Central Asia: Coming to Terms with the Past — Coping in the PresentIngeborg Baldauf

ASIEN – Nr. 129 (2013) pp. 5–6

In this special issue of ASIEN, “Central Asia” refers to the newly independent states of Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan as well as Mongolia, Xinjiang, Tibet, and Afghanistan. The papers presented here do not actually cover every part of the area thus outlined, and many other delineations of “Central Asia” also exist in other contexts. Viewed through the lens of perceptions of the past and strategies of the present, however, shared historical and contemporary experiences seem to form a meaningful basis for investigation. These include the effects of inclusion into the realms of neighboring regional superpowers that exert(ed) quasi-colonial rule; the rampant effects of rapid modernization predominantly induced by ideologies initially alien to the region, but finally embraced by more than just a minority of the population; deprivation of cultural autonomy, which almost caused the extinction of previously omnipresent cultural features like local languages, customs, and belief systems; and the subsequent recovery of these aspects of local life in more recent years, albeit under different conditions due to global entanglement. None of the sub-regions we look at share all these features, nor do they share those they have to an equal degree. All the more challenging is the task of scrutinizing the regions in an attempt to uncover their diversity rather than simply presenting a generalized “big picture” of Central Asia…