ABSTRACT

The breaking up of the Soviet Union produced five independent Asian countries, in the region once known as Turkistan. All five have Muslim (mainly Sunni) traditions and culture. Four use languages of the Turkic group – the fifth language, Tajik, being Iranian. The peoples of this central Asian region, conquered by the Russian empire between 1845 and 1895, broke away after the 1917 Russian revolutions, but by 1924 the USSR had reconquered them. It later reorganized the area into five Soviet republics. The division was mainly based on language, but exceptions to that rule were made in order to break up centres of potential resistance. One of these was the Fergana valley, which before 1876 had been the heart of the powerful khanate of Kokand, and even in the 1930s was notable for guerrilla resistance to rule from Moscow. Hence the curious intertwining in and around it of the boundaries, laid out in the Soviet period, which still exist today.