Inside Central Asia : a political and cultural history of Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkey, and Iran / Dilip Hiro.

“Includes bibliography”—(p. [430]-431).

Contents: Maps—Preface—Introduction—Chapter 1 : Turkey : from militant secularism to grassroots Islam—Chapter 2 : Uzbekistan : the complex hub of Central Asia—Chapter 3 : Turkmenistan : molded by a Megalomaniac despot—Chapter 4 : Kazakhstan : rising oil state courted by big powers—Chapter 5 : Kyrgyzstan : the Tulip revolution, a false dawn—Chapter 6 : Tajikistan : the rise and fall of political Islam—Chapter 7 : Iran : the geopolitics of the Islamic revolution—Summary and conclusions—Epilogue—Notes—Select bibliography—Index.

Summary: “Turkey and Iran existed as distinct entities long before the inception of the central Asian republics. Their histories have been molded by religion, relations between state and mosque, secularism, nationalism, Islamic fundamentalism, westernization. Modernization, capitalist development, and moderate Islamism. As for central Asia, the preeminent dynamics of the constituent republics’ histories have been tsarist imperialism, territorial loyalty, Islam, pan-Turkism, the Bolshevik revolution, Marxism-Leninism, the highly centralized communist party, Stalin’s theory of nations, socialist development in economics and culture (including scientific atheism), the Stalinist purges, the great patriotic war, de-Stalinization, glasnost and perestroika, the Soviet bloc’s defeat in the cold war, ethnic nationalism, religious revival, radical Islam, the market economy, and multiparty politics”—(p. [391]).