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Encounters at the Edge of the Muslim World

A Political Memoir of Kyrgyzstan

Eugene Huskey

This unique work provides the only sustained political history of independent Kyrgyzstan, explaining events in the context of its society and the broader international order. Drawing on three decades of personal encounters with ordinary citizens and leading public figures, Eugene Huskey takes readers on a journey through the unlikely birth and tumultuous development of Central Asia’s most open society. Starting with the heady, romantic first days of independence and moving through the popular uprisings and inter-ethnic violence of recent years, he chronicles the struggles of a new state to establish a democratic order and to find its place in the international community, while caught between China, the Middle East, and the Russian world. At the center are the very human stories of leaders and citizens trying to navigate the transition from communism, where identities, property, and the rules of the political game were constantly in dispute. With citizens of independent Kyrgyzstan stripped of their Soviet identity, the book illustrates how alternative loyalties based on kinship, geography, statehood, and religion competed for prominence in ways that often complicated the new country’s political, social, and economic development.

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Pages: 266 • Trim: 6⅜ x 9½

978-1-5381-1707-1 • Hardback • September 2018 • $83.00 • (£64.00)

978-1-5381-1708-8 • Paperback • September 2018 • $38.00 • (£30.00)

978-1-5381-1709-5 • eBook • September 2018 • $36.00 • (£30.00)

Subjects: Political Science / World / Russian & Former Soviet Union, History / Europe / Russia & the Former Soviet Union, History / Asia / Central Asia

Encounters at the Edge of the Muslim World

A Political Memoir of Kyrgyzstan

Hardback

Paperback

eBook

Summary

This unique work provides the only sustained political history of independent Kyrgyzstan, explaining events in the context of its society and the broader international order. Drawing on three decades of personal encounters with ordinary citizens and leading public figures, Eugene Huskey takes readers on a journey through the unlikely birth and tumultuous development of Central Asia’s most open society. Starting with the heady, romantic first days of independence and moving through the popular uprisings and inter-ethnic violence of recent years, he chronicles the struggles of a new state to establish a democratic order and to find its place in the international community, while caught between China, the Middle East, and the Russian world. At the center are the very human stories of leaders and citizens trying to navigate the transition from communism, where identities, property, and the rules of the political game were constantly in dispute. With citizens of independent Kyrgyzstan stripped of their Soviet identity, the book illustrates how alternative loyalties based on kinship, geography, statehood, and religion competed for prominence in ways that often complicated the new country’s political, social, and economic development.

Details

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Pages: 266 • Trim: 6⅜ x 9½

978-1-5381-1707-1 • Hardback • September 2018 • $83.00 • (£64.00)

978-1-5381-1708-8 • Paperback • September 2018 • $38.00 • (£30.00)

978-1-5381-1709-5 • eBook • September 2018 • $36.00 • (£30.00)

Subjects: Political Science / World / Russian & Former Soviet Union, History / Europe / Russia & the Former Soviet Union, History / Asia / Central Asia

Author

Eugene Huskey is William R. Kenan, Jr., Chair in Political Science at Stetson University. His research on Kyrgyzstan first took him to the country in 1992, six months after Kyrgyzstan’s emergence as an independent state. He has been back to Kyrgyzstan ten times since then to conduct research, teach at the American University of Central Asia, train Kyrgyzstani political scientists, and participate in a mission for the International Center for Transitional Justice.

Table of Contents

List of Figures
Preface and Acknowledgments
Note on Usage
1 Conversations with Bolot
2 From Moscow to Bishkek (or Kirgizia, Kirgizstan, Kyrgyzstan)
3 The Present Is History
4 Hope Abounds
5 Traveling the Chu Valley: Last Stop, the President’s Office
6 The Power of Words
7 Kyrgyzstan Goes to the Polls
8 Central Asia through Students’ Eye
9 Falsification and Conciliation
10 Borders and Regions Bedevil a President
11 The Tulip Revolution
12 The Revolution Betrayed
13 Fear Stalks the Land
14 Talk of Kinship, Gender, and Islam
15 Taking the Lonely Road Home
16 The Netherworld of the Opposition
17 Bakiev Falls, Washington Reacts
18 Revolutionary Legality versus Transitional Justice
19 June 2010: The Month That Remade a Country
20 “We Either Have Fair Elections, or We Have Violence”
21 First Steps on the Parliamentary Road
22 Without Abuse, Power Loses Its Charm
23 Goodbye to Manas
24 In Osh the Past Is Never Dead
25 Preparing for a Presidential Afterlife
26 A Stan Like No Other
Notes
Selected Bibliography
About the Author

Reviews

No American scholar has quite the depth of understanding of Kyrgyzstan that Eugene Huskey commands, and in this work he puts both his impressive analytical skills and his vast knowledge and experience to excellent use in a work that teaches a great deal and remains remarkably engaging and warm. This book, which has no equal in the current literature, is a first-person account of the protracted birth, at times painful and at times joyous, of Central Asia’s first modern democracy. It is an important accomplishment and the most significant contribution to date to the English-language literature concerning Kyrgyzstan.

— Scott Horton, contributing editor, Harper’s Magazine

I opened this book not even sure I could pronounce Kyrgyzstan. I finished it with a realization that the story of this small Central Asian country, wedged between three major global hotspots, is highly relevant to any American trying to make sense of the world today. If you want to understand Kyrgyzstan—and you do, even if you don’t know it yet—this is the only book to read.

— Steve Kornacki, national political correspondent, NBC News

As an objective observer with a unique insider’s knowledge of our country, Eugene Huskey has traced the turbulent development of our young post-communist democracy a quarter century after the founding of independent Kyrgyzstan. Written with warmth and humanity by an outstanding scholar, this book offers an invaluable firsthand account of Kyrgyzstan for foreign readers who want to know more about contemporary Central Asia. It is a rare, heartfelt work that will encourage us to write about our revolutions instead of only making them.

— Roza Otunbayeva, former president of Kyrgyzstan

Encounters at the Edge of the Muslim World is more than an analysis of Kyrgyz politics; it is a narrative of Kyrgyzstan’s post-communist social, economic, and political evolution that captures the reader’s attention by interspersing scholarly analysis with personal reflections. This is a must-read for experts and non-experts alike.
— The Russian Review

Features

the first full-length study of the birth and development of the new country of Kyrgyzstan

an innovative approach to the analysis of the post-communist world that weaves together personal narrative and accessible analysis of the country’s history, politics, and culture

Offers both a ground-level view of critical events and everyday life and an assessment of how Kyrgyzstan figures into broader patterns of regional politics and international affairs

the most extensive assessment available of the intra- and inter-ethnic conflicts occasioned by the collapse of communism and the search for new identities in post-communist Kyrgyzstan

based on extensive personal observation and interviews with the key players in Kyrgyzstani public life, including three of the country’s presidents

the book is the product of 30 years of research on, and travel in, Kyrgyzstan.

Encounters at the Edge of the Muslim World

A Political Memoir of Kyrgyzstan

Eugene Huskey

Encounters at the Edge of the Muslim World

A Political Memoir of Kyrgyzstan

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