Famed travel essayist Paul Theroux, who possibly has one of the best jobs on earth, had this to say of his apparently illuminating journey through Niyazov-era Turkmenistan last year:
[I]t’s wrong only to think of Turkmenistan as a strange place. Many places are strange in somewhat the same way. One of the biggest mistakes that can be made in any country is to name an airport or name a river or name something after a living person. This is something that Niyazov did. So Turkmenbashi this and Turkmenbashi that. But we do that in America.
Interestingly, RFE/RL says Theroux described Turkmenistan as an “obsession with personality,” but Theroux used the term to describe the unfortunate American habit of naming airports, schools, and large federal office buildings after living politicians. Anyway, thinking of Turkmenbashi’s personality cult got me to thinking of the enormous personalities at play in Central Asia, even down to the current Nazarbayev/Aliyev spat: despite the crime aspect, despite the political aspect, it comes down to personality. Islam Karimov is a personality. And so on.
So I wonder what kind of history this collection of Central Asian “scientists,” gathered by Meruyert Abuseitova of the Kazakhstan Institute of Oriental Studies will actually write. A history of the personalities who have governed and influenced the region? A history of imperialism and conquering? A tragedy? A triumph?
Central Asia has far too many histories to conveniently distill into a Soviet-sounding “scientific” history (unless it is a history of science in the region). What could that project hope to achieve? And why not have actual historians contribute? And how can we separate “official” from “actual” histories, given the very large personalities involved?
This post was written by...
Joshua Foust – author of 1771 posts on Registan.net.
Joshua Foust is a Fellow at the American Security Project and the author of Afghanistan Journal: Selections from Registan.net. His research focuses primarily on Central and South Asia. Joshua is a correspondent for The Atlantic and a columnist for PBS Need to Know. Joshua appears regularly on the BBC World News, Aljazeera, and international public radio. Joshua is also a regular contributor to Foreign Policy’s AfPak Channel, and his writing has appeared in the New York Times, Reuters, and the Christian Science Monitor. Follow him on twitter: @joshuafoust
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From this:
I’d suggest looking at the Soviet histories of the peoples of the region. This new history is written just like those to serve political purposes and looks like it will repeat the old “our people have been on this territory since the dawn of man” common to Soviet-era histories. I’m sure there’ll be “proof” of ethnic continuity back to paleolithic times, and proof of ethnic continuity between modern inhabitants of territories and previous inhabitants.
That said, it’s always nice to see stuff like this for no other reason than it makes me revisit Yuri Bregel’s wonderful “Notes on the Study of Central Asia.
Despite their rather Mongolian origin, I presume. I never read any convincing explanations for that bit.
For those interested, we posted up Paul Theroux’s complete article from the New Yorker in PDF format back in May.
http://www.robertamsterdam.com/2007/05/travels_in_turkmenistan.htm
Excellent! I’ve wanted to get my hands on it, but I was unwilling to pay for it