Sovietistan: Travels in Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan

Norwegian social anthropologist Fatland (The Village of Angels) details her eight-month trip through “five of the newest countries in the world” in this fascinating memoir. Traveling through Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan—the former Soviet republics that all became independent when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991—Fatland details the peculiarities of “the Stans” (Persian for “ ‘place’ or ‘lands’ ”): “Turkmenistan is more than eighty per cent desert, whereas more than ninety per cent of Tajikistan is mountains; the regime in Uzbekistan is so corrupt it’s comparable to North Korea, while the people in Kyrgyzstan have deposed two presidents.” But what Fatland finds throughout her travels is a nostalgia for the “good old days” when “the world was red... the shops were full of tinned food.” Anachronistic practices still exist, such as the problem of bride snatching in Kyrgyz villages, and there are several desolate places, such as Polygon in Kazakhstan, where the Soviet Union tested nuclear weapons. Ultimately, Fatland concludes that these nations are “still struggling to find their identity, bridging the span between east and west.” Her remarkable look at the region serves as a solid introduction to an area that remains little traveled by those from the West. (Jan.)