The History of Perestroika in Central Asia
Head of project:
Dr. Irina Morozova
Senior Scholars:
Dr. Tolganai Umbetalieva (Kazakhstan)
Dr. Gulnara Aitpaeva (Kyrgyzstan)
Prof. Jigjidijn Boldbaatar (Mongolia)
Ph.D. Students:
Munkhsaruul Enkhbaatar (Mongolia)
Ainura Turgangazieva (Kyrgyzstan)
Saltanat Orazbekova (Kazakhstan)
Short Info:
The project investigates the adaptive strategies of social groups in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Mongolia during perestroika in a broader socio-cultural context and seeks to explain how the newly introduced ideological trends and cultural ideas impacted on social groups and personalities. The project follows a genuinely comparative approach and aims to distinguish the similarities, differences and specifics of patterns of social consolidation in the three societies. The study begins chronologically at the end of Brezhnev's era in 1982 and Tsedenbal's long rule in Mongolia in 1984 and continues up to the dissolution of the USSR and CMEA in 1991. The project is carried out by an international research team that includes senior and junior researchers from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Mongolia; the senior scholars supervise selected doctoral students, who write their PhD theses in the framework of the project at their home institutions.
Advisory council of the project:
- Prof. Jacques Legrand, President of INALCO (Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientalist), Paris
- Prof. Dr. Matthias Middell, Director of the Centre for Advanced Studies, University of Leipzig
- Prof. Dr. Hans-Henning Schröder, Head of Research Division Russian Federation/CIS, Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik, Berlin
- Prof. Dr. Petra Stykow, Geschwister-Scholl-Institut für Politikwissenschaft, Universität München
- Prof. Dr. Peter van der Veer, Director of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, Göttingen