entitled “Regional Cooperation and Integration in Central Asia: Challenges and Opportunities” was held at the Brookings Institution this past Monday, March 27. It was jointly organized by the UNDP and Brookings, and focused on regional trade opportunities. A transcript of the proceedings should be available on the Brookings website shortly.

The below is a summary of a discussion about political and institutional obstacles to regional integration held by an panel of prominent academics: Fred Starr, Kathleen Collins, Martha Brill Olcott, Eric McGlinchey, and Talaibek Koichumanov.
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