ABSTRACT
Each field views the period from the mid-1950s to the mid-1980s in the USSR through its own lens. Political scientists and historians see this era of Khrushchev and Brezhnev as a time when the top-down administrative system actually worked. Sociologists see it as a time when the state provided a generous safety net to the population. Whatever one's perspective, the changes that Moscow introduced in these years clearly shaped the cultural life of the Ferghana Valley. Traditional Central Asian communities were slow to come to terms with the changes that came with the establishment of Soviet rule. In the long run this limited the application of the Soviet model of accelerated economic modernization in Central Asia and the Ferghana Valley. This occurred because during the initial stages of Russification and Sovietization, Moscow relied on Russian-speaking migrants from Russia and the western republics.
